My guess is spam. The way I remember it, back in the late 90s and early aughts every news group became useless due to cross posting spam. Sure spam was always

My guess is spam. The way I remember it, back in the late 90s and early aughts every news group became useless due to cross posting spam. Sure spam was always a thing, but I remember groups I used to read became unreadable by the sheer number of binary files being posted. IRC could avoid this problem because it is transitory. But I think the biggest reason is that usenet is unmoderated[0], while there’s always an op on an irc channel. [0] Yes, there’re some things people try to do, but they always felt bolted on, and a bit awkward. I’m not even sure how widespread they are, because I don’t think I’ve ever seen them actually work. Then again, I’m talking about a Usenet from 25 years ago.