>He claims “30 years IT experience” I've written here before about what killed Usenet (<https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27636397 https://news.ycombinator.

>He claims “30 years IT experience” I've written here before about what killed Usenet (<https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27636397 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27636397>). Quoting myself: >That said, there are server- and client-side anti-spam tools of varying effectiveness. A related but bigger problem for Usenet is people of the type this post discusses, those with actual mental illness; think "50 year olds with undiagnosed autism". Usenet is such a niche network nowadays that there has to be meaningful motivation to participate, and if the motivation is not a sincere interest in the subject it's, in my experience, going to be people with very troubled personal lives which their online behavior reflects. Again, as overall traffic declined, their relative contribution and visibility grew. This, not spam, is what has mostly killed Usenet. Serving as volunteer "help" for a Google product on a Google Groups forum also counts as a niche network, with similar unfortunate results when not enough sane people participate to outweigh the weirdos.