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The closest thing we had (have) to online free speech was (is) Usenet. But distributors of child porn along with Andrew Cuomo (when he was the New York state at

by u801e 5y ago

The closest thing we had (have) to online free speech was (is) Usenet. But distributors of child porn along with Andrew Cuomo (when he was the New York state attorney general) making a deal with a number of major ISPs resulted in most ISPs discontinuing their Usenet service.

Gollapalli 5y ago
I used to just take accusations of CP at face value, but knowing how entrapment-happy and truth-ambivalent the US Government can be, I find myself wondering if the killing of usenet wasn't just a part of the "hacker crackdown" and the crackdown on piracy. Piracy in particular is not something that most people had/have any real or natural compunction against.
imiric 5y ago
The unregulated nature of Usenet and spam/malware arguably killed it, not a NY politician. ISPs generally didn't carry a lot of newsgroups anyway, and the best service was always from dedicated Usenet providers. Sadly these days it's only useful for binary downloads if you also use an NZB indexer. Does anyone still use it for discussion?
- u801e 5y ago
  > The unregulated nature of Usenet and spam/malware arguably killed it, not a NY politician. But it did lead to a lot of major ISPs dropping their usenet service around the same time. That killed a lot of existing newsgroups because most, if not all, the regular posters stopped participating. That's what happened to the newsgroups I used to frequent by the late 2000s. > ISPs generally didn't carry a lot of newsgroups anyway, and the best service was always from dedicated Usenet providers On the 3 or so ISPs I used when posting to usenet, they pretty much carried the vast majority of groups under the big 8 hierarchy. But what you say was definitely true for binary groups, where retention and completion were far more important metrics in terms of level of service and usability. > Does anyone still use [usenet] for discussion? I've heard that several of the groups under the comp hierarchy are still relatively active.

by u801e 5y ago

Gollapalli 5y ago

I used to just take accusations of CP at face value, but knowing how entrapment-happy and truth-ambivalent the US Government can be, I find myself wondering if the killing of usenet wasn't just a part of the "hacker crackdown" and the crackdown on piracy. Piracy in particular is not something that most people had/have any real or natural compunction against.

imiric 5y ago

The unregulated nature of Usenet and spam/malware arguably killed it, not a NY politician. ISPs generally didn't carry a lot of newsgroups anyway, and the best service was always from dedicated Usenet providers. Sadly these days it's only useful for binary downloads if you also use an NZB indexer. Does anyone still use it for discussion?

u801e 5y ago
> The unregulated nature of Usenet and spam/malware arguably killed it, not a NY politician. But it did lead to a lot of major ISPs dropping their usenet service around the same time. That killed a lot of existing newsgroups because most, if not all, the regular posters stopped participating. That's what happened to the newsgroups I used to frequent by the late 2000s. > ISPs generally didn't carry a lot of newsgroups anyway, and the best service was always from dedicated Usenet providers On the 3 or so ISPs I used when posting to usenet, they pretty much carried the vast majority of groups under the big 8 hierarchy. But what you say was definitely true for binary groups, where retention and completion were far more important metrics in terms of level of service and usability. > Does anyone still use [usenet] for discussion? I've heard that several of the groups under the comp hierarchy are still relatively active.