> 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 servi

> 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.