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How do newsgroups maintain integrity across providers without a coin? Isn’t it like a sum check? That doesn’t work as good? I wish bitcoin were solving a real

• aeturnum 4y ago
  I think checksums can be used to verify that particular messages are the same, but ultimately I think there just aren't that many protocols for ensuring that every provider has every message. Some messages could get dropped and the solution is that providers will just check again - there's no protocol level guard against it. Absolute integrity is a lot less important in systems which assume that inexpensive manual overrides will be possible - because you save a ton by simply deciding to build a system that 'only' works 99.9% of the time and intervening in 0.1% of cases. Obviously blockchains don't work 100% of the time but that's the premise for their increased costs.
• lmm 4y ago
  Newsgroups were run by a secret cabal for a long time. Beyond that the system just doesn't preserve integrity; a given provider can censor some messages and that's generally something you live with or switch to a better provider.