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The problem with USENET is spam. Moderation can be a burden. I suppose Google has some systems in place to mitigate this.

by haolez 4y ago

bornfreddy 4y ago
These days, it should be fairly easy to combat this. Everyone subscribes their messages. Client sw allows whitelisting the signatures. Whitelisted signatures can vouch for new signatures to be added. User can easily silence any signature. Messages that are hidden (because the signature is not whitelisted) are shown if a whitelisted message replies to them. I'm sure I didn't catch all the edge cases, but the main idea is that the system is distributed, built on reputation, and self-managed. Everyone is responsible for the content they receive.
- giantrobot 4y ago
  That's just bozo filters with a side of Web of Trust. It's been done. Bozo filters help with spam on the client side but don't do anything about spam on the server side. Servers still have to host everything because they can't know a priori what clients will want or not. Not that your idea is necessarily bad but it breaks a lot of the utility of Usenet to have whitelist based filtering. I can't know ahead of time I like your posts and want to whitelist you. I also don't want to have to "know a guy" to get involved in a group (via Web of Trust).
  - bornfreddy 4y ago
    Is spam message a problem if noone reads it? Storage is cheap. As for knowing a guy... Maybe someone will browse spam and vouch for you for this message and if more people like it, you are accepted to their whitelists. But to be honest, if people don't want to read my messages, that is their prerogative.
Pxtl 4y ago
Chat AI is going to make combatting spam 100X harder. Imho we're reaching the end of our ability to allow anonymous contribution to public fora in general. Which is why I have a conspiracy theory about why conspiracy theorists are against "digital ID".
- mschuster91 4y ago
  > Which is why I have a conspiracy theory about why conspiracy theorists are against "digital ID". Even if you're not a tinfoil hat wearer, "digital ID" projects are fraught with issues: - private ones can instantly and permanently revoke your access for whatever reason they believe. Facebook, Google and Twitter have shown that often enough. Or they can go out of business like many OpenID providers which is even worse - you can, given enough resources, even hold Internet giants accountable, but it's impossible to resurrect a shuttered service once they delete their keyrings. Or they can use information about which services you use to push even more detailed ads. - public (i.e. government-run) ones... you don't want your government to know which porn you watch, you don't want the government to be able to know what you're writing on Reddit, and you don't want the government to be able to take away your access to your (digital) assets on a whim like the Canadian government did by freezing the bank accounts of COVID deniers (note: I support actions against COVID deniers, but that's going way more than a few steps too far).
  - justeleblanc 4y ago
    I quite frankly don't care if the government knows what porn I watch. I'm really tired of this puritanical-inspired take on privacy. Always the same examples. Freezing assets is completely different, but I don't see how that's relevant in the context. You're just waving the vague feeling that government is this evil omnipotent being.
    - mschuster91 4y ago
      > I quite frankly don't care if the government knows what porn I watch. I'm really tired of this puritanical-inspired take on privacy. The thing is, invasive acts against civic freedoms tend to be started going against sex workers or be justified with sexuality/morals. Just look at Florida and the book bans or how sex work is criminalized in a lot of countries, including wide parts of the US. Why should I trust a government with my porn when it deems it necessary to determine under which conditions two adults can have consensual sex? > Freezing assets is completely different, but I don't see how that's relevant in the context. You're just waving the vague feeling that government is this evil omnipotent being. I'm German. My ancestors abused innoucuous data registers to have precise lists on who was to be transported off to gas chambers, less than a hundred years ago. I live less than 20km from the KZ Dachau, where the Nazis murdered tens of thousands of people. That gives a pretty harsh view on just how evil governments can become if citizens do not care.
floren 4y ago
At least the last time I looked, Usenet spam was so lazy that it was pretty easy to filter: the exact same ads posted again and again (filter the article title), or schizophrenics posting under the same username 100 times a day (filter the name). Usenet clients made it pretty easy, once you learned the right commands, to instantly shitcan all future messages which matched [sender/title/some string in the body/etc.] Unfortunately, while it's easy to filter stuff, it means that every newcomer sees the unfiltered crap and has to figure out filtering for themselves.
- pwg 4y ago
  The vast bulk of USENET spam is arriving /from/ google groups. A very effective spam filter is to simply killfile anything with an @google.groups message id. Sadly, that also killfiles the few real posters who use GG, so if one wants to continue to see them, one has to add them as overrides to the general "kill GG" filter.
  - pasc1878 4y ago
    Add to the fun GFoogle Groups have stopped carrying some groups because they had too much spam. As others noted much of it was coming from google groups itself, if only it had the spam filters other usenet providers had.
mrweasel 4y ago
It hasn't really been developed, so it's in the same state that email would have been in, had it too been abandoned. The big surprise is that NNTP servers are still running, and that there are active newsgroups. With a bit of care I still think NNTP could be a nice base for new localized social networks. Just in the small "town" where I live there are a number of Facebook groups, those could just as easily have been newsgroups. Usenet currently isn't in a great state, and had it not been for piracy it would have looked even worse.

The problem with USENET is spam. Moderation can be a burden. I suppose Google has some systems in place to mitigate this.

by haolez 4y ago

The problem with USENET is spam. Moderation can be a burden. I suppose Google has some systems in place to mitigate this.

bornfreddy 4y ago

These days, it should be fairly easy to combat this. Everyone subscribes their messages. Client sw allows whitelisting the signatures. Whitelisted signatures can vouch for new signatures to be added. User can easily silence any signature. Messages that are hidden (because the signature is not whitelisted) are shown if a whitelisted message replies to them. I'm sure I didn't catch all the edge cases, but the main idea is that the system is distributed, built on reputation, and self-managed. Everyone is responsible for the content they receive.

giantrobot 4y ago
That's just bozo filters with a side of Web of Trust. It's been done. Bozo filters help with spam on the client side but don't do anything about spam on the server side. Servers still have to host everything because they can't know a priori what clients will want or not. Not that your idea is necessarily bad but it breaks a lot of the utility of Usenet to have whitelist based filtering. I can't know ahead of time I like your posts and want to whitelist you. I also don't want to have to "know a guy" to get involved in a group (via Web of Trust).
- bornfreddy 4y ago
  Is spam message a problem if noone reads it? Storage is cheap. As for knowing a guy... Maybe someone will browse spam and vouch for you for this message and if more people like it, you are accepted to their whitelists. But to be honest, if people don't want to read my messages, that is their prerogative.

Pxtl 4y ago

Chat AI is going to make combatting spam 100X harder. Imho we're reaching the end of our ability to allow anonymous contribution to public fora in general. Which is why I have a conspiracy theory about why conspiracy theorists are against "digital ID".

mschuster91 4y ago
> Which is why I have a conspiracy theory about why conspiracy theorists are against "digital ID". Even if you're not a tinfoil hat wearer, "digital ID" projects are fraught with issues: - private ones can instantly and permanently revoke your access for whatever reason they believe. Facebook, Google and Twitter have shown that often enough. Or they can go out of business like many OpenID providers which is even worse - you can, given enough resources, even hold Internet giants accountable, but it's impossible to resurrect a shuttered service once they delete their keyrings. Or they can use information about which services you use to push even more detailed ads. - public (i.e. government-run) ones... you don't want your government to know which porn you watch, you don't want the government to be able to know what you're writing on Reddit, and you don't want the government to be able to take away your access to your (digital) assets on a whim like the Canadian government did by freezing the bank accounts of COVID deniers (note: I support actions against COVID deniers, but that's going way more than a few steps too far).
- justeleblanc 4y ago
  I quite frankly don't care if the government knows what porn I watch. I'm really tired of this puritanical-inspired take on privacy. Always the same examples. Freezing assets is completely different, but I don't see how that's relevant in the context. You're just waving the vague feeling that government is this evil omnipotent being.
  - mschuster91 4y ago
    > I quite frankly don't care if the government knows what porn I watch. I'm really tired of this puritanical-inspired take on privacy. The thing is, invasive acts against civic freedoms tend to be started going against sex workers or be justified with sexuality/morals. Just look at Florida and the book bans or how sex work is criminalized in a lot of countries, including wide parts of the US. Why should I trust a government with my porn when it deems it necessary to determine under which conditions two adults can have consensual sex? > Freezing assets is completely different, but I don't see how that's relevant in the context. You're just waving the vague feeling that government is this evil omnipotent being. I'm German. My ancestors abused innoucuous data registers to have precise lists on who was to be transported off to gas chambers, less than a hundred years ago. I live less than 20km from the KZ Dachau, where the Nazis murdered tens of thousands of people. That gives a pretty harsh view on just how evil governments can become if citizens do not care.

floren 4y ago

At least the last time I looked, Usenet spam was so lazy that it was pretty easy to filter: the exact same ads posted again and again (filter the article title), or schizophrenics posting under the same username 100 times a day (filter the name). Usenet clients made it pretty easy, once you learned the right commands, to instantly shitcan all future messages which matched [sender/title/some string in the body/etc.] Unfortunately, while it's easy to filter stuff, it means that every newcomer sees the unfiltered crap and has to figure out filtering for themselves.

pwg 4y ago
The vast bulk of USENET spam is arriving /from/ google groups. A very effective spam filter is to simply killfile anything with an @google.groups message id. Sadly, that also killfiles the few real posters who use GG, so if one wants to continue to see them, one has to add them as overrides to the general "kill GG" filter.
- pasc1878 4y ago
  Add to the fun GFoogle Groups have stopped carrying some groups because they had too much spam. As others noted much of it was coming from google groups itself, if only it had the spam filters other usenet providers had.

mrweasel 4y ago

It hasn't really been developed, so it's in the same state that email would have been in, had it too been abandoned. The big surprise is that NNTP servers are still running, and that there are active newsgroups. With a bit of care I still think NNTP could be a nice base for new localized social networks. Just in the small "town" where I live there are a number of Facebook groups, those could just as easily have been newsgroups. Usenet currently isn't in a great state, and had it not been for piracy it would have looked even worse.