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> decentralized, text-based social network We had that. It was called Usenet, and it was great. Google destroyed it, so Facebook is going to own the next one

> decentralized, text-based social network We had that. It was called Usenet, and it was great. Google destroyed it, so Facebook is going to own the next one from the get-go? Doesn't sound good.

bawolff 4y ago
You have to really be rewriting history to blame google for the downfall of usenet.
- illumego 4y ago
  Wake me up when September ends.
- papito 4y ago
  To put it another way, Deja put Usenet out of a coma, and Google finally pulled the plug.
giantrobot 4y ago
The Google graveyard is expansive but they most certainly didn't kill Usenet. Spam put Usenet on life support and ISPs dropping NNTP hosting pulled the plug. By the late 90s spam killed actual conversations on Usenet. Eternal September had already raised the noise floor but spam just got out of control. First ISPs dropped retention of even text-only hierarchies and then by the early 2000s dropped NNTP hosting entirely. So even people willing to wade through the spam had to go hunting for independent Usenet hosting. Google didn't have anything to do with either of those things.
fer 4y ago
Usenet was destroyed by spam. Even if you set up your client to have your groups clean, for any new arrival without guidance it was a horrible experience that required a lot of effort in bringing signal out of the noise. What killed it was not having a distributed spam filtering as it became popular.
- throwaway81523 4y ago
  Usenet had spam filtering that was at least somewhat decentralized and that worked, though maybe not fully distributed. Some alt groups that didn't use it became unusable, and a few groups (sci.crypt) were intentionally destroyed by sporgery that was hard to stop by filters. There were also moderated groups that were hard to spam because of cryptographic signatures in the moderation approval. IIRC the signatures were 512 bit RSA, so maybe the keys can be cracked by now. I think spam may have been less of an issue than the exploding size of binary newsgroups used for distributing warez and pr0n. That is a big reason ISP's gave up on it. Plus politicians like NY Gov Cuomo (not sure which Gov Cuomo, there were two that I know of) crusaded against it since OMG people could post anonymously. I think Usenet with a few adjustments for velocity control is still a perfectly viable scheme. Every time I look at BBS software and think about how to do it better, the answer turns out to be Usenet. If you read the novel "A Fire Upon The Deep" you might be amused to find that in it, Usenet still exists in an era of interstellar travel.
specialist 4y ago
BBS networks (eg FidoNet, PC-Relay) were pretty great too. FWIW, I believe, but cannot prove, that content moderation on Internet accessible "open" messaging systems (aka store & forward, decentralized) is not feasible. Back in the day, I was hub for a small BBS network as well as moderated a forum on CompuServe. It was manageable, but a lot of work, esp for volunteers like me. These days, there's no way I could do a reasonable job. I guess we'll see if I'm correct with the Mastodon experiment.

> decentralized, text-based social network We had that. It was called Usenet, and it was great. Google destroyed it, so Facebook is going to own the next one from the get-go? Doesn't sound good.

bawolff 4y ago

You have to really be rewriting history to blame google for the downfall of usenet.

illumego 4y ago
Wake me up when September ends.
papito 4y ago
To put it another way, Deja put Usenet out of a coma, and Google finally pulled the plug.

giantrobot 4y ago

The Google graveyard is expansive but they most certainly didn't kill Usenet. Spam put Usenet on life support and ISPs dropping NNTP hosting pulled the plug. By the late 90s spam killed actual conversations on Usenet. Eternal September had already raised the noise floor but spam just got out of control. First ISPs dropped retention of even text-only hierarchies and then by the early 2000s dropped NNTP hosting entirely. So even people willing to wade through the spam had to go hunting for independent Usenet hosting. Google didn't have anything to do with either of those things.

fer 4y ago

Usenet was destroyed by spam. Even if you set up your client to have your groups clean, for any new arrival without guidance it was a horrible experience that required a lot of effort in bringing signal out of the noise. What killed it was not having a distributed spam filtering as it became popular.

throwaway81523 4y ago
Usenet had spam filtering that was at least somewhat decentralized and that worked, though maybe not fully distributed. Some alt groups that didn't use it became unusable, and a few groups (sci.crypt) were intentionally destroyed by sporgery that was hard to stop by filters. There were also moderated groups that were hard to spam because of cryptographic signatures in the moderation approval. IIRC the signatures were 512 bit RSA, so maybe the keys can be cracked by now. I think spam may have been less of an issue than the exploding size of binary newsgroups used for distributing warez and pr0n. That is a big reason ISP's gave up on it. Plus politicians like NY Gov Cuomo (not sure which Gov Cuomo, there were two that I know of) crusaded against it since OMG people could post anonymously. I think Usenet with a few adjustments for velocity control is still a perfectly viable scheme. Every time I look at BBS software and think about how to do it better, the answer turns out to be Usenet. If you read the novel "A Fire Upon The Deep" you might be amused to find that in it, Usenet still exists in an era of interstellar travel.

specialist 4y ago

BBS networks (eg FidoNet, PC-Relay) were pretty great too. FWIW, I believe, but cannot prove, that content moderation on Internet accessible "open" messaging systems (aka store & forward, decentralized) is not feasible. Back in the day, I was hub for a small BBS network as well as moderated a forum on CompuServe. It was manageable, but a lot of work, esp for volunteers like me. These days, there's no way I could do a reasonable job. I guess we'll see if I'm correct with the Mastodon experiment.