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How did Usenet ever work wItHoUt MoDeRaTiOn though? Well, I suppose Usenet is dead or close to it, so maybe that's the answer: it doesn't anymore, but maybe it
by cryptonector 4y ago
How did Usenet ever work wItHoUt MoDeRaTiOn though? Well, I suppose Usenet is dead or close to it, so maybe that's the answer: it doesn't anymore, but maybe it's dead or dying for other reasons.
- ilyt 4y agoModerated groups were possible, although rare I'd imagine the offenders were laughed at, and if repeated people just filtered out messages from them. It died because pretty much new people went to blogs and social sites, not some obscure tech needing special client, same way many "desktop" apps were more and more often used in web form. But I'd imagine if it lived longer the spam would kill it. Lack of moderation and lack of any kind of algorithmic favouring works well in small focused communities, and not when there is relentless amount of spam and let's say "uncultured" users, as netiquette is essentially dead now
- not2b 4y agoNo, moderated groups weren't that rare; they were mostly unmoderated though. For a while, social pressure kept things under control, as well as killfiles (allowing users to block each other). It was the beginning of the end when a pair of asshole lawyers decided to spam every unmoderated Usenet group with ads to help people enter the US green card lottery (in April 1994). This didn't immediately kill Usenet but started the downhill slide. For a while, admins worked to cancel spam messages but in the long term this was a losing battle.