5 ms·

Usenet started in 1980 and the first spam didn't appear until 1994.

by dn3500 3y ago

kristopolous 3y ago
Right when the commercialization of the internet was permitted. The fact that we did that in the heydays of neoliberalism so we fumbled the ball into this current trainwreck will probably be part of the history in books written 200 years from now
- Hyolobrika 3y ago
  How would you forbid it?
  - dsr_ 3y ago
    You make it socially unacceptable to run a server that emits spam. You make it socially unacceptable to work for a company that emits spam. At an interview: "OK, I see you worked for an oil company, right, and then a porn company, fine -- oh, you worked for a spammer. Sorry, we're done. I don't know how this happened, I'll need to talk to HR about their filters."
    - dylan604 3y ago
      socially where? where ever you set those social norms, someone will set up a server not there. like russia or any of the other internet bogeymen countries
    - tomjen3 3y ago
      The problem with that is to agree on what is acceptable social behaviour. Trust me, lots of places would have issues with oil companies, others with porn and so one.
  - kristopolous 3y ago
    At the time the restriction was on who was allowed to operate and for what purpose. These types of restrictions in the real world are common. We don't permit say, people to set up shop running gambling tables inside of library reading rooms. We have restrictions all around us like this. No picnicking on freeways, or say, hookers picking up Johns next to the paintings in the city art gallery. You can't just say, wheel in dirt to city hall and start tending a garden in the council chamber. We decided to blow away all such equivalent restrictions on the web in the early 90s, being antithetical to any conventions. Maybe continuing to adhere to that, 30 years in, is not the best idea. Obvious guardrails, equivalent to no picnicking on the freeway, can be set up. It's time to build more of a rules based online society
- thelastparadise 3y ago
  > 1994 > heydays of neoliberalism please explain.
  - Eisenstein 3y ago
    Wikipedia seems to have an adequate explanation: Neoliberalism, also neo-liberalism,[1] is a term used to signify the late-20th century political reappearance of 19th-century ideas associated with free-market capitalism after it fell into decline following the Second World War.[2][3] A prominent factor in the rise of conservative and right-libertarian organizations, political parties, and think tanks, and predominantly advocated by them,[4][5] it is generally associated with policies of economic liberalization, including privatization, deregulation, globalization, free trade, monetarism, austerity, and reductions in government spending in order to increase the role of the private sector in the economy and society.
    - kristopolous 3y ago
      Also this was during the real halcyon days of the third way and DLC right after the end of the cold war. The libertarian fanboys on HN really don't like it because this is what they furtively shake their pom-poms for and it's clearly trending towards a socially net negative These hands off approaches will get a thousand flowers to bloom but they'll mostly be weeds
      - Eisenstein 3y ago
        People who think that the robber baron days are to be aspired to frighten me.
        kristopolous 3y ago
        It's fine in luxury industries. Yachts, jets, jewelry, cruises, etc. But things that people with limited capital need? That obviously doesn't work. Look at the Cochabamba Water War or the California electricity crisis for good examples. An unspoken rule of their models is all consumers value money the same and have an unlimited supply. These assumptions fall flat on >99.5% of people. But ruby and sapphire encrusted watches? fine! Game on.
- rainonmoon 3y ago
  It's part of the history books now. Ben Tarnoff's Internet for the People is a bracing but very accessible history of this and the potential futures we let slide off the table. Highly recommended reading.
  - forgetfreeman 3y ago
    Let slide my ass, they were intentionally yanked off the table by monied interests. I distinctly remember my reaction the first time I encountered an actual honest-to-fuck ad campaign in an online space. Shock, followed my a grudging smirk at the novelty of it, followed by months of concerned chatter among the "netizens" I interacted with about what it would mean for the web if advertising or any other form of money scheme were permitted online, followed by dire (and entirely prescient) predictions of what the internet might devolve into if the floodgates were opened to the idle masses through mass commodification of connectivity coupled with a flood of bullshit zero quality content laid as bait.
    - rainonmoon 3y ago
      By "we let slide" I don't just mean the initial privatisation of the internet or the web, which I agree -- it's hard to imagine any citizen was in a position to change that against the interests motivating it. Instead I mean the ensuing 30 years in which we've constantly ignored the warnings and analysis of e.g. civil society about the dangers of surveillance and data acquisition, devaluation and diminishing of trust in the fourth estate, labour exploitation and consolidation around platform capitalism, etc. because the toys those privatising forces offered were too shiny. At every point we've had a chance to say: no thank you. Or to build slowly and with consideration instead of aligned to the profit motive. Well, you can see it in this thread: we're at one of those points now but ostensibly well-informed people are begging for more software-companies-as-benevolent-dictators. We have a chance to channel the current energy of frustration into a new generation of the web guided by a focus on values like community ownership. Unfortunately the responses of many of my fellow technologists don't inspire much hope! But I still believe we can yank a few of those things back.
      - 3y ago
- im3w1l 3y ago
  If the internet didn't permit commercial use, then it would lose another inter-network that did. People want to do buy things online and people want to sell things online and someone would step up to fill that need.
e40 3y ago
Kill files were useful before 1994, as I used them to filter out obnoxious people, some of whom were trolls.

Usenet started in 1980 and the first spam didn't appear until 1994.

by dn3500 3y ago

Usenet started in 1980 and the first spam didn't appear until 1994.

Right when the commercialization of the internet was permitted. The fact that we did that in the heydays of neoliberalism so we fumbled the ball into this current trainwreck will probably be part of the history in books written 200 years from now

Hyolobrika 3y ago
How would you forbid it?
- dsr_ 3y ago
  You make it socially unacceptable to run a server that emits spam. You make it socially unacceptable to work for a company that emits spam. At an interview: "OK, I see you worked for an oil company, right, and then a porn company, fine -- oh, you worked for a spammer. Sorry, we're done. I don't know how this happened, I'll need to talk to HR about their filters."
  - dylan604 3y ago
    socially where? where ever you set those social norms, someone will set up a server not there. like russia or any of the other internet bogeymen countries
  - tomjen3 3y ago
    The problem with that is to agree on what is acceptable social behaviour. Trust me, lots of places would have issues with oil companies, others with porn and so one.
- kristopolous 3y ago
  At the time the restriction was on who was allowed to operate and for what purpose. These types of restrictions in the real world are common. We don't permit say, people to set up shop running gambling tables inside of library reading rooms. We have restrictions all around us like this. No picnicking on freeways, or say, hookers picking up Johns next to the paintings in the city art gallery. You can't just say, wheel in dirt to city hall and start tending a garden in the council chamber. We decided to blow away all such equivalent restrictions on the web in the early 90s, being antithetical to any conventions. Maybe continuing to adhere to that, 30 years in, is not the best idea. Obvious guardrails, equivalent to no picnicking on the freeway, can be set up. It's time to build more of a rules based online society
thelastparadise 3y ago
> 1994 > heydays of neoliberalism please explain.
- Eisenstein 3y ago
  Wikipedia seems to have an adequate explanation: Neoliberalism, also neo-liberalism,[1] is a term used to signify the late-20th century political reappearance of 19th-century ideas associated with free-market capitalism after it fell into decline following the Second World War.[2][3] A prominent factor in the rise of conservative and right-libertarian organizations, political parties, and think tanks, and predominantly advocated by them,[4][5] it is generally associated with policies of economic liberalization, including privatization, deregulation, globalization, free trade, monetarism, austerity, and reductions in government spending in order to increase the role of the private sector in the economy and society.
  - kristopolous 3y ago
    Also this was during the real halcyon days of the third way and DLC right after the end of the cold war. The libertarian fanboys on HN really don't like it because this is what they furtively shake their pom-poms for and it's clearly trending towards a socially net negative These hands off approaches will get a thousand flowers to bloom but they'll mostly be weeds
    - Eisenstein 3y ago
      People who think that the robber baron days are to be aspired to frighten me.
      - kristopolous 3y ago
        It's fine in luxury industries. Yachts, jets, jewelry, cruises, etc. But things that people with limited capital need? That obviously doesn't work. Look at the Cochabamba Water War or the California electricity crisis for good examples. An unspoken rule of their models is all consumers value money the same and have an unlimited supply. These assumptions fall flat on >99.5% of people. But ruby and sapphire encrusted watches? fine! Game on.
rainonmoon 3y ago
It's part of the history books now. Ben Tarnoff's Internet for the People is a bracing but very accessible history of this and the potential futures we let slide off the table. Highly recommended reading.
- forgetfreeman 3y ago
  Let slide my ass, they were intentionally yanked off the table by monied interests. I distinctly remember my reaction the first time I encountered an actual honest-to-fuck ad campaign in an online space. Shock, followed my a grudging smirk at the novelty of it, followed by months of concerned chatter among the "netizens" I interacted with about what it would mean for the web if advertising or any other form of money scheme were permitted online, followed by dire (and entirely prescient) predictions of what the internet might devolve into if the floodgates were opened to the idle masses through mass commodification of connectivity coupled with a flood of bullshit zero quality content laid as bait.
  - rainonmoon 3y ago
    By "we let slide" I don't just mean the initial privatisation of the internet or the web, which I agree -- it's hard to imagine any citizen was in a position to change that against the interests motivating it. Instead I mean the ensuing 30 years in which we've constantly ignored the warnings and analysis of e.g. civil society about the dangers of surveillance and data acquisition, devaluation and diminishing of trust in the fourth estate, labour exploitation and consolidation around platform capitalism, etc. because the toys those privatising forces offered were too shiny. At every point we've had a chance to say: no thank you. Or to build slowly and with consideration instead of aligned to the profit motive. Well, you can see it in this thread: we're at one of those points now but ostensibly well-informed people are begging for more software-companies-as-benevolent-dictators. We have a chance to channel the current energy of frustration into a new generation of the web guided by a focus on values like community ownership. Unfortunately the responses of many of my fellow technologists don't inspire much hope! But I still believe we can yank a few of those things back.
    - 3y ago
im3w1l 3y ago
If the internet didn't permit commercial use, then it would lose another inter-network that did. People want to do buy things online and people want to sell things online and someone would step up to fill that need.

e40 3y ago

Kill files were useful before 1994, as I used them to filter out obnoxious people, some of whom were trolls.