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I was in an AI conference yesterday, and there was a bunch of discussion in the chat about Slack channels, Discord servers, etc. So I was literally just lamenti
by mindcrime 3y ago
I was in an AI conference yesterday, and there was a bunch of discussion in the chat about Slack channels, Discord servers, etc. So I was literally just lamenting the state of shared discussion forums, and commented that we all need to go back to Usenet and drop all these lame "walled garden" proprietary forums.
I'd like to tell people "install Thunderbird, sign up for a free Usenet provider, and join comp.ai, comp.misc, etc and have fun." But I'm a bit leery of encouraging people to do that since I'm not sure what the state of spam being sent to the various Usenet groups is, or how providers are handling spam filtering (if at all).
That said, there's definitely a place for NNTP / Usenet. It might take some work to fix up some issues, but it would be great to see vibrant / fruitful discussions via Usenet again.
- jonhohle 3y agoIs there a free provider you’d recommend?
- mindcrime 3y agoNo, see above: it's been a while since I looked at the usenet landscape. TBH, I'm tempted to set up my own, but I'm not sure I have the time/energy/money to deal with the peering stuff. But never say never...
- brightsize 3y agoEternal September, mentioned in the article, is good. Another that I know of is https://solani.org/ https://solani.org/ .
- pdntspa 3y agoI'm surprised nobody made fun of you with the typical ageist-conformist fashion nonsense that permeates tech discussion these days
- alexpotato 3y ago> since I'm not sure what the state of spam being sent to the various Usenet groups is Isn't this why some groups were moderated?
- reidrac 3y ago> sign up for a free Usenet provider Sorry, but you make it sound like there are many. That allow posting, and free, I think I only know one.
- mindcrime 3y agoSorry, but you make it sound like there are many. That allow posting, and free, I think I only know one. It's been a while since I looked. I could have sworn there were at least a handful, but either A. I might be mis-remembering or B. the landscape might have changed since I checked last. That said, there seem to be quite few who offer cheap if not actually free access. And by "cheap" I mean, on the order of $10.00 (USD) / month or less.
- dvdkon 3y agoI don't think 10USD/month for access to a forum is anywhere near cheap or even reasonable, no matter how big it is. I can't imagine anyone paying that for non-warez Usenet access.
- kxrm 3y agoThat pricing is definitely targeted at users who use usenet to trade binary files. If you do not care about binary files then use https://www.eternal-september.org https://www.eternal-september.org, it's free.
- sigio 3y agoGet a provider with a block account... 1GB will last forever on text-groups, and block accounts usually go for 10-1000GB for a few bucks
- fluoridation 3y agoThat seems rather expensive given the service being provided, i.e. read-write access to a text-only discussion board. Where's all the cost going?
- 3y ago
- reaperducer 3y agosign up for a free Usenet provider Any suggestions?
- layer8 3y agohttps://www.eternal-september.org/ https://www.eternal-september.org/
- squarefoot 3y agoJust a warning: Eternal September's administrator doesn't give a damn about trolls and spammers posting through that server; every single complaint I filed went 100% ignored.
- Parker51 3y agoIt's worse than that. They won't even take action against harassment of moderators, including their users that repeatedly submit obviously rejectable articles to moderated newsgroups, then reply with verbal abuse and profanity when rejected. The eternal-september admins tell moderation teams that it is their responsibility to deal with these users, not them. Our moderated newsgroup dealt with one of their users (lawfully, of course). No surprise that the individual had an anonymous identity that was a synonym for the devil.
- reaperducer 3y agoThe registration system seems to be borked. Any others?
- layer8 3y agoIt worked for me, but I had to disable adblockers.
- superkuh 3y agoThe free "10 GB" trial accounts available from usenet binaries providers can serve as a text only read/posting account for years. Like with usenet.farm
- jtode 3y agoThe spam is the biggest issue. We never solved it there, and it's only being controlled on usenet's imitators through tight control, which is not a feature of usenet. One setup I could see working is a pubkey setup where anyone who posts, always encrypts with their private key, and anyone you want to hear from, you add their public key to your list of keys you decrypt to read. Aggregators can occupy public keys as their "address" and any aggregator that gets obnoxious, you just trim it from your list, which only contains things you've either let in or accepted via slates or whitelists. Then the spammers can do whatever they like, really. I believe the main reason usenet faded so thoroughly was that it became a piracy distribution platform very early on (not sure which came first, the pirate booty or the porn booty, but I'm guessing porn), and very quickly there came a kind of unspoken "don't talk about usenet" code among those who already knew about it. At the time, Napster and bittorrent were the main targets of the authorities and IP trolls and usenet was just doing a Jim-From-The-Office-smirking-through-the-blinds.
- sfmike 3y agohttps://easynews.com/ https://easynews.com/
- SSLy 3y agoIt still does that.
- jtode 3y agoshhhhh
- II2II 3y agoDidn't a lot of servers just stop carrying the binaries newsgroups, or never bothered carrying them in the first place? Even without considering piracy, binaries tended to place a burden on the server provider since the messages tended to be much larger. (Even a small image/program in the 10's of kB would be larger than a heavily quoted message.
- derefr 3y ago
- tptacek 3y agoThe thing you want exists. It's called the Fediverse. Don't like the politics? You wouldn't have liked Usenet in its heyday either.
- caskstrength 3y ago> Don't like the politics? You wouldn't have liked Usenet in its heyday either. Or just join an instance that is not explicitly political. You don't have to be on beehaw or hachyderm.
- datavirtue 3y agoLiterally perplexed at that statement. That was the only place for solid community, damn good information, and endless free file downloads in it's heyday. The barriers that made people drop it actually make it more attractive these days since the masses will never show up.
- omoikane 3y agoThe organization of Fediverse is different, and availability of historical discussions is spotty. Also, some quirky usenet groups aren't available elsewhere, such as alt.binaries.*
- tptacek 3y agoMost Usenet servers had strict retention limits; there was no expectation of availability of historical discussions.
- jtode 3y agoI think you're coating your memory with a thick blanket of woke. I was also around in its heyday and the trolls were in full effect, and had already learned how to make women's lives hell. There's a newsgroup still extant which is named after a woman who spoke up about the CSAM problem on our local university's server (I stumbled across it myself once, there was some nasty fucking shit going through there). The users of these groups did not take kindly to people messing with their access to pictures of children being sexually abused. Not naming her or the newsgroup because I'm sure she's long since gotten it in her rear view mirror.
- rjsw 3y agoI have a few people in my killfile so that I don't see messages from them but don't get much spam in the comp.* groups that I read. The threading and only seeing new messages is a lot better in my Usenet client than any web forum that I use, including this one.
- mindcrime 3y agoThe threading and only seeing new messages is a lot better in my Usenet client than any web forum that I use, including this one. Yep. The Usenet experience is nice. The only thing that really got me out of the habit of participating frequently was a combination of two factors: 1. My ISP quit providing NNTP access by default 2. So many other people moved off, that a lot of the groups became nothing but CfP's, spam, and maybe 1 actual interesting post per year. But in the spirit of "be the change you want in the world" I guess I'll bit the bullet and sign up for a Usenet account somewhere, or stand up my own server and look into what it would take to get peering setup.
- usrusr 3y ago"Including this one" is a good example, for how the rules of how content is selected for presentation define the medium. Even with exactly the same people, exactly the same dang occasionally nudging people this way or that way, this place would be an entirely different if the effective feed composition wasn't the one it is. So much of the identity of these online communities is an emergent consequence of the mechanisms employed.