The "fediverse" failed to learn from usenet and is doomed to repeat it. Usenet's downfall came from no management of resource usage or abuse-management costs (

The "fediverse" failed to learn from usenet and is doomed to repeat it. Usenet's downfall came from no management of resource usage or abuse-management costs (both of the spam and the "that message is illegal" sort). Sites dealt with mounting costs by outsourcing to specialists, which lost a lot of usenet's distributed advantages (e.g. local copies providing for ultra low latency access, availability during outages, traffic sharing when many users were using the same groups, only having to appeal to your choice of local authorities to carry something rather than distant ones that didn't get a crap about you, etc). Due to overhead costs it's cheaper for fewer providers to support more users, this along with acquisitions caused the centralization onto a few and then essentially one usenet provider who then implemented policy (monetization schemes, walled gardens, censorship) that eliminated the residual benefits of usenet over alternatives. The alternatives were more flexible, and had less baggage (particularly the quasi-monopoly provider), and with no reason left to use usenet over them eventually they took over.