6 ms·

The 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 u

by jtode 3y ago

The 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 ago
https://easynews.com/ https://easynews.com/
SSLy 3y ago
It still does that.
- jtode 3y ago
  shhhhh
- II2II 3y ago
  Didn'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
    Yes, and so these days there are paid-subscription NNTP providers that sync the alt.binaries groups. Presumably all the pirates (both the uploaders, and the pure leechers) are using such providers.
listenallyall 3y ago
> I believe the main reason usenet faded I believe it was due to AOL and CompuServe forums, which were most importantly, new, novel, friendly and easy. Technical people were "above" AOL and so those Usenet communities survived a few more years, but ultimately succumbed to web forums which were superior to Usenet in almost every way. Unfortunately, web forums were mostly hollowed out due to social media, and now that people are sick and tired of that, the simplicity and "innocence" of early 2000's forums, and even 90s Usenet, seems appealing (although tinted by rose-colored nostalgic glasses).
- jghn 3y ago
  Just my opinion but I can't think of a single way in which I found web forums of the early 2000s to be superior to usenet.
  - jtode 3y ago
    Yah no idea what they talking about me
  - MetaWhirledPeas 3y ago
    Discoverability? A novice could type something into Web Crawler and get a forum back as a search result. Then they could click the link and begin reading and participating immediately. Was Usenet ever that easy?
    - jtode 3y ago
      There was a time when "Groups" was section of google search and they indexed the whole thing.
      - edgyquant 3y ago
        Think this is still around (at least the groups are) but the interface is terrible. Mailing list-tier
    - BearhatBeer 3y ago
BearhatBeer 3y ago
Usenet faded because ISPs all conspired to drop it, en masse, in the early 2000's. Used to be every ISP from Comcast down to the mom and pops had Usenet. Now it's not just uncommon, it's nearly impossible to find any ISP that has their own Usenet feed. And yes the excuse given to drop it was piracy.
- stewbrew 3y ago
  I assume they dropped it because they couldn't monetize it, i.e. spam you with personalized ads and the like. Probably the same reason why RSS News feeds were dropped.
- skrause 3y ago
  In Germany basically all ISPs never provided the binary groups, so piracy was never an issue. There also was no conspiracy to shut down the servers because of that. And yet the German groups started a slow but steady decline after their peak in 2001: http://usenet.dex.de/de.ALL.html http://usenet.dex.de/de.ALL.html I was active in the German Usenet back then and still remember that between around 2001 and 2005 the spammers and trolls took over and destoyed one group after another until they were completely unusable. I also mostly quit around maybe 2005. So I highly doubt that Usenet would have continued to work if ISPs had just continued support it. Usenet only worked as long as everyboy was nice to each other, it would never work today without much better moderation protocols and tools.
- vidarh 3y ago
  It was expensive. I ran an ISP on the mid 90s, and it took up an expensive server and a disproportionate amount of my time to ensure we had good enough feeds for people to be happy, and so the moment demand was dropping it was very high on the list of things to get rid of. Had peering been more on demand, rather than a firehouse, maybe people would have kept them longer. I for a while worked on an aggressively caching NNTP server as an option because of the costs involved.
  - bsder 3y ago
    Yeah, people forget just how expensive both bandwidth and storage were in the late 1990s. YouTube appeared in 2005 and was losing VAST amounts of money before Google bought them out. So, even in 2005, Usenet probably was still too expensive.
upofadown 3y ago
>...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. I think you mean that posters would sign with their private keys and you would have a list of public keys that you would verify the signature against. That, incidentally, is also a valid approach to email spam...
amadeuspagel 3y ago
> 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. The most important thing that web forums like this one enable is interaction between people who don't know each other.
- jtode 3y ago
  People could auto-trust those who have been trusted by those they trust; this could have a user setting deciding how many degrees of separation they are willing to trust. Everybody's public key (ie. the ability to read their signed posts) is public, it's a question of which ones you choose to read. There are many ways to skin this cat, but every one that's gonna work involves cooperation, rather than adversarial control.

by jtode 3y ago

sfmike 3y ago

https://easynews.com/ https://easynews.com/

SSLy 3y ago

It still does that.

jtode 3y ago
shhhhh
II2II 3y ago
Didn'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
  Yes, and so these days there are paid-subscription NNTP providers that sync the alt.binaries groups. Presumably all the pirates (both the uploaders, and the pure leechers) are using such providers.

listenallyall 3y ago

> I believe the main reason usenet faded I believe it was due to AOL and CompuServe forums, which were most importantly, new, novel, friendly and easy. Technical people were "above" AOL and so those Usenet communities survived a few more years, but ultimately succumbed to web forums which were superior to Usenet in almost every way. Unfortunately, web forums were mostly hollowed out due to social media, and now that people are sick and tired of that, the simplicity and "innocence" of early 2000's forums, and even 90s Usenet, seems appealing (although tinted by rose-colored nostalgic glasses).

jghn 3y ago
Just my opinion but I can't think of a single way in which I found web forums of the early 2000s to be superior to usenet.
- jtode 3y ago
  Yah no idea what they talking about me
- MetaWhirledPeas 3y ago
  Discoverability? A novice could type something into Web Crawler and get a forum back as a search result. Then they could click the link and begin reading and participating immediately. Was Usenet ever that easy?
  - jtode 3y ago
    There was a time when "Groups" was section of google search and they indexed the whole thing.
    - edgyquant 3y ago
      Think this is still around (at least the groups are) but the interface is terrible. Mailing list-tier
  - BearhatBeer 3y ago

BearhatBeer 3y ago

Usenet faded because ISPs all conspired to drop it, en masse, in the early 2000's. Used to be every ISP from Comcast down to the mom and pops had Usenet. Now it's not just uncommon, it's nearly impossible to find any ISP that has their own Usenet feed. And yes the excuse given to drop it was piracy.

stewbrew 3y ago
I assume they dropped it because they couldn't monetize it, i.e. spam you with personalized ads and the like. Probably the same reason why RSS News feeds were dropped.
skrause 3y ago
In Germany basically all ISPs never provided the binary groups, so piracy was never an issue. There also was no conspiracy to shut down the servers because of that. And yet the German groups started a slow but steady decline after their peak in 2001: http://usenet.dex.de/de.ALL.html http://usenet.dex.de/de.ALL.html I was active in the German Usenet back then and still remember that between around 2001 and 2005 the spammers and trolls took over and destoyed one group after another until they were completely unusable. I also mostly quit around maybe 2005. So I highly doubt that Usenet would have continued to work if ISPs had just continued support it. Usenet only worked as long as everyboy was nice to each other, it would never work today without much better moderation protocols and tools.
vidarh 3y ago
It was expensive. I ran an ISP on the mid 90s, and it took up an expensive server and a disproportionate amount of my time to ensure we had good enough feeds for people to be happy, and so the moment demand was dropping it was very high on the list of things to get rid of. Had peering been more on demand, rather than a firehouse, maybe people would have kept them longer. I for a while worked on an aggressively caching NNTP server as an option because of the costs involved.
- bsder 3y ago
  Yeah, people forget just how expensive both bandwidth and storage were in the late 1990s. YouTube appeared in 2005 and was losing VAST amounts of money before Google bought them out. So, even in 2005, Usenet probably was still too expensive.

upofadown 3y ago

>...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. I think you mean that posters would sign with their private keys and you would have a list of public keys that you would verify the signature against. That, incidentally, is also a valid approach to email spam...

amadeuspagel 3y ago

> 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. The most important thing that web forums like this one enable is interaction between people who don't know each other.

jtode 3y ago
People could auto-trust those who have been trusted by those they trust; this could have a user setting deciding how many degrees of separation they are willing to trust. Everybody's public key (ie. the ability to read their signed posts) is public, it's a question of which ones you choose to read. There are many ways to skin this cat, but every one that's gonna work involves cooperation, rather than adversarial control.