4 ms·
Google stewardship in action. Can we even go back to Usenet without Google Groups?
by baz00 3y ago
Google stewardship in action.
Can we even go back to Usenet without Google Groups?
- stefanos82 3y agoOh how I wish this to become true!
- tgv 3y agoTechnically it's simple, but I don't think anyone is willing to pay for the required infrastructure. Nor is it going to be used a lot.
- Y_Y 3y agoI'd like to hear someone explain how simple and how expensive. I think there would be quite a lot of interest, at the right price point.
- tmpX7dMeXU 3y ago[flagged]
- 15457345234 3y agoThe costs would depend entirely on the userbase; usenet was in heavy use during the 1990-2000 era so the software must be incredibly lightweight by today's standards. I don't know what ongoing development has taken place wrt usenet server software. The clients will all be hopelessly outdated, I imagine WinVN will still run but you probably wouldn't enjoy the experience much. The big issue would be preventing the server/servers from filling up with AI entities. If you're attracting enough of a userbase to be worth influencing they will creep in unless you somehow find a way to guarantee that all users are real people, and that presents its own problems.
- b112 3y agoSadly, I think AI will force a complete de-anonymization of the internet. No accounts without government ID, no connectivity without it either, open access points illegal, and so on. Governments and police would love this, and with AI, spam (as you elude to) is going to rise to a new level. And there are already issues, with most of the net's citizens, unable to detect fraudulent posts. Countries have already had civil wars, thanks to Cambridge Analytics, and disinformation will only make this worse. Long story short, accountability is impossible with anonymity, and so to sue, to charge with crimes, I sadly think the internet will soon change.
- delfinom 3y agoUntil you know, mass data breaches of said government ID from corporate systems and those AI bots now just use said ID
- b112 3y agoYour online ID, doesn't need to be your government ID. It does need to be validated though. That said, this is the same problem you have with loads of other accounts. Be it banks, trading houses, or just compromised meta, X, or whatever accounts. Still, my point wasn't whether or not it would work, but merely that it will happen. Governments will become more and more frustrated with a deluge of propaganda, which makes what we see today seem inconsequential. And I believe this will be their response. And it is already true in many countries. I did say it makes me sad. Not happy.
- mschuster91 3y agoNot if done right. Everyone's ID card/drivers license (for the USA) gets an RFID smartcard with a cryptoprocessor and secure storage. Upon first activation (during production) it is seeded with the personal data of the person (name, personal identifier e.g. SSN), generates its own rsa4096/ec keypair, provides the public key to the interface, and gets a certificate signed by a government root CA back. Upon an attempt to log in at a service (using a phone with a companion app), a nonce signed accompanied by a certificate signed by the government root CA gets signed by the private key on card, and that as well as the signed personal data gets provided to the requesting service.
- ksherlock 3y agoIf you just want "usenet without google", one line in the kill file (on the client or the server) will take care of it.
- davikr 3y agoUsenet is still pretty alive for warez, and people pay providers for access.
- praptak 3y agoNo. I mean technically yes but this wouldn't solve the actual problem: mass human communication at scale. Usenet was a decent shot at this problem but it lost to other solutions. Yes, all the current solutions are pretty bad but they aren't worse than Usenet. In particular Usenet had zero spam protection, Google stewardship or not.
- fmajid 3y agoI’m old enough to remember the original Canter and Siegel spam, and yes, it was on Usenet. What amazes me is that in 2023 people still launch social networks where spam prevention is not at the center.
- kmeisthax 3y agoBut don't worry, guys, we'll have someone from the Air Force yell at you if you send out PDP-11 ads over the Internet backbone
- fmajid 3y agoNot that old...
- ksaj 3y agoYou're old like me then. I actually have their printed book "How to Make a Fortune on the Information Superhighway" on how to "advertise" in the Internet. I put that in quotes, because their methods were absolutely literally spam. Having said that, they must have been right, because spam has never dwindled away like Usenet News did. That may very well have been their fault, too.
- BruceEel 3y agoPlease yes. And while we are it, bring back Deja News too!
- jk_i_am_a_robot 3y ago"Can we even go back to Usenet without Google Groups?" No. Any group that doesn't have some kind of pre-post vetting idiom is going to have spam and abuse problems. This wasn't always the case and I can't pinpoint exactly when the change happened or what it was.
- jghn 3y agoI'd suggest Canter & Siegel in 1994.
- NelsonMinar 3y agoThe "Usenet" you remember has been gone for years. Usenet to most people now means a place to download unlicensed videos with a remarkably byzantine and inefficient encoding and obfuscation system.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- jmclnx 3y agoGoogle Groups is not USENET, it is irrelevant as far as USENET goes. Google Groups only access USENET. Do a search for Free USENET and many will come up with instructions how to access without Google Groups.