The worst part about the whole thing is they could have just dropped the binary groups and kept the text groups. By dropping all of Usenet, they killed most of

The worst part about the whole thing is they could have just dropped the binary groups and kept the text groups. By dropping all of Usenet, they killed most of the discussion and effectively handed it to the binaries users. In doing so, they created an environment where most people using Usenet were doing it to pirate stuff, and those users had already moved to private providers who could afford the bandwidth. Nowadays all you get when you search for Usenet providers are folks dedicated to binaries. Piracy won and smothered out discussion in the process. Even the Usenet sub on Reddit is just discussions that toe the line on Reddit's piracy rules. The only text-only provider I'm still aware of is Eternal-September. I've heard of SDF offering newsgroups as well but I haven't looked into it.