On Sat, 23 Jul 2022 17:13:50 -0400
"voyager55" <voyager55@none.none> wrote:
> On 7/20/2022 9:41:45 PM, Spiros Bousbouras wrote:

[...]

> > An absolute concept of free speech is that if persons A and B want to
> > exchange views or information about whatever issue , no entity C (where
> > "entity" means individual or corporation or government) should be able to
> > prevent it. In other words , the decision should be entirely up to A and B
> > and noone else.
>
> I submit that this still exists, for the most part. E-mail is still mostly
> unaffected by this, and while both Microsoft and Google are likely to hand over a
> user's inbox to law enforcement whenever asked, they're unlikely to censor
> contents. The protocol itself has all the functionality you describe; it's
> decentralized and federated, and anyone can spin up a mail server if they so
> choose. There are also a number of chat applications that handle synchronous
> communication in a similar manner. Signal and Telegram have so far managed to
> hold up to some scrutiny, while Rocketchat and Mattermost and Matrix allow users
> to spin up their own chat servers and federate them as well.
>
> The statement above assumes one-to-one communication, while Twitter's claim to
> fame is one-to-many communication...and that's why the question arises with
> Twitter in a way that it doesn't with E-mail.

And usenet also allows one-to-many communication. I didn't say this in my
opening post but it is an important factor. One puts a message out there and
anyone can decide to read it or not , to propagate it or not. If a group of
people have already prearranged to communicate amongst themselves then yes ,
they can use email and they can also use encryption which makes censorship
harder.

> > There are physical limitations which make such absolute free speech
> > impossible and it may not even be desirable. But it is also very far from
> > a desirable level of free speech if a single entity , like Twitter , can
> > restrict people's ability to communicate with each other. Obviously
> > Twitter isn't the only form of online communication but my overall point
> > is that online discussion is too centralised at present , that this
> > centralisation negatively affects freedom of speech and plurality of
> > opinions therefore the right way forward is to give emphasis to more
> > decentralised methods of online discussion.
>
> Centralization also has its benefits, if we're going to be real about it. If it
> didn't, Gmail wouldn't be the default it is today. Ever try to solve an e-mail
> flow issue? User->Server->Filter->Internet- >Filter->Server->User, any one of
> those links can go wrong. They're worth having for the very reasons you specify,
> but we can't truly solve an issue if we're not honest about why it is chosen.

I don't see what this has to do with freedom of speech.

> Yes, Twitter brings censorship with it, but it also brings message amplification
> to it. Reddit does this as well. Though Reddit is admittedly susceptible to
> groupthink, lets users upvote/downvote and sort by those votes, allowing
> generally-more-desirable content to be sifted from the generally-less-desirable
> content, without actually censoring anyone (in principle, anyway). As much as I
> appreciate the true egalitarianism of Usenet, it is disingenuous to paint the
> algorithms at Twitter (and the more human one at Reddit) as completely without
> merit.

Reddit most definitely allows censorship including shadow banning which is a
very noxious form of censorship. I have read claims that while the "gamergate"
issue was "hot" , several people on reddit were shadow banned over their views.
With anything having to do with gamergate one gets great many contradictory
claims so I cannot vouch for that but reddit certainly allows for shadow banning.

I'm not sure who you think was being disingenuous since no one mentioned the
algorithms of twitter or reddit. The problem is that these algorithms are
controlled by a small group of people. Freedom of speech includes the right
for one to read what they deem important even if their assessment of what's
important disagrees with the assessments of the majority. Say you have an
online discussion community with 1,000,000 people and 999,999 of them think
that person A is a sage and person B is an idiot but there is one person C
who thinks that B says more worthwhile stuff than A ; C should still have the
ability to read B's messages. If the 999,999 people can use their preferences
to prevent C from reading B's posts (or make it very hard) , it goes against
freedom of speech regardless of what algorithms these 999,999 people use to
achieve that.

By the way , usenet is egalitarian only in certain respects. Among the
regulars in a group , there are certainly going to be people whose posts
carry a lot more weight (according to the opinions of other regulars) than
other people's posts. But the point is that on usenet everyone can make up
their own mind and cannot force it on other people.

> Your post and some random cryptocurrency spam have two different values.
> The relatively low user count of Usenet at the moment is pretty much the primary
> reason why your post wasn't bordered by a thousand crypto bot spam messages and
> the protocol makes it extremely difficult to solve this problem.

Why do you think that crypto bots would use the groups I posted in ?

> Retroshare, an interesting chatroom/IM/Usenet/E-mail/p2p file sharing app, has
> the tech part on lock, but my time in their Usenet-esque section was rather
> unnerving. Actual-antisemitism (i.e. calls to 'finish the job'), bomb-making
> instructions, unhinged conspiracy theories and 'erotica' involving violence were
> just a handful of the topics represented. I'm not quite sure where the line is
> drawn, but "free speech for them too" meant Retroshare was philosophically
> consistent at the expense of making the community somewhere I'd never recommend
> to anyone else. A community that *can* become like that *will* become like that
> eventually.

I don't see what point you're trying to make. You found some online discussion
which you found unnerving ? Well yes , for the vast majority of people there
will be plenty of dicussions they will find unnerving and also plenty of books ,
movies , etc. So ?

> > And as it turns out , there is such a method. Not only that but it is one
> > of the oldest forms of online dicussion : usenet !
> >
> > I will guess that you have already encountered usenet although perhaps not
> > recently. It is a lot less popular than what it was some decades ago but
> > it is still going strong. From the point of view of freedom of speech it
> > has many advantages over Twitter : it is decentralised , meaning a large
> > number of servers controlled by different entities instead of servers
> > ultimately controlled by a single entity which can command that this or
> > that should be censored. Usenet is based on open standards for which there
> > exist already a large number of implementations both of servers and
> > clients and also programming libraries for many programming languages. So
> > whether one wants to use a preexisting client or server or implement their
> > own , possibly one with a fancier interface , the possibilities are
> > limitless.
>
> Ironically, due to the aforementioned spam issue, something tells me that a
> successful Usenet renaissance would yield one of two related solutions.

I don't think anyone can predict how something as complicated as the online
discussion of millions of people will play out. Perhaps the majority will
gravitate towards some centralised solutions but it is still important for
the possibility to exist to do otherwise.

> The first variant would be something like Mimecast or Mailprotector - users would
> pay a company to implement spam filtering and 'good stuff prioritization'. This
> has some advantages, in that services could compete on the efficacy of their
> filtering solution, and also that users would have greater control over the
> algorithm while being able to say "show me everything" in a verifiable way.

Why couldn't users decide for themselves what they consider good stuff and
possibly rely on word of mouth ?

> The second variant would be something like Gmail: "Usenet access, complete with
> antispam and good stuff prioritization!" Which, Google Groups essentially is.
> This sort of solution would end up being Twitter with extra steps. If Google were
> to implement their Gmail filtering to their Usenet service, you're right next to
> censorship.

Only for people who rely exlusively on googlegroups.

> The last variant is what you talk about below: having a myriad of servers users
> can choose to subscribe to, and leave it up to the server ops to pick things to
> remove. I'll address this below the section...
>
>
> > You are a visionary so let me a suggest the following vision : every city
> > block in every city in every technologically advanced country will have at
> > least 1 usenet server operating. Note that the servers do not need any
> > special facilities , it could just as well be a server operating from
> > one's own home. It doesn't have to be a recent or powerful computer either
> > , an old computer which one has lying somewhere and remains unused , would
> > do the job just fine. The important thing is that all of these servers
> > would be operated by different people. So lets say someone does not want a
> > certain usenet group or messages on their server because they consider
> > them as too right wing or too left wing or too whatever wing or they feel
> > it's "hate speech" , etc. Not a problem. With so many servers the messages
> > would still get transmitted between the people who are interested in them
> > because there would be billions of different paths (passing through
> > servers) between clients a message could follow. Now *that's* freedom of
> > speech.
>
> I don't think the lack of NNTP services is truly a problem:
> https://www.reddit.com/r/usenet/wiki/providers/ For good or for ill, they don't
> censor much of anything. As many of the existing Usenet services cater primarily
> to binary downloads, the closest thing the existing companies seem to come to is
> to handle DMCA takedowns. A handful of individual newsgroups are moderated, but
> post removals on those aren't performed by server owners.

On Tue, 02 Aug 2022 21:27:23 +0100
Richard Kettlewell <invalid@invalid.invalid> wrote:
> Rich <rich@example.invalid> writes:
> > If you go digging, you can probably find as many explanations as you
> > wish, all of which in isolation will sound plausable. There is one
> > floating around related to a New York AG who was going hard at child
> > porn circa 1997-1999 and targeted Usenet in his 'sweep' that is offered
> > up as a reason why ISP's started dropping Usenet.
>
> There were various legal issues in the UK but Usenet provision largely
> continued despite them. Virgin Media appear to have only stopped in 2021
> (TBH I’m surprised they carried on that long.)

Yes , virginmedia were providing usenet until 2021-06-30 . The retention on
some groups was more than 10 years. Very nice. There is a U.S. based ISP who
still provide usenet access :
https://secure.dslextreme.com/support/kb/email-and-newsgroups/newsgroups/news-settings-for-clients

I have a vague recollection that I've come across a Canadian ISP doing similar
but I couldn't find an entry in my bookmarks and perhaps I'm misremembering.
I guess this is as good a place as any to ask if anyone knows of any ISP in
any country who automatically provide usenet access to their subscribers.

> > Reality is more likely a combination of:
> [...]
>
> 6) There was no good way to prevent bad behavior on Usenet. If you
> wanted to escape bad actors (or just posters who can’t let go), Usenet’s
> competitors offered an easy way out.

Or you could and can use filtering. It is a minor mystery to me why people
don't do that. I have indirect evidence that some people chose to leave a
group which had posters they strongly disliked rather than filter those
posters and I could see from the headers of the people who left that they
were using a newsreader i.e. not googlegroups. My guess is that for some
people there is a psychological factor involved and they find off-putting or
distracting the idea that they are reading or posting on the same online
discussion medium as some "bad" people. So even if they can apply filtering
and not see any of the posts of the bad people , that's not good enough for
them.

> IMO Usenet is dying due to lack of demand, not lack of supply.

I don't think it's dying but advertising it more is desirable.

--
I am writing this mail to you with serious tears in my eyes and great
sorrow in my heart
An email offering me 30% of $7,200,200

On Tue, 2 Aug 2022 22:34:38 -0400
"25B.Z969" <25B.Z969@noda.net> wrote:
> On 8/2/22 9:10 PM, Scott Dorsey wrote:
> > Spiros Bousbouras <spibou@gmail.com> wrote:
> >> And that's why we need as many servers as possible. Otherwise , yes freedom
> >> has de facto limits. After all , people have been jailed or killed for saying
> >> some things in public , usenet cannot magically remove such physical
> >> possibilities , it can at most make them harder.
> >
> > Having as many servers as possible means that people who really should be
> > removed from the net do not get removed. That's kind of the problem today.
> > The management system that worked for Usenet does not scale up.
>
>
> "Should be removed" ?????? Gee, how TOTALITARIAN of you !
>
> NOBODY "should be removed from Usenet" - not even the
> worst pin-headed trolls. If you don't like them, there
> doesn't exist a newsreader where you can't plonk them
> so you're no longer bothered.

Yes , that's my feeling too. Having said that , with a huge amount of servers
available , I expect some would do filtering. Say for example person A thinks
that person B is a jerk. Then person A can run a news server which filters
all posts by B. Those people who agree that B is indeed a jerk could connect
to this server and not see any posts by B without bothering to do any
filtering themselves. Those who still want to see posts by B could connect to
a different server. But I'm totally against the idea that B should be
prevented on a worldwide level from making available his/her views online. In
extreme circumstances (like , B is sharing a realistic way to construct an
atomic bomb using ordinary kitchen materials !) then maybe but in such cases
the authorities would likely need to be involved anyway and handle the matter
in the physical world and that's a whole different discussion.

--
vlaho.ninja/prog

Spiros Bousbouras <spibou@gmail.com> writes:
> Richard Kettlewell <invalid@invalid.invalid> wrote:
>> 6) There was no good way to prevent bad behavior on Usenet. If you
>> wanted to escape bad actors (or just posters who can’t let go), Usenet’s
>> competitors offered an easy way out.
>
> Or you could and can use filtering. It is a minor mystery to me why
> people don't do that. I have indirect evidence that some people chose
> to leave a group which had posters they strongly disliked rather than
> filter those posters and I could see from the headers of the people
> who left that they were using a newsreader i.e. not googlegroups. My
> guess is that for some people there is a psychological factor involved
> and they find off-putting or distracting the idea that they are
> reading or posting on the same online discussion medium as some "bad"
> people. So even if they can apply filtering and not see any of the
> posts of the bad people , that's not good enough for them.

Filtering as implemented on Usenet is inadequate for reasons that seems
pretty clear to me.

First if you block one person you still see the responses. You may be
spared one particular idiot, but you still see the argument. You can
filter out everyone who likes arguing with idiots but then you miss
everything else they say outside those arguments.

Secondly, everybody has to do their own filtering. It’s considerable
excess effort compared to centralized blocking and means that everyone
gets a different view of what would otherwise be a unified forum.

In contrast Usenet’s successors have, for the most part, distributed
decisions over blocking of bad actors to localized authorities.
Empirically it seems that most people prefer this model.

Elsewhere you wrote:

| Say you have an online discussion community with 1,000,000 people and
| 999,999 of them think that person A is a sage and person B is an idiot
| but there is one person C who thinks that B says more worthwhile stuff
| than A ; C should still have the ability to read B's messages. If the
| 999,999 people can use their preferences to prevent C from reading B's
| posts (or make it very hard) , it goes against freedom of speech
| regardless of what algorithms these 999,999 people use to achieve
| that.

The reality is different. What actually happens is different in two
ways:

1) The controllers of the discussion community ban person B, usually
with very little reference to the 999,999 other readers. Those readers
stay or go elsewhere depending on their views of the moderation policy,
the quality of the discussion, etc.

2) If B and C still want to communicate then they can can make a new
online discussion community to do so.

No communication that anyone actually wants to receive is blocked. The
only thing that B is denied is access to an audience that don’t want to
hear from them anyway.

To me, “freedom of speech” means freedom to speak to those who wish to
hear you. It does not give anyone a claim over other people’s attention.

>> IMO Usenet is dying due to lack of demand, not lack of supply.
>
> I don't think it's dying but advertising it more is desirable.

It’s dying in the sense that the numbers of users and posts have sharply
and consistently declined from their peak (IIRC somewhere around the
turn of the century).

--
https://www.greenend.org.uk/rjk/

Spiros Bousbouras <spibou@gmail.com> wrote:
> On Tue, 02 Aug 2022 21:27:23 +0100
> Richard Kettlewell <invalid@invalid.invalid> wrote:
>> Rich <rich@example.invalid> writes:
>> > If you go digging, you can probably find as many explanations as you
>> > wish, all of which in isolation will sound plausable. There is one
>> > floating around related to a New York AG who was going hard at child
>> > porn circa 1997-1999 and targeted Usenet in his 'sweep' that is offered
>> > up as a reason why ISP's started dropping Usenet.
>>
>> There were various legal issues in the UK but Usenet provision largely
>> continued despite them. Virgin Media appear to have only stopped in 2021
>> (TBH I?m surprised they carried on that long.)
>
> Yes , virginmedia were providing usenet until 2021-06-30 . The retention on
> some groups was more than 10 years. Very nice. There is a U.S. based ISP who
> still provide usenet access :
> https://secure.dslextreme.com/support/kb/email-and-newsgroups/newsgroups/news-settings-for-clients
>
> I have a vague recollection that I've come across a Canadian ISP doing similar
> but I couldn't find an entry in my bookmarks and perhaps I'm misremembering.
> I guess this is as good a place as any to ask if anyone knows of any ISP in
> any country who automatically provide usenet access to their subscribers.
>
>> > Reality is more likely a combination of:
>> [...]
>>
>> 6) There was no good way to prevent bad behavior on Usenet. If you
>> wanted to escape bad actors (or just posters who can?t let go),
>> Usenet?s competitors offered an easy way out.
>
> Or you could and can use filtering.

Which is the reason proper usenet readers include killfiles.

Of course, killfiling "troll-54@troll.farm.com" does not help when a
bunch of other members respond to that troll, because now one sees the
replys from "valuable-members-*@good.poster.com" often containing quoted
matter from killfiled "troll-54@troll.farm.com", somewhat negating the
value of the killfile. And, sadly, a very many of those "troll
engagement" replies, that allow the troll to sneak in around one's
killfile, do come from the clueless google groupers.

> It is a minor mystery to me why people don't do that. I have
> indirect evidence that some people chose to leave a group which had
> posters they strongly disliked rather than filter those posters and I
> could see from the headers of the people who left that they were
> using a newsreader i.e. not googlegroups. My guess is that for some
> people there is a psychological factor involved and they find
> off-putting or distracting the idea that they are reading or posting
> on the same online discussion medium as some "bad" people.

Without asking them we can only guess (likely incorrectly) as to their
reasons. I've often suspected part of it to be the inherent "nanny"
desire of some where they expect "others" to do the work so they can
experience a "pre-cleaned environment" within which to play. And with
web forums and third party "moderators" those who wanted their "nanny"
to "clean up their room" got what they wanted, the web forum was
(mostly) "clean of trolls" because the moderator played the part of
"nanny" and kept the trolls at bay.

2022-08-03, Richard Kettlewell <invalid@invalid.invalid> schrieb:

[Schnipp]

> First if you block one person you still see the responses. You may be
> spared one particular idiot, but you still see the argument. You can

Ever thought of filtering on the "References"-header?

[Schnipp]

--
Jan v/d Broek
balglaas@dds.nl

Jan van den Broek <balglaas@dds.nl> wrote:
> 2022-08-03, Richard Kettlewell <invalid@invalid.invalid> schrieb:
>
> [Schnipp]
>
> > First if you block one person you still see the responses. You may be
> > spared one particular idiot, but you still see the argument. You can
>
> Ever thought of filtering on the "References"-header?

You can block the thread, but that's a manual process you have to do for
every objectionable thread.
You can auto-block threads started by identified idiots, but it doesn't help
when the idiot follows up to an existing thread.
You can auto-block subthreads from the idiot posting onwards, but you might
lose a lot of thread (eg the idiot just posts '+1' and then a hundred more
posts follow from others with interesting content).

Also, on Usenet in general there is no strong binding from posters to
humans. You can make a million sockpuppets and they can all post. The
email addresses don't even have to be valid. If somebody blocks one of your
socks you have 999,999 more socks you can post from. If you do this enough
you overwhelm the ability of readers to add you to the block list. Some
servers (eg Google Groups) enforce a valid email<->account policy, but people
still use them to post spam, and it's trivial to find a server that doesn't
need this.

Essentially the filtering tools on Usenet are designed for not seeing posts
from people posting genuinely. They are not designed for people posting
adversarially, who aim to work around the filtering.

Theo

Jan van den Broek <balglaas@dds.nl> writes:
> 2022-08-03, Richard Kettlewell <invalid@invalid.invalid> schrieb:
>> First if you block one person you still see the responses. You may be
>> spared one particular idiot, but you still see the argument. You can
>
> Ever thought of filtering on the "References"-header?

Yes, and I do. But it’s additional effort for every discussion, and if
the subthread gets back on track then it produces false positives.

The starting point of this subthread was “it’s a mystery why people
don’t use filtering”. It is really not a mystery if you’re paying
attention.

--
https://www.greenend.org.uk/rjk/

25B.Z969 <25B.Z969@noda.net> wrote:
>
> "Should be removed" ?????? Gee, how TOTALITARIAN of you !
>
> NOBODY "should be removed from Usenet" - not even the
> worst pin-headed trolls. If you don't like them, there
> doesn't exist a newsreader where you can't plonk them
> so you're no longer bothered.

And that, in short, is what killed Usenet.
--scott
--
"C'est un Nagra. C'est suisse, et tres, tres precis."

On 8/5/22 7:40 PM, Scott Dorsey wrote:
> 25B.Z969 <25B.Z969@noda.net> wrote:
>>
>> "Should be removed" ?????? Gee, how TOTALITARIAN of you !
>>
>> NOBODY "should be removed from Usenet" - not even the
>> worst pin-headed trolls. If you don't like them, there
>> doesn't exist a newsreader where you can't plonk them
>> so you're no longer bothered.
>
> And that, in short, is what killed Usenet.

Gimmicks, eye-candy and GOOD ADVERTISING killed Usenet.

Everybody wanted to post pictures and video of their lunch
or cats. Usenet isn't good for that (and be very very
happy it isn't).

"25B.Z969" <25B.Z969@noda.net> writes:

> On 8/5/22 7:40 PM, Scott Dorsey wrote:
>
>> 25B.Z969 <25B.Z969@noda.net> wrote:
>>
>>> "Should be removed" ?????? Gee, how TOTALITARIAN of you !
>>>
>>> NOBODY "should be removed from Usenet" - not even the
>>> worst pin-headed trolls. If you don't like them, there
>>> doesn't exist a newsreader where you can't plonk them
>>> so you're no longer bothered.
>>
>> And that, in short, is what killed Usenet.

Does no one remember the hipcrime flooder? Screening/scoring 25,000
posts a day means sucking down at least the headers for 25,000 posts.
So yeah, I'm kinda selfrightrously authoritarian about someone trying
to burn the medium down. Were you trolling with accusations of
"totalitarian"?

> Gimmicks, eye-candy and GOOD ADVERTISING killed Usenet.
>
> Everybody wanted to post pictures and video of their lunch
> or cats. Usenet isn't good for that (and be very very
> happy it isn't).

Has everybody read "Where Were You Last Pluterday"? An extra day in
the week accessible only to the plutocracy. Where's my Pluternet for
the sane, rational, literate & articulate? IIRC, at the end of the
story, it tunrs out that there's an *extra* extra day for those
dismayed that Pluterday is being too much invaded by the proles.

--
Mike Spencer Nova Scotia, Canada

Mike Spencer <mds@bogus.nodomain.nowhere> wrote:
>"25B.Z969" <25B.Z969@noda.net> writes:
>> On 8/5/22 7:40 PM, Scott Dorsey wrote:
>>> 25B.Z969 <25B.Z969@noda.net> wrote:
>>>
>>>> "Should be removed" ?????? Gee, how TOTALITARIAN of you !
>>>>
>>>> NOBODY "should be removed from Usenet" - not even the
>>>> worst pin-headed trolls. If you don't like them, there
>>>> doesn't exist a newsreader where you can't plonk them
>>>> so you're no longer bothered.
>>>
>>> And that, in short, is what killed Usenet.
>
>Does no one remember the hipcrime flooder? Screening/scoring 25,000
>posts a day means sucking down at least the headers for 25,000 posts.
>So yeah, I'm kinda selfrightrously authoritarian about someone trying
>to burn the medium down. Were you trolling with accusations of
>"totalitarian"?

I was thinking more about alt.religion.scientology and the cancelbunny
wars than about hipcrime but indeed the problems are similar.

I think there is a broad middle road between totalitarianism and complete
absence of editorial control. And I think a lot of people don't seem to
realize that road exists. Usenet (and to a much greater extent altnet)
tend toward the latter, which is why we still can't get rid of
alt.hairy-douchebag.meredith-tanner thirty years after Carasso mkgrouped it.
--scott
--
"C'est un Nagra. C'est suisse, et tres, tres precis."

On Wed, 03 Aug 2022 16:26:38 +0100
Richard Kettlewell <invalid@invalid.invalid> wrote:
> Spiros Bousbouras <spibou@gmail.com> writes:
> > Richard Kettlewell <invalid@invalid.invalid> wrote:
> >> 6) There was no good way to prevent bad behavior on Usenet. If you
> >> wanted to escape bad actors (or just posters who can’t let go), Usenet’s
> >> competitors offered an easy way out.
> >
> > Or you could and can use filtering. It is a minor mystery to me why
> > people don't do that. I have indirect evidence that some people chose
> > to leave a group which had posters they strongly disliked rather than
> > filter those posters and I could see from the headers of the people
> > who left that they were using a newsreader i.e. not googlegroups. My
> > guess is that for some people there is a psychological factor involved
> > and they find off-putting or distracting the idea that they are
> > reading or posting on the same online discussion medium as some "bad"
> > people. So even if they can apply filtering and not see any of the
> > posts of the bad people , that's not good enough for them.
>
> Filtering as implemented on Usenet is inadequate for reasons that seems
> pretty clear to me.
>
> First if you block one person you still see the responses. You may be
> spared one particular idiot, but you still see the argument. You can
> filter out everyone who likes arguing with idiots but then you miss
> everything else they say outside those arguments.

You can filter based on that any of the last N posts in the References:
header field are from the idiot. You choose the value of N based on how
obnoxious the idiot is. It's not going to be perfect but then I don't
see how having someone else do the filtering , someone you don't even
know , would be an improvement.

> Secondly, everybody has to do their own filtering. It’s considerable
> excess effort compared to centralized blocking and means that everyone
> gets a different view of what would otherwise be a unified forum.

It is more effort but I wouldn't call the effort excess. Doing things based
on your own tastes , preferences , values , etc. is always going to be more
work than letting someone else do it for you. It applies to what books or
newspapers you read , what websites you visit , what movies you watch , etc.
I don't see why usenet posts should be an exception and with usenet it's
technically feasible for the content to be distributed everywhere and for
everyone to make their own choices.

As for being a unified forum , what's the value of being a unified forum if
the unity is enforced rather than as a happy result of everyone making
their own choices ? In any case , even with moderation , there's no guarantee
that everyone opens the same threads or not do their own filtering on top of
the centralised filtering or even obtain the same mental picture of that they
read. I mean if you go to a page on amazon or IMDB where there is a large
number of reviews for some book or movie , you will see that different people
focus on different stuff. They have watched or read the same book or movie
but what registered in their brains might be very different. So there is no
"unified forum" , central filtering or not.

> In contrast Usenet’s successors have, for the most part, distributed
> decisions over blocking of bad actors to localized authorities.
> Empirically it seems that most people prefer this model.

Perhaps it's the only model they know of. I have certainly seen many times on
message boards complaints "Why such and such poster was banned ? I liked that
guy". Also complaints that the banning was done with no transparency (some
message boards have a subforum where a short explanation is given as to why
each person got banned). I have also come across message boards where some
banned users had thousands of posts. Obviously these weren't some random
spammers or trolls , it's just that at some point a too large gap appeared
between what those posters wanted to post and what the administrators
considered acceptable.

Ultimately what I want is for people to make an informed choice. Usenet is an
online discussion medium where the software allows each individual to make
very precise and sophisticated filtering based on personal preferences with
no centralised filtering (but centralised filtering is also possible). If
someone does know that such a medium exists and they still prefer centralised
filtering then fair enough.

> Elsewhere you wrote:
>
> | Say you have an online discussion community with 1,000,000 people and
> | 999,999 of them think that person A is a sage and person B is an idiot
> | but there is one person C who thinks that B says more worthwhile stuff
> | than A ; C should still have the ability to read B's messages. If the
> | 999,999 people can use their preferences to prevent C from reading B's
> | posts (or make it very hard) , it goes against freedom of speech
> | regardless of what algorithms these 999,999 people use to achieve
> | that.
>
> The reality is different. What actually happens is different in two
> ways:
>
> 1) The controllers of the discussion community ban person B, usually
> with very little reference to the 999,999 other readers. Those readers
> stay or go elsewhere depending on their views of the moderation policy,
> the quality of the discussion, etc.

Right. And do you consider this preferable over people making their own
choices about specific posters or threads rather than only being able to
make the much cruder choice of whether to leave the community altogether ?

> 2) If B and C still want to communicate then they can can make a new
> online discussion community to do so.

How are they going to do that ? Say B and C are on a message board and B gets
banned. How are they going to communicate after that ? And it's not just
about B and C. People who may come across the message board in the future get
deprived of the opportunity of forming their own opinions. Perhaps some of
those would also like B's posts but they won't get to find out (at least for
newer posts B might have made , older posts tend to remain available even for
banned posters).

> No communication that anyone actually wants to receive is blocked. The
> only thing that B is denied is access to an audience that don’t want to
> hear from them anyway.
>
> To me, “freedom of speech” means freedom to speak to those who wish to
> hear you. It does not give anyone a claim over other people’s attention.

Totally agree with your 2nd paragraph. In the scenario I presented C wants to
read B's posts and the other 999,999 people do not. With individual filtering
everyone gets what they want. Without it , the 999,999 people possibly get
what they want (I say "possibly" because , even if they don't want to read
B's posts , they might still not want for B to get banned for reasons of
principle) , C does not get what he wants and people who join the board in
the future do not get to make up their minds.

> >> IMO Usenet is dying due to lack of demand, not lack of supply.
> >
> > I don't think it's dying but advertising it more is desirable.
>
> It’s dying in the sense that the numbers of users and posts have sharply
> and consistently declined from their peak (IIRC somewhere around the
> turn of the century).

"Dying" suggests it's on its way to not exist anymore. Perhaps it will turn
out like this or perhaps it will remain at its current low numbers of perhaps
it will experience some kind of rebirth. I don't think that the evidence is
conclusive.

--
That evening she was sitting in her hotel room when the phone rang. It was
the fellow she had met in that far off train station, just wanting to chat a
bit more. How did he find her? Quite simple really. He assumed there was only
one place for a foreigner to stay in Ibusuki-the big international hotel. So
he called there and asked to have himself connected to the Dutch woman's
room.
http://www.debito.org/beggarsresults.html

On 03 Aug 2022 22:26:56 +0100 (BST)
Theo <theom+news@chiark.greenend.org.uk> wrote:

[...]

> Also, on Usenet in general there is no strong binding from posters to
> humans. You can make a million sockpuppets and they can all post. The
> email addresses don't even have to be valid. If somebody blocks one of your
> socks you have 999,999 more socks you can post from. If you do this enough
> you overwhelm the ability of readers to add you to the block list. Some
> servers (eg Google Groups) enforce a valid email<->account policy, but people
> still use them to post spam, and it's trivial to find a server that doesn't
> need this.
>
> Essentially the filtering tools on Usenet are designed for not seeing posts
> from people posting genuinely. They are not designed for people posting
> adversarially, who aim to work around the filtering.

What you are describing is a manual DOS attack. Perhaps such are harder to
defend against on usenet rather than say on a message board but if one wants
to do a DOS attack , there are automatic tools. DOS attacks , manual or
otherwise , are a problem but I consider this a different problem than freedom
of speech where one makes arguments they believe in or at least arguments
they believe deserve an answer and it so happens that many people find such
arguments objectionable.

Spiros Bousbouras <spibou@gmail.com> writes:
> Ultimately what I want is for people to make an informed choice. Usenet is an
> online discussion medium where the software allows each individual to make
> very precise and sophisticated filtering based on personal preferences with
> no centralised filtering (but centralised filtering is also possible). If
> someone does know that such a medium exists and they still prefer centralised
> filtering then fair enough.

People did make an informed choice. When alternatives to Usenet appeared
they started to abandon Usenet.

--
https://www.greenend.org.uk/rjk/

On Thu, 4 Aug 2022 00:05:57 -0400
"25B.Z969" <25B.Z969@noda.net> wrote:
> On 8/3/22 9:04 AM, Spiros Bousbouras wrote:
> > On Tue, 2 Aug 2022 22:34:38 -0400
> > "25B.Z969" <25B.Z969@noda.net> wrote:
[...]
> >> "Should be removed" ?????? Gee, how TOTALITARIAN of you !
> >>
> >> NOBODY "should be removed from Usenet" - not even the
> >> worst pin-headed trolls. If you don't like them, there
> >> doesn't exist a newsreader where you can't plonk them
> >> so you're no longer bothered.
> >
> > Yes , that's my feeling too. Having said that , with a huge amount of servers
> > available , I expect some would do filtering.

[...]

> Everybody has favorite perspectives - and, even unconsciously,
> kinda tramps-down the "heretics". This is why we need some
> sources where such activity is just not tolerated, or possible.
> IMHO, the ability to make yourself heard is still too low -
> it NEEDS to be where even aggressive govts can't stop it.
> Bounce lasers off the moon if need-be.

If a source of a signal can be located then entities which have sufficient
resources can eliminate the signal. So the best possibility I see is for
the source of the signal (speech) not to be detectable. A large number of
servers would help for that much like the Tor network does things.

On Thu, 04 Aug 2022 09:17:26 +0100
Richard Kettlewell <invalid@invalid.invalid> wrote:
> Jan van den Broek <balglaas@dds.nl> writes:
> > 2022-08-03, Richard Kettlewell <invalid@invalid.invalid> schrieb:
> >> First if you block one person you still see the responses. You may be
> >> spared one particular idiot, but you still see the argument. You can
> >
> > Ever thought of filtering on the "References"-header?
>
> Yes, and I do. But it’s additional effort for every discussion, and if
> the subthread gets back on track then it produces false positives.
>
> The starting point of this subthread was “it’s a mystery why people
> don’t use filtering”. It is really not a mystery if you’re paying
> attention.

Let me mention 2 specific cases. There is a guy named Pascal Bourguignon who
used to be a regular on comp.lang.lisp .Very knowledgeable and very willing
to share the knowledge. On 2018-06-11 he posted <m27en5weof.fsf@despina.home>
where he asks if it is worth it to renew his usenet subscription and one
reason he was wondering was the trolls on the group. Back then (and now) the
trolls (including brain damaged people) posting on comp.lang.lisp were
trivial to filter , they made no (or trivial) attempts to avoid filtering ,
usually didn't get any replies at all and by filtering the few replies (if
any) , one would be guaranteed not to miss anything important. Also Pascal
used emacs so he could certainly do filtering. I replied with
<1XT61I7xwyekwcQsGB2NfJzX8zHMw@bongo-ra.co> where I emphasised that it's
easy to filter the trolls. Pascal did renew his subscription but sometime
after that he disappeared from comp.lang.lisp and any other group I
frequent. So what I find a mystery here is why make a post to complain ,
among other things , about the trolls ? Why not just go and filter them and
take them off your mind ? And he never replied to my points about filtering.
He could have said for example that he doesn't consider it effective for
whatever reason. If there were purely technical reasons , I think he is the
kind of person who would explain them. Hence I think that there is also a
"psychological factor involved".

The other example is from a thread "rip erik naggum" also on comp.lang.lisp
started on 2009-06-20. I only have a googlegroups link for this one :
groups.google.com/d/topic/comp.lang.lisp/cDiRNDre9w4 .In the thread we read

Scott Burson :
His arrogance and hostility drove me away from c.l.l for years. I can
only wonder how many others he alienated.

Spiros Bousbouras (replying to the above) :
Why go away from c.l.l instead of simply not reading his posts?

vippstar (also responding to Burson) :
Why are you glad? Did he do anything that you couldn't avoid by
killfiling him? It was your choice (and seems, your fault) that you
didn't ignore him when you had to.

Burson made several more replies in the thread but again he never addressed
this point. Admittedly Naggum was a harder case to filter because he was a
very divisive poster ; a significant percentage on comp.lang.lisp thought
he was posting very worthwhile stuff whereas another significant percentage
thought he was a major jerk and possibly that his contributions weren't that
worthwhile on the average. So a lot of people responded to Naggum and there
were long metadiscussions on how good or bad Naggum was (like , in fact , the
thread I linked to) , etc. But again I find it strange that Burson gets asked
by 2 people essentially "Why didn't you filter Naggum since he bothered you so
much ?" and he never gave even a short response like saying for example that
with the amount of responses Naggum was getting , filtering him would not
have been practical. So again my instinct suggests some kind of psychological
reason like perhaps that Burson was finding Naggum so unpleasant that he
reached a point that he just couldn't bear to be on the same group as Naggum
even if he didn't get to read his posts.

By the way , with someone as divisive as Naggum , I'm not sure that a moderated
group would have been an improvement because , no matter what decision a moderator
would have made with regard to Naggum posts and replies to him , it would have
annoyed a lot of people. So again I consider the least evil that everyone gets
to make up their own mind ; if it is to leave the group altogether , so be it
(although a pity).

--
Let me never fall into the vulgar mistake of dreaming that I am persecuted
whenever I am contradicted.
Ralph Waldo Emerson

Spiros Bousbouras <spibou@gmail.com> writes:
> Richard Kettlewell <invalid@invalid.invalid> wrote:
>> Jan van den Broek <balglaas@dds.nl> writes:
>>> 2022-08-03, Richard Kettlewell <invalid@invalid.invalid> schrieb:
>>>> First if you block one person you still see the responses. You may
>>>> be spared one particular idiot, but you still see the argument. You
>>>> can
>>>
>>> Ever thought of filtering on the "References"-header?
>>
>> Yes, and I do. But it’s additional effort for every discussion, and if
>> the subthread gets back on track then it produces false positives.
>>
>> The starting point of this subthread was “it’s a mystery why people
>> don’t use filtering”. It is really not a mystery if you’re paying
>> attention.
>
> Let me mention 2 specific cases.

It seems pretty clear that most people (including Pascal and Scott) find
Usenet’s local filtering inadequate. The only remaining issue is that
you don’t believe anyone when they tell you this.

--
https://www.greenend.org.uk/rjk/

On 6 Aug 2022 18:09:39 -0000
kludge@panix.com (Scott Dorsey) wrote:
> Mike Spencer <mds@bogus.nodomain.nowhere> wrote:
> >"25B.Z969" <25B.Z969@noda.net> writes:
> >> On 8/5/22 7:40 PM, Scott Dorsey wrote:
> >>> 25B.Z969 <25B.Z969@noda.net> wrote:
> >>>
> >>>> "Should be removed" ?????? Gee, how TOTALITARIAN of you !
> >>>>
> >>>> NOBODY "should be removed from Usenet" - not even the
> >>>> worst pin-headed trolls. If you don't like them, there
> >>>> doesn't exist a newsreader where you can't plonk them
> >>>> so you're no longer bothered.
> >>>
> >>> And that, in short, is what killed Usenet.
> >
> >Does no one remember the hipcrime flooder? Screening/scoring 25,000
> >posts a day means sucking down at least the headers for 25,000 posts.
> >So yeah, I'm kinda selfrightrously authoritarian about someone trying
> >to burn the medium down. Were you trolling with accusations of
> >"totalitarian"?
>
> I was thinking more about alt.religion.scientology and the cancelbunny
> wars than about hipcrime but indeed the problems are similar.

Yes , DOS attacks can be a problem but I consider it of a very different
nature than freedom of speech.

> I think there is a broad middle road between totalitarianism and complete
> absence of editorial control. And I think a lot of people don't seem to
> realize that road exists.

Unless someone has had very limited exposure to online discussions , I can't
imagine how they would fail to realise that there are many possibilities for
editorial control including total absence of it. They may have a strong
preference for some small subrange of what's available but they must have come
across the many possibilities. However , in this day and age where usenet is
not that well known , it may be that there are many people who don't realise
that it's possible to have a group like comp.misc which has no moderation
but you still get civil and educated discussion.

> Usenet (and to a much greater extent altnet)
> tend toward the latter, which is why we still can't get rid of
> alt.hairy-douchebag.meredith-tanner thirty years after Carasso mkgrouped it.

What's altnet ? Googling did not give me a definite answer.

I've never used newsserver software but I assume that it tends to have some
configuration file and , based on the content , the server carries whichever
groups. Is it more complicated than this ? If not then can't any server
operator who wants to get rid of some newsgroup simply edit the file and
that's all there is to it ?

By the way , the list of groups offered by a server I used in the past
includes alt.flame.hairy-douchebag.meredith-tanner and
alt.flame.hairy-douchebag.roger-david-carasso but no
alt.hairy-douchebag.meredith-tanner .In any case , having such groups (or
twitter for that matter) available where people can express their base
instincts so to speak and having other parts of usenet for more in control
discussion , seems perfectly reasonable to me. So I don't necessarily think
it is bad to have alt.flame* newsgroups. I have even come across message
boards which have some subforum where anything goes (or close) and other
subforums have stricter rules.

--
If war is the continuation of politics by other means, terrorism is the
continuation of war by other means.
Where the Right Went Wrong
http://buchanan.org/blog/quotes

On Sun, 14 Aug 2022 14:17:39 +0100
Richard Kettlewell <invalid@invalid.invalid> wrote:
> Spiros Bousbouras <spibou@gmail.com> writes:
> > Richard Kettlewell <invalid@invalid.invalid> wrote:
> >> Jan van den Broek <balglaas@dds.nl> writes:
> >>> 2022-08-03, Richard Kettlewell <invalid@invalid.invalid> schrieb:
> >>>> First if you block one person you still see the responses. You may
> >>>> be spared one particular idiot, but you still see the argument. You
> >>>> can
> >>>
> >>> Ever thought of filtering on the "References"-header?
> >>
> >> Yes, and I do. But it’s additional effort for every discussion, and if
> >> the subthread gets back on track then it produces false positives.
> >>
> >> The starting point of this subthread was “it’s a mystery why people
> >> don’t use filtering”. It is really not a mystery if you’re paying
> >> attention.
> >
> > Let me mention 2 specific cases.
>
> It seems pretty clear that most people (including Pascal and Scott) find
> Usenet’s local filtering inadequate. The only remaining issue is that
> you don’t believe anyone when they tell you this.

The only people who could reliably have given this information were
Pascal Bourguignon and Scott Burson and they didn't. If they had said
that they find usenet filtering inadequate , I would have believed
them. The rest of us can only speculate.

On Sat, 13 Aug 2022 21:25:25 +0100
Richard Kettlewell <invalid@invalid.invalid> wrote:
> Spiros Bousbouras <spibou@gmail.com> writes:
> > Ultimately what I want is for people to make an informed choice. Usenet is an
> > online discussion medium where the software allows each individual to make
> > very precise and sophisticated filtering based on personal preferences with
> > no centralised filtering (but centralised filtering is also possible). If
> > someone does know that such a medium exists and they still prefer centralised
> > filtering then fair enough.
>
> People did make an informed choice. When alternatives to Usenet appeared
> they started to abandon Usenet.

Decades ago it might have been the case that anyone who went online also
learned about usenet. This no longer applies (apparently , there are even
people who don't realise that being on facebook counts as being on the
internet. But presumably such people wouldn't be a good match for usenet
anyway) so it would be good that people *now* knew about usenet and its
capabilities and made a choice. I cannot absolutely exclude that they do know
and have made a choice but , based on some comments I have seen from people
who post through googlegroups , there are people who don't have a clear
picture.

--
vlaho.ninja/prog

On Wed, 3 Aug 2022 12:02:28 -0000 (UTC)
Spiros Bousbouras <spibou@gmail.com> wrote:
> On Sat, 23 Jul 2022 17:13:50 -0400
> "voyager55" <voyager55@none.none> wrote:
> > The sort of solution you're describing is either obscenely time consuming for
> > humans to perform (there are over 110,000 existing newsgroups), or those server
> > ops are stuck running a spam/content filter of their own and not letting end
> > users weigh in.
>
> There's no reason for a server to carry all those groups. In my idea of every
> city block having at least one usenet server , I was thinking around the lines
> that each server would carry a few hundred groups whose content the operator
> of the server would be somewhat interested in.

With just a few hundred groups a server could also have unlimited retention.
So I imagine an individual running a server like this throughout their lives
and even passing it on to their children and grandchildren (with appropriate
updates in hardware). Every post which isn't spam or illegal would be on the
server indefinitely.

Spiros Bousbouras <spibou@gmail.com> writes:
> Richard Kettlewell <invalid@invalid.invalid> wrote:
>> Spiros Bousbouras <spibou@gmail.com> writes:

>>> Ultimately what I want is for people to make an informed
>>> choice. Usenet is an online discussion medium where the software
>>> allows each individual to make very precise and sophisticated
>>> filtering based on personal preferences with no centralised
>>> filtering (but centralised filtering is also possible). If someone
>>> does know that such a medium exists and they still prefer
>>> centralised filtering then fair enough.
>>
>> People did make an informed choice. When alternatives to Usenet
>> appeared they started to abandon Usenet.
>
> Decades ago it might have been the case that anyone who went online
> also learned about usenet. This no longer applies (apparently , there
> are even people who don't realise that being on facebook counts as
> being on the internet. But presumably such people wouldn't be a good
> match for usenet anyway) so it would be good that people *now* knew
> about usenet and its capabilities and made a choice. I cannot
> absolutely exclude that they do know and have made a choice but ,
> based on some comments I have seen from people who post through
> googlegroups , there are people who don't have a clear picture.

Obviously I meant that the people _who were on Usenet_ made an informed
choice. But unless you think people have fundamentally changed in the
last couple of decades there’s no reason to think the outcome would be
any different if today’s Internet population were introduced to Usenet.

I think you’re just in denial about Usenet going the way of telegrams
and fax. Sometimes the world moves on.

--
https://www.greenend.org.uk/rjk/

Spiros Bousbouras <spibou@gmail.com> wrote:
>kludge@panix.com (Scott Dorsey) wrote:
>
>> I think there is a broad middle road between totalitarianism and complete
>> absence of editorial control. And I think a lot of people don't seem to
>> realize that road exists.
>
>Unless someone has had very limited exposure to online discussions , I can't
>imagine how they would fail to realise that there are many possibilities for
>editorial control including total absence of it. They may have a strong
>preference for some small subrange of what's available but they must have come
>across the many possibilities. However , in this day and age where usenet is
>not that well known , it may be that there are many people who don't realise
>that it's possible to have a group like comp.misc which has no moderation
>but you still get civil and educated discussion.

comp.misc has no moderation, but being a Usenet group, the server is allowed
to carry it because they are not abusive. Carrying Usenet groups (unlike
altnet groups) is a privilege and not a right.

>> Usenet (and to a much greater extent altnet)
>> tend toward the latter, which is why we still can't get rid of
>> alt.hairy-douchebag.meredith-tanner thirty years after Carasso mkgrouped it.
>
>What's altnet ? Googling did not give me a definite answer.

Okay, there are basically three kinds of newsgroups. There are Usenet groups,
which is to say the Big Eight heirarchy. Groups in the Big Eight are managed
by the backbone cabal. There is a published procedure for creating and
removing groups, which involves a whole lot of discussion and voting before
a cmesg newgroup is issued.

Altnet came about in the nineties because some people thought this was too
restrictive. Anyone can create an alt. group and it is pretty much
impossible to ever get rid of one. There is no Usenet Death Penalty for
alt. groups and no backbone cabal like there is for the Big Eight groups.

For the most part this has made many altnet groups totally unusable because
of the lack of control and the history of the alt.sex groups is a very
enlightening example.

The third kind of groups are local or regional groups, like mit.general or
dc.dining, which are managed by a single admin or a small number of admins
and which don't have wide propagation.

>I've never used newsserver software but I assume that it tends to have some
>configuration file and , based on the content , the server carries whichever
>groups. Is it more complicated than this ? If not then can't any server
>operator who wants to get rid of some newsgroup simply edit the file and
>that's all there is to it ?

If you carry the Big Eight, you carry all the Big Eight groups. That is
part of the agreement. You do not create or remove groups except with
control messages sent throughout the entire heirarchy, after a vote has
been performed.

If you carry the alt. groups you can remove groups from your local server
but if you do, sooner or later there will be a control message coming down
the line causing the recreation of those groups. People have tried to get
rid of some of the altnet groups for decades and they keep coming back.
Altnet is not Usenet and does not follow Usenet rules but it uses the Usenet
mechanisms.

In the case of local groups, if you own the group, sure you can remove it.
It's yours, you own it. The newsmaster at mit can add or remove whatever
mit. groups he or she wants.

>By the way , the list of groups offered by a server I used in the past
>includes alt.flame.hairy-douchebag.meredith-tanner and
>alt.flame.hairy-douchebag.roger-david-carasso but no
>alt.hairy-douchebag.meredith-tanner .In any case , having such groups (or
>twitter for that matter) available where people can express their base
>instincts so to speak and having other parts of usenet for more in control
>discussion , seems perfectly reasonable to me. So I don't necessarily think
>it is bad to have alt.flame* newsgroups. I have even come across message
>boards which have some subforum where anything goes (or close) and other
>subforums have stricter rules.

Altnet is not Usenet. Many sites that carry Usenet do not carry Altnet.
You may wish to read some of the discussion in news.admin.newusers.
--scott

--
"C'est un Nagra. C'est suisse, et tres, tres precis."

On Sun, 14 Aug 2022 18:00:58 +0100
Richard Kettlewell <invalid@invalid.invalid> wrote:
> Spiros Bousbouras <spibou@gmail.com> writes:
> > Richard Kettlewell <invalid@invalid.invalid> wrote:
> >> People did make an informed choice. When alternatives to Usenet
> >> appeared they started to abandon Usenet.
> >
> > Decades ago it might have been the case that anyone who went online
> > also learned about usenet. This no longer applies (apparently , there
> > are even people who don't realise that being on facebook counts as
> > being on the internet. But presumably such people wouldn't be a good
> > match for usenet anyway) so it would be good that people *now* knew
> > about usenet and its capabilities and made a choice. I cannot
> > absolutely exclude that they do know and have made a choice but ,
> > based on some comments I have seen from people who post through
> > googlegroups , there are people who don't have a clear picture.
>
> Obviously I meant that the people _who were on Usenet_ made an informed
> choice. But unless you think people have fundamentally changed in the
> last couple of decades there’s no reason to think the outcome would be
> any different if today’s Internet population were introduced to Usenet.

What has certainly changed in the last 2 decades is the population of the
planet which has gone up (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_population :
6,143,494,000 in 2000 , 7,795,000,000 in 2020) and the percentage of that
population who have internet access. I imagine (but can't be bothered to
search for statistics) that that percentage has also gone up due to
technological and economic development. So there are a lot more potential
usenet users.

Beyond that , where one decides to conduct one's discussion , especially
political discussion , is among other things a political decision. In the
last few years there have been many complaints , justified or not , that a
few social media big players have too much control over which political
opinions get heard. So the conditions are ripe for people to use a much
more decentralised medium for online discussion. Usenet is here and it
is technologically mature.

> I think you’re just in denial about Usenet going the way of telegrams
> and fax. Sometimes the world moves on.

We'll see.

--
vlaho.ninja/prog