Re: How To Improve This Group

On Sat, 12 Apr 2025 23:06:43 -0000 (UTC), Borax Man <rotflol2@hotmail.com>
wrote in <slrnvvlsg1.j0v.rotflol2@geidiprime.bvh>:

On 2025-04-12, CrudeSausage <crude@sausa.ge> wrote:

On 4/12/25 02:40, Borax Man wrote:

On 2025-04-11, CrudeSausage <crude@sausa.ge> wrote:

[ * snip * ]

On 2025-04-11 09:44, Borax Man wrote:
>
In the case of NNTP, American Congress seems to have been succesful
in killing most of it. If I remember correctly, some poorly informed
politician had no idea what was going on on Usenet or even how to use
it, but he felt that he could complain about its contents anyway. As
a result, ISPs stopped providing a news server. The result is that
those of us on Usenet are usually people who lived in the before
times and are aware of its existence. I doubt that people under the
age of 40 even know what a Usenet is. As for IRC, it is never
mentioned to users of the Internet. Few web sites talk about it and
ISPs themselves don't even mention its existence. After all, there is
no money in it, so why would they bother. Instead, people are told
about things like Discord and TikTok because there is a way of
monetizing a user's presence on those sites. Once again, the people
on IRC are usually Linux users who venture onto their distribution of
choice's support channel, or people from he before times who are
aware of its existence.
>
>

Yes, I remember my ISP carried Usenet, and cancelled it.  I'm in
Australia though, so it may be for different reasons.

>
Depending on when it happened, it was probably caused by the decision
of the American Congress. Much like how the United States and other
countries in the West were convinced that Mortal Kombat and Night Trap
were going to traumatize a generation and we needed video game ratings,
they were convinced that Usenet was the center of all degeneracy.
People should not be surprised that countries in the Five Eyes Alliance
all behave similarly, which is why both Canadians and Americans should
be concerned that Brits are currently being arrested and sentenced for
sharing memes on social media.
>
>

It could simply have been too much bother.  It would have taken a lot
of bandwidth and storage for something most customers weren't aware
of.  It was sad to see it go, and I do wish they maintained it, but
from a business point of view, I do understand.  They cancelled it mid
or late 2000s, or possible later.
 
I suppose then it is our job to mention these technologies and make
people aware of alternatives to the privacy traps and algorthmic
straight jackets that more modern alternatives hoist on thier
victims... um... users...
 
I set these up for my own personal clique, but they're not much into
communicating anyway, or are simply put or, or confused, by any client
that is not web based or an "app".  Unfortunately, I've not been able
to find a good NNTP web frontend that allows only encrypted
connections. Maybe I'll get to work on modifying an existing one to
make it the way I think it should be.

>
I think that the bandwidth argument is an excuse. Even the "hotbed of
degeneracy and piracy" argument is a weak one. In reality, our Western
governments didn't like the fact that Usenet is an uncontrolled
environment where you can truly say what you think and discuss topics
that they consider to be taboo. They don't believe in freedom of
speech,
so they are ready to take away any platform which protects it.
>
>

Given what has happened in the 2020s, and recently what has been exposed
with regards to government meddling in Social Media, I think this is a
credible hypothesis.  I think the storage and bandwidth would have
contributed, if the ISP's were pressured, to not push back too much.
There WERE a lot of binaries floating around, I do remember that.  Also,
Usenet didn't have that much dissident political discussion on it, that
I could see.  There was more to be found on Web Forums that Usenet, so
it could have been a target, but I don't think it was lucrative a target
as you might think.

As someone who used to administer a netnews server, I can tell you
that -- at least in our case -- the decision to shut down the server
was purely business.  We had very few users using the service, and
it was a significant cost to update and maintain.

For a while we outsourced it, then finally pulled the plug.

We kept a shell server going for longer, but last June we shut that down,
also -- only a tiny percentage of our users used it, and there are
better-maintained shell servers out on the Net.

--
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