Re: Netnews: The Origin Story

On Thu, 7 Nov 2024, Wolfgang Agnes wrote:

Rich <rich@example.invalid> writes:
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Wolfgang Agnes <wagnes@jemoni.to> wrote:

Rich <rich@example.invalid> writes:
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D <nospam@example.net> wrote:

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On Wed, 6 Nov 2024, Rich wrote:
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D <nospam@example.net> wrote:

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On Wed, 6 Nov 2024, Rich wrote:
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D <nospam@example.net> wrote:

This is the truth!  As a thought experiment I sometimes think
about how I would be able to handle usenet if it had 10x the nr
of posts, and I don't think I would.

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Been there, seen that....  Circa 1995 (I forget which groups now)
the text posting volume was so great in the few groups I was
following that it was not possible to keep up.  I was always
behind, and falling further behind each day.  Eventually the fall
behind problem reached a point where I decided to just drop out.
So I disappeared for a good ten years or so.  Of course, when I
did return again, Usenet was a shadow of its former self as far as
text posting rates go.
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It would have to be either a laser focus on a very small nr of
groups, or aggressive filtering of the subject lines.

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One did have to do both, and even so, the volume was impossible to
keep up with if the group was at all active.

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This is an interesting problem. How is it solved in modern social media?

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If by "modern social media" you mean the likes of FB and its ilk,
presumably by having "the algorithm" showing you stuff, and then you
just doom scroll through the algorithm driven feed.  And if stuff
does not get put on your feed, you are unaware of its existance.
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Ah, so probably just setting some keywords in my client and filter based
on those. Not a very satisfactory solution.

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Except with "modern social media" you (the user) don't get to "just
set[ting] some keywords" for the "algorithm".  The "algorithm" does it
all for you by magic.  Which, unfortunately, leaves you at the mercy of
the allmighty "algorithm" as to what you see, and provides a great
opportunity for the "algorithm" to bias your world view into whatever
its creators want your world view to be by selective showing or
omission of various posts to your feed.

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In other words, it's unacceptable---period.

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Indeed, yes.  With a user-local killfile (i.e., the Usenet client
method) then you, the user, is explicitly deciding what you want to
exclude (or include, as most modern clients implement the 'kill' as a
score so one can up/down articles if one wants).
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But with the allmightly algorithm, you are at the mercy of your
corporate overlords.
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Sadly, as most social media users are very similar to the humans on the
spaceship on the cartoon Wall-E, they are lazy and want "someone else"
to do all the work for them, expecting them to put in the even minimal
effort to curate their own local 'killfile' is likely too much to
expect.

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And that's a very interesting phenomenon---that people are so
uninterested in such relevant matters.  The laziness looks more like a
depression, a state of total uninterest in one's life.
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Could very well be. What's the statistics on prescribed happy-pills? Is it increaseing over the world?
I would not be surprised if a lot of people are looking to be constantly distracted, in order not to feel the pain of the empty gaping hole in their souls.
Instead they could work on themselves, their values, achievements and goal, which would feedback positively, and improve their lives.
I do hope that the pill-people are the exception and not the rule.