Re: People Without Meaningful Lives Seek Power Over Others

On 1/22/2025 4:12 PM, Shadow wrote:

On Wed, 22 Jan 2025 20:43:03 GMT, cyclintom <cyclintom@yahoo.com>
wrote:
 

On Tue Jan 21 12:18:34 2025 Jeff Liebermann  wrote:

On Tue, 21 Jan 2025 09:27:10 -0300, Shadow <Sh@dow.br> wrote:
>

On Tue, 21 Jan 2025 01:06:34 GMT, cyclintom <cyclintom@yahoo.com>
wrote:
>

Do we need to make the point that you hide your identity

>
This is Usenet. Usenet was DESIGNED to be anonymous. In fact
people are advised to NEVER post anything that might identify them.
It was the reason why Google spent billions buying the
dejanews archives and then hid them. An attempt to kill Usenet. It
didn't work.
If you really believe in freedom, NEVER ask anyone on Usenet
to identify themselves.
[]'s

>
That's not the exactly what happened.  When the Internet was
contrived, it was essentially an academic research network.  Many
systems didn't have password and some prominent users (Richard
Stallman) refused to use passwords on his publicly accessible systems.
That was fine as long as academia ruled the Internet, but fell apart
as companies and corporation started connecting to the Internet.
Management of these companies insisted that nothing company related
would appear on the Internet which included the personal opinions of
the user.  Also, no business or financial transactions were allowed.
As the Internet grew, enforcing that became increasingly difficult.
The only way around this was for users to obscure their identities so
management couldn't determine who was writing bad things about their
company management or products.  That soon morphed into the right to
"privacy" which really meant that right to post almost anything about
someone on the Internet without fear of retaliation.  There were
attempts to prosecute individuals for libel, but that failed badly.
>
Google didn't buy Deja News because they wanted to suppress free
speech.  They bought it because Usenet was growing far too fast for
the founders to be able to store everything (especially binaries) and
because there was no easy way to monetize Usenet News.  By 2001, Deja
News was out of money and was forced to shutdown.  Google then offered
to rescue Deja News by buying the company and inheriting the archive.
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Groups#Google_Groups>
Google had no idea what to do with Deja News.  After Google merged
Deja News and Google Groups, it sat essentially dormant as Google
considered various ways of making money from the transaction, but
found nothing.  Eventually, web forums, blogs, social media and
specialty sites replaced Google Groups.  Usenet is still around, but
the bulk of the users have moved to other services.

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Well, to my surprise you seem to have exactly explained usenet. I was
in at the very first when it was almost strictly academia and was a resource
for scientific information.

  Are you claiming you were responsible for Usenet filters? I
find that improbable. Though it is possible. I can imagine how
annoying it would be for someone to keep butting in on high level
discussions.

Tommy had no exposure to usenet before rec.bicycles.tech. He may have heard of it at one of his workpaces, but given his level there would have been no cause for management to provide him with access.

 

The ENTIRE idea of anonymity was entirely foreign.

  Anyone could post anything, under any name. That was by
design.
 

We all wanted to know who it was offering information.

  Which is why it was hard to obtain. Not everyone wanted their
names out there. There could be conflicts with workplace contracts and
even local laws.
 

This is why I had a hard time accepting anonymity from Flunky since
he can say anything he wants without people checking it.

  Most people offer links to check information.

I almost always do. Tommy rarely does, and when he does provide a link it rarely supports his claims (except for the youtube whackjobs making videos about "turbocancers").

It's always been
this way with "academia". ANY article, unless it's 100% original (do
they exist anymore?) cites references, which are links to other
people's ideas, experiments and results.

Tommy accepts any information - regardless of any references - as long as it aligns with his world-view. Any information that contradicts his world view is fake news/lies/politically biased regardless of the veracity of the source or references.

The expansion into things like political discussions didn't happen for
a long time but when it did the numbers of groups exploded.

  Political discussions went to "anti-social media". It's where
you'll find the expensive propaganda, the brain washing cambridge
analytica  and the #FAKE_NEWS.
Most groups in Usenet were and still are technical.

That isn't true. The vast majority of usenet groups are under the "alt." and "rec." hierarchies. ES statistic show the top 3 hierarchies for postings per month for the past 12 months as:
alt. - 9217
it. - 5966
rec. - 3912
It seems the highest ranked _technical_ newsgroup in the past 12 months is de.sci.mathmetik coming in at #10.

>
Let me approve of your explanation.

Hey! you got the tommy seal of approval! Lucky you!

  I don't think you understood it.
[]'s

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