# Is usenet/netnews dead ?



## Alain De Vos (Oct 25, 2022)

Is usenet,netnews still used? For what concrete ? Or do people use a mordern variant ?


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## Cthulhux (Oct 25, 2022)

Yes, I still use Usenet. To communicate. There is no modern variant that does not suck.


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## hruodr (Oct 25, 2022)

I read: comp.lang.tcl   comp.mail.pine  comp.text.tex

I think the distributed way usenet works is very good due to our times in which censorship is gaining impulse.

The problem is that usenet is spoiled with spam. Perhaps some kind of web gateway with filtering could
revive it.


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## Crivens (Oct 25, 2022)

Usenet isn't dead. It just smells a bit damp. Still reading there, sometimes I even post.


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## drhowarddrfine (Oct 26, 2022)

hruodr said:


> our times in which censorship is gaining impulse.


Censorship is one of the multitude of problems of reddit and even Hacker News. I know people who are experts in their field and can't post in either place because some moderator didn't like their comment about something. Which means both places lose their expertise. That makes me question how many such experts are banned from them.

Of course, I'm not sure experts in their field go to such places cause they have better things to do. I've often questioned such people, in the past, and some of them have only heard of reddit or HN but have never gone there.


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## hardworkingnewbie (Oct 26, 2022)

It's dead, Jim. Nobody knows what Usenet/NNTP is since at least the early 2000s, and all major internet providers shut down their own NNTP servers during the early 2000s as well. 

It's riddled with spam, unless you are using some cancel feeds with Cancel Moose, and even then many people do not particularly feel happy of having to provide an email address for that, which then becomes public. 

People have moved away a long time ago to mailing list for smaller degree, and web based forums to a much bigger degree, and stuff like Facebook. 

Unless you want to leech some binaries, Usenet is irrelevant today. The times when you could expect to gain there knowledge, or have some valuable discussions are long gone.


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## Cthulhux (Oct 26, 2022)

hardworkingnewbie said:


> It's riddled with spam



You’re in the wrong groups.



hardworkingnewbie said:


> People have moved away a long time ago to mailing list for smaller degree, and web based forums to a much bigger degree, and stuff like Facebook.



Web forums and Facebook are dying.



hardworkingnewbie said:


> Unless you want to leech some binaries, Usenet is irrelevant today.



Usenet was never great for binaries. In fact, my Usenet provider does not even have them and that’s fine.


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## hardworkingnewbie (Oct 26, 2022)

Well, then web forums and Facebook will migrate to something else, like Whatsapp.

This doesn't change the fact that a whole generation of internet users grew up without knowing what NNTP is, nor their provider having such a thing up and running for access.

Usenet is dead. It is irrelevant nowadays. The only thing which keeps it alive are the commercial binary servers, that's it. Nobody goes there looking for discussions since decades, or even bothers to hook himself up to get access to and start to discuss something, because it is so irrelevant.

It is like Gopher: it was important in the past, but that's about it. Nowadays Gopher is for most only relevant for historical reasons, like a stone age axe exhibited in some kind of museum.


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## hruodr (Oct 26, 2022)

drhowarddrfine said:


> Of course, I'm not sure experts in their field go to such places cause they have better things to do. I've often questioned such people, in the past, and some of them have only heard of reddit or HN but have never gone there.


Censorship is rising everywhere, specially regarding news and politics, sure in Europe much worse than in USA.
Centralised web forums make censorship easier, nntp servers distributed in the whole world makes it more difficult.

The problems to be solved: (1) spam, (2) people are used to web. That is why I think web gateways with spam filtering
could be a solution.


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## Cthulhux (Oct 26, 2022)

hardworkingnewbie said:


> This doesn't change the fact that a whole generation of internet users grew up without knowing what NNTP is



I think that the absence of AOL customers who “moved on” to lesser communities helps the quality of the Usenet.

(Ref.: Eternal September.)



hardworkingnewbie said:


> Nobody goes there looking for discussions since decades, or even bothers to hook himself up to get access to, because it is so irrelevant.



I’m nobody now.
Why are you so enraged about this?


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## hardworkingnewbie (Oct 26, 2022)

It is not just AOL who shut down their NNTP servers; every major commercial ISP did so, because of no demand. That's big a difference. Nowadays Usenet is either used for leeching binaries, or by some niche hobby enthusiasts, which are quite few.

And trust me, I am not enraged, I am just stating the facts. The times when somebody like Andrew Tanenbaum had deep, technical discussions about kernel design with that student Linus Torvalds are long over, and will never return. Nobody is looking in Usenet for that type of stuff since ages. Most of the smart people, which had this type of discussion, have left the building long time ago, and never will be back.


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## Cthulhux (Oct 26, 2022)

hardworkingnewbie said:


> It is not just AOL who shut down their NNTP servers



You did not understand the reference.



hardworkingnewbie said:


> Nowadays Usenet is either used for leeching binaries, or by some niche hobby enthusiasts, which are quite few.



Which is ok. I think it’s more peaceful here on Usenet without people who still think so much about the Usenet that they waste quite a few posts on a web forum talking about how dead it is and how non-existent I am.


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## hardworkingnewbie (Oct 26, 2022)

And you clearly don't get what I am talking about. You think that the absence of Joe Average due to all major NNTP servers gone is good for the Usenet. Fine, why not.

But that's not the point of this discussion; the point is if Usenet is still relevant or dead nowadays. For me and my personal experience it is mostly dead.

I've been there in the glory days of the Usenet, the early 90s. when it was basically a small academic group discussing there, so like a walled garden because internet access was not ubiquitious in the beginning. I've first used Cnews with Taylor UUCP to get my groups, later moved on to INN with UUCP. I was there when the spam infestation began, never to go back. When the AOLers started going into the net, also when people started moving away. How hard it really is to moderate.

I've ran as hobby experience a small NNTP server - all hierarchies, no binaries - in the early 2010s on my own, which is really unexpensive nowadays. This was thing was listed traffic wise on top1000.org, and configured with INN, CNFS as storage and evaluating some kill feeds as well.

I was the moderator of one national top level hiercharchy, where I saw how stale it became due to people just blocking everything because out of boredom or they can. And again brain drain to other platforms.

Usenet is dead. It will never return to the glory days I have witnessed and participated at from its beginnings, nor become as relevant again as it was in the past.


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## Alain De Vos (Oct 26, 2022)

Against spam you might need something like "CAPTCHA I'm not a robot".


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## SirDice (Oct 26, 2022)

Alain De Vos said:


> Against spam you might need something like "CAPTCHA I'm not a robot".


Usenet doesn't have a web interface. Although there were (are?) some web gateways, this certainly isn't the norm. And while CAPTCHA keeps _some_ spammers out it's certainly not foolproof (judging by the number of spammers I regularly delete here on the forums).


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## Cthulhux (Oct 26, 2022)

hardworkingnewbie said:


> the point is if Usenet is still relevant or dead nowadays.



If these are your only two options, the Usenet is not to blame for that.


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