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Why would anyone decide to use USENET these days? (lemmy.darkc0de.one)
submitted 2 months ago by to c/asklemmy@lemmy.world
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I'm not asking about how it is used for warez, since that is what it mostly hosting at this point... Nor am I asking why anyone should or should not start a community on USENET (many reasons why you wouldn't/couldn't).

Instead, I am asking why someone would only decide to engage with the textual, traditional, conversational aspects of USENET over modern tools like lemmy?

I could name a few I suppose:

  • Relative anonymity
  • Access to a large amount of history
  • Nostalgia
  • Communication with those who still frequent newsgroups

I don't know how many more there are but I would like to hear your guys' opinions in regards to those listed above and any others I may have missed.

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[–] 17 points 2 months ago (2 children)

I loved USENET back in the day, but it doesn't do what it used to.

Pure, or nearly pure text boards are still useful, but that's how I use Lemmy now. I just wish it had more general buy-in.

Honestly, you could look at USENET as federation before federation needed to be a thing. Way back when it was all hosted mostly on university servers. Lemmy seems to me to be very much the heir to USENET.

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  • [–] [S] 3 points 2 months ago

    I would say that I liked the simpler technology stack that it used to communicate, even working over high-latency high-throughput transfer links (i.e. Tape drives over 747s back in the day). Though that is specifically UUCP related rather than USENET as a whole.

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  • [–] [S] 2 points 2 months ago

    I also prefer the text based nature of USENET, it was simpler and honestly easier to create whole fleshed out ideas. Your article had a nice stage and a spotlight all to its own in each message pane, meanwhile the modern forums have you view the text within surrounding comments or text. I just think it makes it less intimate than it was before. Though, easier to scroll through

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