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Posted Thursday 21st December 2023
Usenet is a worldwide distributed discussion system developed by Tom Truscott and Jim Ellis in 1980. It's been up and running for nearly fourty-four years, and outdates a good 52% of current regular internet users (according to ONS data). Recently, evil mega-corp Google decided to drop support for Usenet, and as such there's been talk of a resurgence of use.
Put simply, Google brought a level of visibility to Usenet that attracted one thing: spam. Regular users fled as the platform was flooded with spam, brought to the platform after Google integrated Usenet into its 'groups' product. With the closure of Groups, usenet has had a concious uncoupling from Google and is now free to flourish outside of capitalism.
The web is messy and loud and commercial. It's become all the things that it said it never wanted to be, and that's why people are flocking to Gemini and leaving places like Twitter and the WWW behind. Usenet is simple, community-driven, and connected. It's the answer to the noise of the web and social media, if we let it be.
It's a question I ask myself more and more, particuarly since 2020. That's the year when not only did the world change as it reacted to a massive global pandemic, but several members of my family went through things that reminded me we only have one life to live and the time we have in which to live is often more fleeting than we want it to be. But you know what made my brain start churning on this even more than the response to COVID in 2020?
I guess we'll have to watch this space. For now, why not consider signing up and seeing what it's all about? You'll find me kicking around eternal-september.newcomers, uk.london, and uk.gay-and-lesbian.
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