Renee McNeely <
reneemcneely@outlook.com> wrote:
Not that Google should have had to clarify this, but I can imagine a
lot of people got the impression that Google created and controlled
Usenet, and therefore, that Google discontinuing a service they had
already abandoned meant game over for Usenet.
Right. The history of the net isn't taught in school. At least it
wasn't when I went to school. Which isn't surprising since that was
before the net existed.
For a lot of people my age (born in the 2000s) who are more familiar
with sites like Reddit or Discord, the idea of Usenet being a
decentralized service provided by a myriad of sources probably never
even crossed their mind.
The net, or rather the online world, started as a bunch of walled gardens.
A user of CompuServe (founded in 1969) couldn't communicate with a user
of Genie, AOL, Delphi, The Source, the ARPAnet, or any BBS.
Later the ARPAnet evolved into the Internet, and at about the same
time (early 1980s) Fidonet (a network of BBSs) and Usenet (a network
of Unix machines at universities) were founded. Within about a decade
Fidonet, Usenet, Tymenet, and AOL were absorbed into the Internet. It
was a wonderful time. Anyone could talk to anyone, and there was no censorship. The Web (which is not just another name for the Internet)
was created in 1991, and any public web page could be viewed by
anyone. There was a problem with spam, but there were techniques
to deal with it.
I'm baffled that people have retreated from this, and joined a new set
of walled gardens, called "social networks." For instance MySpace,
AOL (again), LiveJournal (until it was taken over by Russians), Google
Groups, Reddit, SDMB, Twitter (now "X"), YouTube, and Facebook. And
nobody on on one social network can talk to anyone in another. And
everyone is subjected to constant ads. And likely to be permanently
banned for wrongthink at any time.
Usenet isn't perfect, but it's a great improvement over its successors.
And it's even older than The Simpsons.
And it's still here, and is not going away. Nobody has the power to
shut it down. New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo tried, 16 years
ago. He failed. He later resigned in disgrace, in response to
accusations of sex crimes.
--
Keith F. Lynch -
http://keithlynch.net/
Please see
http://keithlynch.net/email.html before emailing me.
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* Origin: United Individualist (3:633/280.2@fidonet)