A mere twenty years after it was last relevant, I had a look at Usenet.

And as it turns out, it SUCKS.

Text Usenet (no binaries) is one of the many excellent services provided by
the Cambridge University Student Run Computing Facility (SRCF) and I
thought I'd give it a go. Clearly nobody could have predicted that a system
where anyone could go and talk about their interests with anyone else in
the world would end up a more uncivil, spam-ridden cesspool than comments
on public Facebook posts.

My initial impression was one of a ghost town. Lots and lots of empty
groups and SO MUCH SPAM. I don't know why this was a surprise given that
unmoderated really does mean unmoderated.

One question I had was "who the hell still uses Usenet", other than those
who brandish cutlasses with a yo-ho-ho. The answer seems to be old farts,
old trolls, and spammers. I was astonished that people so long in the tooth
still felt the need to be so hot-headed and irritable.

It seems to have been this way for twenty-five years, too: cited on
Wikipedia, Bruce Schneier noted of alt.sci.crypt:

It is read by an estimated 100,000 people worldwide. Most of the posts are
nonsense, bickering, or both; some are political, and most of the rest are
requests for information or basic questions. Occasionally nuggets of new
and useful information are posted to this newsgroup.

Aside from the sky-high user numbers, this still applied to most of the
groups I visited. Overall, the impression I have is of social media before
social media, and arguably worse in the absence of the Algorithm to cut
through the crap (never thought I'd say that!). I have seen better
discussions unfold on 4chan than some of the rubbish here. I think it
speaks volumes that the group with BY FAR the most activity was
alt.politics.trump. I'm not entirely sure why this was, but it's probably
some combination of

- the internet's most toxic individuals getting banned from social media
  and branching out to pastures greener
- from what I gather, Usenet has suited conspiracy theorists and
  misinformation spreaders quite well since forever 

If I ever go back, I think I'll probably stick to ucam.societies.srcf...

ADJ 2021-07-31