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by Throwway32 2610 days ago
USENET was the equivalent of a public square on the Internet. It was overwhelmed by spam.

These networks have been curated from the get-go, for no reason other than to control spam. Then, to keep people hooked, they emphasized virality and controversy. These aspects make them quite unlike a town square.

2 comments

> USENET was the equivalent of a public square on the Internet. It was overwhelmed by spam.

Our situation is even better than this, the entire internet is our town square, anyone can spin our own metaphorical soap box online and say whatever we want, and the entire worlds internet connected public can hear us if they choose to do so.

A king's court, then.

Even worse.