[commandlinefan]

Part of the problem with Usenet is that it isn't "free" like Twitter and Facebook are. (They're free because they host ads, and there are all sorts of problems with that, of course, but you don't pay a monthly subscription to them). Way back, it used to be you got an NNTP server bundled with your ISP which was ok, because you were the only customer who knew what that was and how to use it, so you weren't creating a lot of load on your ISP. Even then, the NNTP server didn't carry much content, wasn't well maintained, didn't save much, so you had to pay more for a third-party server if you wanted to participate.

My hope for Usenet back in the day was a fully decentralized implementation that would allow each Usenet client to act as a client as well as a mini-server to cut the middleman out. Freenet (and I2P, I think) was sort of based on this idea at a very high level, but went in sort of a weird way (and didn't build on NNTP either).

[dsr_]

In 1996, my local ISP ran Usenet on the beefiest PC-platform machine I had ever seen: a dual Pentium-II 400 with 128MB of RAM and 6 9GB SCSI disks. At times Usenet ate most of a T1 (that's a 1.5Mb/s pipe).

So if you want Usenet, right now, every $5/month minimal VM that I'm aware of has more than enough CPU, RAM, disk and I/O to support you and two dozen friends, as long as you don't take binaries froups.

[throw0101a]

> At times Usenet ate most of a T1 (that's a 1.5Mb/s pipe).

How much of that was due to alt.binaries.*?

[readingnews]

All of it. Like 90something percent of it. And I think you meant to say alt.binaries.pictures.erotica.*

I was the sysadmin at an ISP in the 90s also. We spent the majority of our time talking about that NNTP server. Is it worth it? How do get purchase more disk when the SCSI bus is full and disks are crazy expensive? How do we get more CPU? How do we keep the load down at sync time? I think we spent more time talking about that than playing doom.

Still, Horny Robs BBS files were all on alt.binaries.pictures.erotica.hornyrob (or something like that) and well, that kept a LOT of customers happy, so we keep that pile of servers running.

[indymike]

> How much of that was due to alt.binaries.?

Most ISPs stopped carrying .binaries.* groups because of this.

[commandlinefan]

I wonder how expensive it would be with today’s disk prices - I can’t imagine binaries.* have grown that much in size themselves.

[dsr_]

They got much, much bigger. HD video.

[jeremyjh]

My first thought too! Probably 99%.

[Narishma]

> In 1996, my local ISP ran Usenet on the beefiest PC-platform machine I had ever seen: a dual Pentium-II 400 with 128MB of RAM and 6 9GB SCSI disks.

That's a feat, considering the Pentium II wasn't released until 1997, and the 400 MHz version late 1998.

[dsr_]

That might have been the successor, then. You'll forgive my memory at this range.

[darrenf]

> Way back, it used to be you got an NNTP server bundled with your ISP which was ok, because you were the only customer who knew what that was and how to use it, so you weren't creating a lot of load on your ISP. Even then, the NNTP server didn't carry much content, wasn't well maintained, didn't save much

In the UK, Demon Internet in the 90s maintained a usenet server for customers and one for non-customers (pubnews.demon.co.uk). They carried plenty, had decent retention, and were very well maintained. And busy too. Demon were the largest consumer ISP at the time IIRC. So, at least over here, what you say doesn’t match my recollections.

(I worked at Demon in 1998; if either news server went down I had to fix it if I could, or raise 3rd line expertise otherwise, 24/7)

[Melatonic]

Anything to do with the later Demonoid?

[Mc91]

> My hope for Usenet back in the day was a fully decentralized implementation that would allow each Usenet client to act as a client as well as a mini-server to cut the middleman out.

Gnutella started as this, but for a lot of reasons it didn't work for what it did, with every node sending broadcast to every other mode. The network became a number of federated super-nodes, or ultra-peers, or whatever you'd call them. These would be nodes that had a decent uptime, had a steady network connection, could handle a number of connections etc.

[fweimer]

Google still offers free Usenet access, but alas not over NNTP (I think).

These days, with reasonably cheap virtual servers and reduced Usenet traffic, you can just run your own server after finding one or two peers to exchange articles with. The Debian packaging of INN is quite good, I think. It's still a bit of work to set up things, but so is reading and writing articles.

All of this applies to the text-only Usenet. A lot of for-pay Usenet was actually about access to binary-only groups with content of questionable copyright status (or even legality, depending on country). I don't know if that's still a thing today. The bandwidth requirements for these binary-only groups could be significant.

[jhallenworld]

Sounds like NNTP combined with BitTorrent..

Back in the day I remember dreaming ways to optimize the NNTP server- surely there was a better way than storing each article in a separate file.. but actually it was a very convenient to have a shell account on the same system that ran the server. This is why I enjoyed TheWorld (Software Tool & Die). You could cat the articles if you wanted.

/usr/spool/news, C-News, innd (Rich $alz!), it's all coming back..

[Dracophoenix]

When you did you get on TheWorld? What was it like?

[LinuxBender]

You are right the decent high retention + SSL NNTP providers cost at least $6/mo [0]. There are some free ones [1] but I have never tried them. I've heard they are sometimes slow and lack SSL. I liked the speed of Giganews for binaries but had problems canceling my account and had to call someone.

[0] - https://www.techradar.com/best/best-usenet-providers

[1] - https://teddit.zaggy.nl/r/usenet/comments/6l8h82/free_usenet...

[fweimer]

I think news.individual.net only charges 10 EUR per year, but is strictly text-only of course.

[bbanyc]

The lack of a business model is why any attempt to revive Usenet or run a new federated protocol like Mastodon is probably not going to get anywhere. Somebody's got to pay for it, and the quality of discussion isn't nearly good enough to attract paying customers. (The binaries may be, but isn't it silly to pay for piracy?) Ad-supported services have bad incentives all around, but nobody's ever come up with an alternative way to pay for it, aside from being small enough that voluntary donations will do.

[anthk]

Usenet isn't just for piracy.

[onion2k]

No. We also used it for porn and flame wars.

[rjsw]

There are free servers, they don't hold binary groups but they work fine.

[icedchai]

There are free Usenet services out there (like aioe.org) if you don’t need binaries. Activity is pretty low though.

[akadempythag]

The payments make sense, though. The market for Usenet providers and indexers is very capitalist.

You try to find the organizations who can catch and index posts from the people you're interested in, at the lowest cost.

It is uncomfortable, but I think the fediverse may need to be more ephemeral than most centralized social networks today. If you shout into the void and nobody hears you...a centralized network will archive your thoughts, but a decentralized one will let them die out as soon as your server does.

It may not be a bad thing. People will re-upload useful content and personally, I'm glad that my 12-year-old self's online musings are lost to the wind.