[antod]

I seem to remember one reason usenet worked so well was the pretty stringent insistence on good netiquette. Of course it wasn't foolproof, but nearly all people wanted to follow the implied rules most of the time.

Todays internet demographics and social media landscape though probably makes Eternal September pale into insignificance.

[pixl97]

I agree. While spam and bad actors did exist, the crowd size was so small most of the time and the amount of spam tended to be far more limited and typically had a human at the other side posting the crap.

If you open up an HTTP POST api these days that publicly listed the amount of crap that will be posted to it is legion. You'll have spammers and spammers bots hit it endlessly. You'll have broken scripts pound at it till the end of time. You'll have clever users figure out how to turn it into a data storage API. You'll have every dark thing that hides in the shadows of humanity use you as its new cave. If you allow binary uploads then that API is now a porn site or serving warez. The people pushing the most questionable stuff will come from a vast range of proxied IPs and infected jumpboxes.

It's been some years now since I've been in charge of managing servers that require public facing internet presence and I cannot tell you how glad I am because of it. Attempting to maintain operational integrity on the open internet is like attempting to maintain structural integrity in a blast furnace.