[iwanttocomment]

Spam and binaries. Moderated groups moved very slowly as every message needed to be approved. Unmoderated groups became cesspools of spam and flamewars. Binaries groups carried so much data that supporting them was both expensive and legally risky.

As the utility of USENET as a discussion platform diminished due to spam and moderation difficulties, and the binaries groups became an expensive liability, ISPs stopped providing USENET access included with user subscriptions.

That takes us to where we are now. Mastodon is probably the closest successor architecturally, but I'm not sure there's a good example of a platform that has ever seriously solved the problems of moderation in a decentralized environment.

[tbolt]

Mastodon is great and you’re probably right that it’s as close as we will get.