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by tptacek 73 days ago
Usenet is a system so bad that "posting a message on a Usenet server and having it appear on other servers in a few seconds" sounds like an achievement. And: both those other systems have reliable ways to see all the new messages on a thread, unlike Usenet, which couldn't even guarantee that you'd see all the messages, let alone in order.

I was a Usenet systems engineer (regional ISP operator, INN hacker) during the heyday of Usenet, and a dedicated user in that time as well. These rose-tinted views of how well Usenet worked don't fly for me at all. Reddit is actively, materially, multifariously better than Usenet, and Reddit is not the state of the art.