[pocksuppet]

There are only 3-4 providers because the system is spammed with hundreds of terabytes of new data per day by actors seeking to destroy it. They can't moderate the spam because the pirated data is all encrypted so indistinguishable from random data, and because moderation would destroy their pretense of not knowing what content is being posted.

[anthk]

Spam is dead since Google Groups dissappeared and most people just use non-binary newsgroups for high tech/culture talks.

[pocksuppet]

The binary Usenet is the one that Internet Archive would be like. It receives hundreds of terabytes of new data every day. Most of it is just random bits designed to waste space on the providers.