usenet and irc were 'the fediverse' before it became trendy.
this post was submitted on 21 Dec 2023
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So much this! I am old, I guess, but I was on Usenet for years before the web was even invented. When I became aware of the fediverse, I got serious Usenet vibes. A decentralized model, several servers, you access one and get what it sends you, but it syncs with all other servers. You‘re getting everything in the entire Usenet and what you post gets everywhere too… we’ve come full circle, I think, even if we now use ActivePub instead of NNTP… a shame people nowadays know of it as “that piracy thing” instead of what it once was (and was designed to be).
Preach! My first experience with Usenet was rexx scripts on a mainframe using tn3270. Same with all of the ftp sites. Remember fingering id software?
Also, you can post to nntp via email.
Yah, I can’t imagine finger being widely deployed nowadays, the huge security and privacy hole it would be!
As for nntp and email… I also remember using email relay proxies for FTP way back when! FTP access to some places was spotty at best, so I sent a GET request to an email server that would get the file, UUENCODE it, and send it multipart by email. Not that files were big back then, but not was it possible to attach more than a few hundred KBs at once, if that.
In fact, I just remembered a funny story from when I was using the Usenet. I used a client that ran on our VAX/VMS mainframe. While browsing the newsgroups, I would get a figure for the transfer rate at the bottom of the screen. It was usually in tens of bytes per second, sometimes a few hundred. Often it stalled, etc. One day, out of the corner of my eye, I see it is showing “1”. My immediate thought as the most plausible interpretation: “damn, one byte per second. this is especially slow today!” And then I noticed the units: one KILOBYTE per second. it was the first time I had ever seen such a fast transfer rate!
A few years later, mid 90s I was trying to download a video that accompanied a conference paper. It was 6MB in size if memory serves. It took me from Friday afternoon to Sunday to manage it. Not only was it slow, but it kept interrupting and I had to start over numerous times. But I did manage in the end, and walked away with it split into a few floppy disks 🙂.
We’ve certainly come a long way since!
I remember stitching multipart uuencoded files together by hand, lol. Then when OS/2 2.0 came out, IBM fully embraced the Internet of the time and had the best Usenet client that would gasp do all of that automatically and display the image or save the binary file you were after. WebEx was also the best web browser until Netscape took over.
you can post to nntp via email.
There are web<->nntp gateways too; and not just the ggroups one!
Nntp by uucp was life-changing.
Back in the day I'd use UUCP over dial up to the local university to get email and my chosen usenet groups. Ah, the nostalgia of coming home to find my Amiga's floppy had run out of room...
IRC wasn't federated though, but you could indeed connect to multiple servers with the same client.
I mean
There were networks such as: EFnet Undernet Quakenet DALnet
different servers in different regions did network together.
There was a different word for 'defederation' back then: net split https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Netsplit
And it was usually from a networking issue.
I'm still salty that an IRCOP from a (now defunct) Canadian server used a net split as an attack: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/IRC_takeover
to steal a # channel from my friends and make it private long enough to sort out the bot auto bans. We appealed, but because they were an IRCOP, the other IRCOPs from the federated servers were just like, "whatever, pound sand users, go run a server if you want to control stuff like us."
Anyway, IRC was a connection of various servers run by various people/corporations/universities etc.
Oh true, I forgot about that. I remember Freenode running multiple servers and them always netsplitting. Good times :)
All of the protocols that have been ratified are federated. That was kind of the big thing of the internet. HTTP, SMTP (email), FTP, etc. All federated.
When people talk about defederating threads, I’m always curious why they think Net Neutrality is a bad idea, or if they’d appreciate if their email providers didn’t allow emails to Gmail because they don’t like big corporations…
Neutrality is a bad idea, or if they’d appreciate if >their email providers didn’t allow emails to Gmail >because they don’t like big corporations…
email servers and domains are blocked constantly and have been since the 90's when they are pushing spam, malware,etc.
Spam filters isn’t the same as defederating. As far as I know outside of cert issues (like DKIM to prevent spoofing) nobody would prevent you from sending an email to any domain that uses SMTP. And if you allowlist emails from that domain you’ll receive it.
This is not the same as Gmail saying “we won’t allow emails to and from proton” or vice versa.
But MANY email services block entire domains. Not "to" I'll give you but from.
As far as I know no email services (at least the big ones) do that. They will mark some domains as spam by default but if you allow them (e.g. adding the email to your contacts) you will get them in your inbox, penis pills and all.
I’d rather be able to do that for Mastodon (allow me to follow some people but mark the rest as whatever-the-equivalent-of-spam is).
While text based messages on usenet may be dieing, the file sharing is still quite popular. My radar and sonar still pick up plenty of signals.
Well the issue with Usenet is the following:
- Usenet is quite old
- Usenet is not very well known.
- Usenet has many barriers to entry.
- Usenet groups have garnered an exclusionary reputation.
- Other easier options have existed for a long time for basic social media interaction.
Usenet also largely became a venue for bootlegging and porn -- and due to the nature of the protocol, companies hosting Usenet services didn't want to have to store all of that shit. After about 1995, you didn't go there for discussion anymore. Eternal September messed it up. Lemmy is fortunate that you can't really use it for file sharing, a few images notwithstanding, or the same thing would happen.
and due to the nature of the protocol, companies hosting Usenet services didn't want to have to store all of that shit.
You can opt not to carry certain newsgroups, eg skipping alt.binaries.* would reduce your storage requirements drastically.
The fact of the matter is that people wanted something more "instant and accessible" than newsgroups that were synced overnight, and modern social media sprang from that desire.
It should be emphasized, the above list is accurate for Social Interaction as the discussions and text have indeed waned. It does mention that at the end, but still.
For media sharing specifically, many of those above items are either trivial OR are actually what helps it thrive. Somehow, 30 years later, we're still under the radar and maxing out connection speeds without having to VPN, seed, share or dodge ISP rules and DMCA requests.
Nntp is easy to set up and run.
There's a webUI and a forum front-end for nntp.
Nntp is as well-known as MC files (if you need to. You know).
An internal slack is as exclusive.
Email<->nntp gateways exist. What's easier than email ?
I don't think irc and usenet is dead. It's still used a lot for piracy.
I think it comes to down to the definition of "dead". Both are certainly dead for the reasons they were created.
Either you die a hero...
I still use irc every day for legitimate work/technical support purposes.
what kinda product do you work on?
Historically I've been a Unix/Linux/VMware sysadmin, though I've moved into a professional services role doing automation/orchestration/config-management.
There's a lot of good IT/Development technical channels on IRC, especially on libera.chat and oftc.net, since freenode went down the drain.
Historically I've been a Unix/Linux/VMware sysadmin, though I've moved into a professional services role doing automation/orchestration/config-management.
Are you me?
Honestly, your nick is familiar, so I'd only rejoice to hear you were in the 07974 for Unix during such exciting times (Random love, shadow legal, blue November etc).
Go learn mgmtConfig!
Afraid that wasn't me. Though I've used this nick in many places over the years, including various tech/sysadmin IRC channels, and other social media sites.
They're dead as social media; all anyone uses them for is piracy these days and not to, you know... Talk to people.
I think IRC could be made more appealing pretty easily though. Just make a client for it with a slick UI and features like Discord has (like voice and video chat, not simply text), and then allow any Nitro-like shit for free.
I'm old, but does anyone remember alt.pave.the.earth? And the spinoff alt.chrome.the.moon?
I found my first girlfriend over Usenet. de.rec.sf.starwars. You can probably still find my messages in archives.