One significant obstacle to a widespread return to Usenet is that the Internet has grown up, and has to behave more like the larger world around it. It's no longer a genteel, academic environment mostly shielded from harm from, and harm to, the general public. The following Techdirt article is an excellent condensed summary of how the world will eventually intrude on any ambitious effort to create, or re-create, an "uncensored" forum:
Yes, the example is about a monolithic service like Twitter, versus something distributed like Usenet. But distributed services have to be hosted somewhere, and two contradictory themes from this discussion are:
- Usenet was more widely used when it was universally available (i.e., commercial ISP's ran news servers)
- Commercial ISP's no longer wish to run news servers due to legal liability and pressure from U.S. states attorneys general
Mom-and-pop server operators won't be as universal, and won't be able to afford expensive staff and lawyers to deal with legal issues.
https://www.techdirt.com/2022/11/02/hey-elon-let-me-help-you...
Yes, the example is about a monolithic service like Twitter, versus something distributed like Usenet. But distributed services have to be hosted somewhere, and two contradictory themes from this discussion are:
- Usenet was more widely used when it was universally available (i.e., commercial ISP's ran news servers)
- Commercial ISP's no longer wish to run news servers due to legal liability and pressure from U.S. states attorneys general
Mom-and-pop server operators won't be as universal, and won't be able to afford expensive staff and lawyers to deal with legal issues.