On Usenet you could filter anything you didn't want to see, which is reasonable, but you could not - as on Reddit, or HN - make it more difficult for other people to read it too, which is not reasonable, and simply helps to create a hostile, cliquey, poisonous echo chamber.
Cliques did exist on newsgroups, but they had less tools at their disposal. In fact one of the reasons people left Usenet for inferior moderated web forums is because while they could (quite rightly) control their own experience, they (quite rightly) had no ability to control the group.
Ironically, although Usenet is considered to be dead these days, it's in some ways in better shape than ever.
20 years ago it suffered from its popularity, under attack from spammers and trolls attempting and often succeeding in destroying newsgroups.
These days it probably has more users than it had before the mid 90s internet explosion, whereas spammers and trolls have largely moved on to bigger audiences elsewhere.
It's strange for me to read people talking nostalgically about how the internet was better in the past, about online forums they were a part of 15 years ago, or Reddit or 4chan, and seemingly have no experience or even knowledge of Usenet.
And that something as similar and simple to use as email is ignored by people who rue the loss of old (web) forums.
Unlike web options Usenet is no-nonsense, free, has no admin headaches, no advertising, no Evil Corp owner (or potential sell out to Evil Corp when the community grows enough), it's anonymous, private and allows unrestricted speech (within applicable law, obviously).
All it requires is for people to use it.