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Comment by bsdetector | Hacker News Reader

Seems like nobody has mentioned a huge reason Usenet failed:

It needed a client program.

Digg/slashdot didn't succeed because they were flashier or moderated or had less illegal content or privately developed or any of these other reasons given, it was because people could just follow a link to a web page and they're in. Even today reddit or discord do everything they can to convert web users to app users for obvious reasons, but they must have that web version for casual users or they'll die off to whoever does have one.

So ultimately what killed Usenet was Section 230. Without that services could do simple copying/caching like NNTP (protected under telecom rules) but the actual presentation had to be done on the user's computer. And consequently were 230 repealed it wouldn't be the end of the social media world, but rather the resurgence of Usenet-like models where all the presentation is done by a client program.

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> it was because people could just follow a link to a web page and they're in

Discord has entered the chat. (wait a minute...)

Seriously though, Discord is precisely an example of this. I was talking to someone about how Skype was degraded, and I wanted to build a competitor, then he showed me Discord. I've been using Discord since (and on my free time thinking of what I would do different to Guilded / Discord). Slack was cute, but Discord was much better. There's lots of room for improvement with Discord, but its just good enough.

This is one of the big reasons, I think. I hear about Usenet all the time, but whenever I try to go looking for it in the past to figure it out, it just makes no sense to me and I cannot figure out how to get to it. To me it's just this nebulous thing that exists somewhere, but I have no idea where.

Some ISPs still provide Usenet feeds, or there are commercial Usenet providers in many countries, similar to email.

Usenet can be accessed via the OSS Thunderbird client, or OSS Usenet clients.

https://www.fastusenet.org/thunderbird-windows-tutorial.html

Go to telehack.com and type 'notes'.

It's not comprehensive, but will give you a taste of the flavor of what Usenet was like.

You can get a free account here (text groups only, not binaries):

https://www.eternal-september.org/

You can access Usenet via Thunderbird (or Pan, mentioned in the article).

There were, and still are, many web interfaces to USENET. So, IANAL, but I doubt section 230 had much to do with it.

> Seems like nobody has mentioned a huge reason Usenet failed:

> It needed a client program.

Many services required client programs to use. Email did and still does unless you use webmail. And there are services that allow you to read and post to usenet through one's browser.

Section 230 had nothing to do with it. Offering usenet retention is the same thing as being a common carrier. Section 230 would only come in to play if you actively moderated your usenet retention to prohibit perfectly legal speech.

> Section 230 would only come in to play if you actively moderated your usenet retention to prohibit perfectly legal speech.

https://www.techdirt.com/2020/06/23/hello-youve-been-referre...

What is your argument?

Sorry, I thought you would actually read it, forgot where I was for a second - Section 230 protection doesn't require a platform to act as a "common carrier" or to only moderate strictly illegal content, so it would not "come into play" under the circumstances you described.

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