> There is way too much friction

A lot of the early ISPs, 1993-early 2000s, had free nntp/usenet services. The "friction" of using usenet was not any greater that the friction of launching an email client, an ftp or gopher session, or launching Mosaic.

At the time there were many easy-to-use featureful nntp clients across most computing platforms. I remember liking MT-Newswatcher quite a bit as well as Nuntius. The UI of Newswatcher was not too different from an email client or perhaps directory browser.

Screenshots from MT-Newswatcher

  https://smfr.org/mtnw/screenshots.html