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Comment by gerikson | Hacker News Reader

The role of Usenet now is filled by the fediverse.

It's filled (sadly) by Reddit and not much else.

I hope the fediverse somehow wins but it doesn't look likely any time soon

I tried Lemmy for a bit and found it to be nothing more than a tiny Reddit clone. And I don't mean just the software aspect of it, rather the content and moderation.

Wasn't being a Reddit clone the point though?

Reddit recreated the social structure of Usenet. Shared infrastructure, but the subreddits managed themselves. Topics, threads... all similar to Usenet. Better multimedia support, of course.

Even the phenomenon of anonymous posters (because accounts didn't require an email for a long time), flames, crossposting... all very like usenet.

Usenet did not have moderators right? Reddit was more of a "run-a-forum as a service".

But the Big Drama made it clear that it's Reddit's forum, not yours. Bait and switch.

Usenet did have moderation, as per this Reddit post (ironically):

https://www.reddit.com/r/vintagecomputing/comments/m2dtcg/us...

Usenet preceded modern social media so the current discussions about who owns content didn't apply.

Reddit was remarkably open in the beginning. Anon accounts, light moderation, open API... it's when they decided to try to extract more value that it became really shitty.

> Usenet did not have moderators right?

It depends on the newsgroup. Some of them did.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usenet_newsgroup

There are still active, moderated newsgroups. The majority of them have dried up, but some are still relevant.

The one thing Reddit didn't copy from usenet was the decentralisation. In that sense, I guess Lemmy is a step forward.

Discoverability and fragmentation seem to be the problems on Lemmy. Groups are small (not really a problem, the smaller subreddits with active and engaged people are better IMHO) but it's really difficult and high-effort for groups to form. Reddit did seem to have that part working well. I think people have gone into Discord (which sucks/I cannot stand).

I'm not aware of anything that fills the role that Usenet filled. What does this? I'd be very interested in such a thing.

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