Ernie Smith of Tedium Remembers Usenet

If you’re old enough to remember Usenet, then I don’t have to tell you buddy, you are old. Google’s given up on archiving it (Google’s given up on lots of things), but Tedium remembers it, and reminds us all about the promise and wonder it once held. Even though it’s older than the World Wide Web that many people mistakenly see as the whole internet, Usenet has many lessons for us today. Like email and the Fediverse, no one owned or owns Usenet, it’s an ad hoc assemblage of many newsservers. And also like email, Usenet at one point was drowning in spam. In fact, one could argue that it drowned in spam, that rampant unsolicited commercial messages are why few use it today, even if it technically still exists. Sure, as some wrinkled ancient netheads will insist, Usenet had ways to stop spam, but if they didn’t get used, consistently and comprehensively, then their existence didn’t matter. The big advantage that Fediverse services like Mastodon have over what Usenet used to be is a…