<story><title>Ask HN: I miss Usenet. Are there any modern equivalents?</title><text>Much as the title says, I really miss the Usenet days where I could contribute to a bulletin board-style forum on hyper-specific subjects.&lt;p&gt;If I remember my computing history correctly, Google ended up acquiring and eating Usenet, becoming Google Groups.  I&amp;#x27;m not sure if this is dead yet.&lt;p&gt;Arguably, Reddit fills some of this niche, but Usenet was tech-focused, generally quite professional and frankly didn&amp;#x27;t have the same clientele as Reddit does.&lt;p&gt;HN is topic-focused, rather than subject-focused.&lt;p&gt;Would be very interested to see if there&amp;#x27;s any Usenet-style project that&amp;#x27;s still alive.</text></story><parent_chain><item><author>slightwinder</author><text>Oh, that&amp;#x27;s a fascinating wild post.&lt;p&gt;&amp;gt; Google ended up acquiring and eating Usenet, becoming Google Groups.&lt;p&gt;They did not acquire usenet, they acquired Dejanews, a big usenet-archive and gateway to the usenet. Usenet itself is made of decentraliced servers. Everyone can have one, most big providers and tech-companies had one in the early days. Each with their own groups. There also were public groups, maintained by some hive-mind-org or something.&lt;p&gt;Anyway, Usenet still exists, it&amp;#x27;s not dead, technically. But there is also not much alive either. File sharing on commercial servers seems to be very popular now, and the discusion-groups are receiving more spam than actual worthy content.&lt;p&gt;&amp;gt; Reddit fills some of this niche, but Usenet was tech-focused,&lt;p&gt;50:50 I&amp;#x27;d say. There were many tech-groups. But pretty fast there were also an equal amount of non-tech-groups. And in terms of hyper-focus I would say, reddit has far more focus today than usenet ever delivered. It&amp;#x27;s more about finding a sub and filling it.&lt;p&gt;&amp;gt; generally quite professional and frankly didn&amp;#x27;t have the same clientele as Reddit does.&lt;p&gt;I get the impression your problem is more about the people, not the platform. Yes, usenet had more nerds and expert, more technical capable people. But usenet was also significant smaller, as was the whole internet at the time. You had some kind of natural selection, as internet generally, and usenet specifically only lured very specific people in. With special interests, from a special age and culture. Today it&amp;#x27;s different, you have anyone from anywhere making a space. I&amp;#x27;d say those time are lost forever. At best you get some overhomogenized communities, like this hackernews here. But if you look at reddit, discord, or web-forums in general, you will still find hyper-focused spaces. Just not necessarily with the kind of people your chemistry matches with.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>Majromax</author><text>&amp;gt; I get the impression your problem is more about the people, not the platform.&lt;p&gt;There&amp;#x27;s one structural difference: Usenet had no engagement metric but replies.  Modern replacements measure and implicitly optimize for view counts (the lurker experience); both Reddit and Hacker News sort and surface posts based on a karma score&amp;#x2F;like count.&lt;p&gt;I think this difference led Usenet to implicitly optimize for high-effort posts.  The stereotypical Reddit &amp;quot;in-joke&amp;quot; thread has no place on Usenet because the principal reward of karma is entirely missing.  Instead, posters are implicitly rewarded with attention when their posts garner replies and discussion.&lt;p&gt;On one hand, this encourages real content and discussion over superficial &amp;quot;updoots to the left&amp;quot;.  On the other hand, it also encourages flamebait and high-effort trolling, which a vote-scoring system can silently suppress.</text></comment>
<story><title>Ask HN: I miss Usenet. Are there any modern equivalents?</title><text>Much as the title says, I really miss the Usenet days where I could contribute to a bulletin board-style forum on hyper-specific subjects.&lt;p&gt;If I remember my computing history correctly, Google ended up acquiring and eating Usenet, becoming Google Groups.  I&amp;#x27;m not sure if this is dead yet.&lt;p&gt;Arguably, Reddit fills some of this niche, but Usenet was tech-focused, generally quite professional and frankly didn&amp;#x27;t have the same clientele as Reddit does.&lt;p&gt;HN is topic-focused, rather than subject-focused.&lt;p&gt;Would be very interested to see if there&amp;#x27;s any Usenet-style project that&amp;#x27;s still alive.</text></story><parent_chain><item><author>slightwinder</author><text>Oh, that&amp;#x27;s a fascinating wild post.&lt;p&gt;&amp;gt; Google ended up acquiring and eating Usenet, becoming Google Groups.&lt;p&gt;They did not acquire usenet, they acquired Dejanews, a big usenet-archive and gateway to the usenet. Usenet itself is made of decentraliced servers. Everyone can have one, most big providers and tech-companies had one in the early days. Each with their own groups. There also were public groups, maintained by some hive-mind-org or something.&lt;p&gt;Anyway, Usenet still exists, it&amp;#x27;s not dead, technically. But there is also not much alive either. File sharing on commercial servers seems to be very popular now, and the discusion-groups are receiving more spam than actual worthy content.&lt;p&gt;&amp;gt; Reddit fills some of this niche, but Usenet was tech-focused,&lt;p&gt;50:50 I&amp;#x27;d say. There were many tech-groups. But pretty fast there were also an equal amount of non-tech-groups. And in terms of hyper-focus I would say, reddit has far more focus today than usenet ever delivered. It&amp;#x27;s more about finding a sub and filling it.&lt;p&gt;&amp;gt; generally quite professional and frankly didn&amp;#x27;t have the same clientele as Reddit does.&lt;p&gt;I get the impression your problem is more about the people, not the platform. Yes, usenet had more nerds and expert, more technical capable people. But usenet was also significant smaller, as was the whole internet at the time. You had some kind of natural selection, as internet generally, and usenet specifically only lured very specific people in. With special interests, from a special age and culture. Today it&amp;#x27;s different, you have anyone from anywhere making a space. I&amp;#x27;d say those time are lost forever. At best you get some overhomogenized communities, like this hackernews here. But if you look at reddit, discord, or web-forums in general, you will still find hyper-focused spaces. Just not necessarily with the kind of people your chemistry matches with.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>davidwritesbugs</author><text>As other commenters have pointed out Usenet was a serious of collaborating servers each independently owned &amp;amp; run so there was nothign to &amp;#x27;acquire&amp;#x27;. What happened, from memory, was that a sysop made a backup of his Usenet feed and Google got that tape. My GoogleFu is to weak to find a link to the story.&lt;p&gt;I ran the Newzbin Usenet search engine so it&amp;#x27;s a topic of some nostalgia for me.</text></comment>