• 0 Posts
  • 17 Comments
Joined 2Y ago
cake
Cake day: Jun 13, 2023

help-circle
rss

Usenet used to be where it was at for conversation on the Internet. Then it moved. Getting people to go back to Usenet is probably going to be as hard as spinning up a Facebook competitor.

It is purely a matter of free public servers. Right now, the free public servers are almost all Fedverse. But they could just as easily be Usenet servers. If the free Fedverse servers close like free Usenet servers did, then Fedverse will also decline. But Usenet actually has some superior features that Fedverse lacks (e.g. automatic merging of groups), so if free Usenet servers pop back up, it would take off again.


I’ve seen lots of people say “federation is like email”, but to me it’s like Usenet.

It is a lot like Usenet, but Usenet has some superior features.

  1. Discussion groups are automatically merged across all servers. So it is decentralized but does not feel decentralized.

  2. Newreaders only show you content that you have not already read/seen

  3. Readers let you kill articles in subscribed newsgroups and threads within subscribed newsgroup articles so that you don’t see them in the future.


[reader.usenet.monster/group?group=comp.lang.php]

This is awesome. Thanks!


Asking someone to download and install a Usenet client then set it up to connect to a server of their choice and then subscribing to newsgroups is way above and beyond what most people are willing to do in 2023, sadly.

This is not true at all. People download phone clients all the time. And there were also Usenet web clients. Subscribing to newsgroups is exactly the same as subscribing to subreddets or kbin magazines. And you have to pick a server for Fedverse also, but the the Usenet server doesn’t matter at all like a Fedverse server does.

The only reason people don’t use Usenet is because the free servers disappeared and ISPs no longer provided it with your internet service.


Reddit has been bloating itself with new features that nobody has been asking for

Exactly. Almost all their “exiting new features” have been subtracting value and turning the site into shit. That’s why I left, not because I care about the API. I don’t understand why they kept paying people to make reddit worse. They should roll back their source code to 10 years earlier.


[One potential solution to this would be automated cross-posting]

You’ve just described Usenet, which had this feature 40 years ago


These growth rates for reddit alternatives are insane. I love it.


there are 10 million bureaucrats in china

Who can very easily take orders from Taipei

yes, it is. it’s logistically impossible.

It’s not. The PRC simply needs to apply become part of the Republic of China again. That is literally all it takes. The rest is just details.

they really do support the CCP.

They really do not. We’ve had the Covid protests, the Hong Kong protests, and the Democracy Wall protests. When the Communist dictatorship is overthrown, it will happen fast, and Taiwan’s help will be needed for their expertise in democracy. Also, the current dictator is literally the very worse one since 1976.

independent organizations have done studies in China.

It is literally impossible for “independent organizations” to objectively “study China”. But in general dictatorships NEVER have more than 15-25% or so of the population. Your stance that Chinese do not want freedom and democracy and control over their own country seems racist. Your stance that only white people want and are capable of having freedom and democracy is totally obsurd.

it’s very possible. it’s happening right now in Hong Kong.

Because Britain foolishly turned control of Hong Kong to Beijing instead of Taipei. If China tried to invade Taiwan it would result in another Ukraine situation, where the entire free world unites against the imperialist aggressors.

I support Taiwan too. I prefer Democracies over authoritarian regimes.

No you don’t. Let’s be real here. You are an apologist for the Communist tyranny. You do not understand how obvious it is but no American would ever say what you said.


The approval rating for the CCP is very high (much higher than democratic countries in the West).

First of all NEVER EVER believe that a dictatorship has a “very high approval rating”. (1) the people have never approved them ever, and (2) If their approval rating really was “very high”, there would be no reason at all not to allow democracy. (3) naive westerners have a long and famous history about being repeatedly conned by dictatorships.

And 2nd LOL that is obvious BS. This happened LESS THAN A YEAR AGO.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2022_COVID-19_protests_in_China

differences between west germany / east germany v taiwan / china

Dude, I already knew all that stuff. So what? None of that is relevant to what I said. The fact remains that (1) Taiwan’s government could be extremely useful in helping China convert to democracy in a stable manner, and (2) It is totally impossible for Taiwan to unify with China unless China becomes democratic like Taiwan. So since #2 is a necessity, it follow that #1 will always be a very important consideration.


Google is doing nothing with their Usenet archive. Hopefully they haven’t destroyed it.


So at this point, what is Google supposed to even serve?

Google has the entire Deja News (Usenet) archive, more valuable than Reddit except for the older age. And they don’t let you access it anymore.


CCP doesn’t need to “fall apart”. China just needs to progress in a new direction. If China goes democratic, and someday it will, it could be wise to leverage Taiwan’s democracy to make the entire process more stable. This is what happened in Germany. West Germany’s government simply absorbed the former East Germany. So for a time the West German capital of Bonn was the capital of the unified Germany.


I am saying that if there is any unification of Taiwan with China, than the ruling government needs to be the Republic of China whose current capital is in Taipei, and former capitals in Nanjing and Chungking, and definitely not the illegitimate PRC dictatorship in Beijing. That is the only possible way China can be reunited. Taipei would need to be the capital for awhile so everybody knows who rules the country, and eventually move the capital back to Nanjing perhaps.


Taiwan, on the other hand, is a current issue. Personally, I feel bad for the taiwanese that don’t want to be integrated into China but it does seem like an inevitability at this point.

Not a problem as long as Taipei remains where the government of China is located for a few decades.


20 or 40 pull requests (they are really push requests) sounds like a nightmare to merge together.


I am staying away from beehaw for that very reason. I regard them as a local bbs.


That is awesome but is it affected by the api policy changes?