• FaceDeer@fedia.io
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    4 months ago

    Long ago, when I first got on the Internet, the big social media forum was Usenet. It was a distributed network of instances where users would have an account on a particular instance, where they could subscribe to “newsgroups” dedicated to particular topics. Their instance would broadcast their posts to a newsgroup to all the other instances that were following that newsgroup, so everyone could interact even if they were on different instances.

    Then the World Wide Web grew, and centralized sites like Digg and Reddit appeared that handled the same sort of social media. Usenet faded. It’s still around, I suppose, though these days last I checked it’s largely a mechanism for distributing pirated files.

    Someday those centralized sites might also fade. Who knows, maybe a decentralized system like Usenet might grow again to replace it?

    The wheel turns.

    • Broadfern@lemmy.world
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      4 months ago

      So Usenet was the first fedi site? Reassuring that the concept predates the current paradigm and still has legs, however niche it is atm.

      • B-TR3E@feddit.org
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        4 months ago

        That’s why almost no ISP is offering it anymore. No one made money from it, so dump it, maybe try to squeeze some cash out of those hwo really want it but better just drop it.

      • Frezik@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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        4 months ago

        Sort of. It predated the web, so calling it a “site” is wrong. Just like you can have an email application that’s completely separate from your web browser, you can have a Usenet client that’s also its own thing. Of course, people made web-based clients as time went on.

        Your ISP ran a Usenet server that connected to other Usenet servers. The biggest problem with this system was that your ISP would automatically delete posts past a certain age. Following old threads was a pain.

        Google Groups started as a Usenet archive where messages were kept forever. Google bought them and turned it into what it is now.