Why are am I being interrogated?

I would argue they are a great distraction but ultimately it falls apart when individuals come to realize that you really only have so much time to spend on stuff that doesn’t really provide much value to your life or other people you care about. The real problem is how addicting they are

I suppose its a perspective of priorities. I would much rather grind out a promotion or a financial plan rather than play video games because it provides greater overall value, and more importantly for consistency, a greater sense of satisfaction in the progress and put-togethered-ness of my life. But more paramount is the issue that with the friction-less society that we have built around consumerism it makes it really hard to even think about what we actually want and properly take the time to consider the cost-benefit analysis of our decisions.

Now with AI, I fear the offloading of cognitive function and friction will worsen this further in the short term (20ish years)

Hah! 😂

People who use their blinkers only half the time should be penalized more than those who don’t at all.

Where does that put you in terms of your relationship with USENET?

The ISP competitions ah yes.

I also want to say (as in other comments I have posted) there are some communities exclusive to just discussion but they are rather slow and small.

I would love to hear your opinion on the gemini protocol

Holy hell, $35 is still crazy!

I fail to find much a difference between our conclusions in your post. I would imagine I probably came at it from the incorrect angle to think it was a contrary idea to mine, so instead I’ll further the thought about still potentially receiving the author’s message.

Something I didn’t realize until now is that when you publish a pay walled book, in most countries there is a form of copyright, a system that is very akin to the solution that you and I have concluded on. Its something that allows for the progress of general humanity while also providing profit for the author. The real question is this.

How long should a creative or descriptive paywalled work be allowed to be paywalled before it placed into the public domain? In my opinion I think something like 75 years is far too long. Even 20 Years may be too long since now society progresses so fast.

@ShellMonkey@piefed.socdojo.com (and others) What is your opinion on that time?

The relative anonymity that I refer to is the lack of validation of posting profiles. This isn’t on a level of layer 1, 2 or 3 but on how providers don’t need any information linked to an ID or at times even emails (for those servers that don’t require authentication for posting) You could define any email, name and user agent in the header fields as a posting profile and it would just accept it.

However, this particular aspect that in my eyes, as a whole, was a good thing regarding the system it did provide a strong foundation for the systemic spam problem that was seen across the board in all newsgroups. Accountability could not be maintained and the only thing to stop bad posts from getting through was quickly overwhelmed moderators.

So no, this isn’t the same level of anonymity that we would expect from modern solutions but there also wasn’t the same guardrails and requirements of identity that has been imposed upon the public like with modern accounts requiring email addresses and phone numbers.

There was a time where accounts didn’t require an email. Side note, this is precisely why I like XMPP as a concept. Though I have found little use for it due to the network effect.

No I do not, The only reason to really pay for it is to be able to download warez or use specialized newsreaders that integrate with indexers and the like. Just not my speed.

You would use it for the same reasons that you use lemmy. Just back in the late 80s until the early 00s; and with a lot more spam…

No options other than web based applications (which pretty much none exist beyond paywalls)

This is just overkill 😆!

Thanks for paying attention 😜

sadly, yes

I kinda wish the binary newsgroups stayed exclusively in the paid ones, but alas that wasn’t how it played out

I never used it but I heard it was rather similar to USENET

Its honestly about connecting with the conversation, reading everyone’s replies and seeing if it is something you would want to comment on and think you could bring something to the table in doing so. Or you could just join in the memery

Just like these forums you see now.

However, I do think the format substantially encouraged a higher level of engagement since you’re comments and thoughts weren’t squished in between everyone elses’. If someone wanted to read your thoughts on the thread it was exclusively your’s that they would look at. Like I said in other comments, its a more intimate experience compared to normal comment sections.

Thats what I love to hear!

the lack of JS is one of my fave features about it. I don’t have to really worry about running remotely provided code when I just want to read a discussion.

Also, I do agree. Usually the conversations are rather insightful, though thats probably just the people