What’s Usenet and how can I access it with modern hardware (phones/laptops)?

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Submitted ⁨⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩ by ⁨tigerjerusalem@lemmy.world⁩ to ⁨[deleted]⁩

Pretty much the question. I heard about Usenet a while back but never managed to wrap my head around it.

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quackers@lemmy.blahaj.zone ⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
It’s funny seeing this thread with it’s descriptions written as if describing the traditions of some long-gone ancient civilization.

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- killeronthecorner@lemmy.world ⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  Which part of that isn’t true
  
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rimu@piefed.social ⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
Get a free account from https://www.eternal-september.org/.

Then in Thunderbird , "Add a newsgroup account" with your login details from eternal september.

Find some groups to subscribe to. Try comp.lang.python for example. Once you subscribe you can see the posts inside it.

You'll probably see lots of spam. To remove the spam you need to use Thunderbirds Message Filters functionality - remove all messages where their Message-ID header contains "googlegroups".

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Boozilla@lemmy.world ⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
Usenet is a decades-old distributed message sharing system. It’s like an old school message board. To access it, you need a newsreader. Mozilla Thunderbird is one such example.

I have not accessed newsgroups in several years, so I don’t know how active it is today. But it used to be the go-to source for “warez” and bootleg media and porn. Oh yeah, and discussionsl threads on myriad topics. :)

Slashdot, digg, Reddit, lemmy, 4chan, etc. are all spiritual descendents of usenet.

The software tech for usenet is old, slow, and has a learning curve. You might find it frustrating to navigate and use. However, modern newsreaders probably hide some of the complexity.

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lemmefixdat4u@lemmy.world ⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
You can subscribe to Easynews. It’s Usenet turned into a website. There’s a built in search engine (supports regular expressions), retention going back to 2008, spam and malware filtering, and multiple servers located in the US and Europe. You choose whether to use the web or a Usenet client. Probably the easiest way to use this neglected corner of the Internet.

Even Usenet gets censored, but there a window of a couple days between posting and takedown where the file is available. We see this a lot with major studios who pay investigators to identify infringing material. To get around this, some uploaders are encrypting their content, and you’ll need the description key.

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fmstrat@lemmy.nowsci.com ⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
Simple. Usenet is an email inbox anyone can read.

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