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Groups > comp.misc > #22054 > unrolled thread
| Started by | Spiros Bousbouras <spibou@gmail.com> |
|---|---|
| First post | 2022-07-21 01:41 +0000 |
| Last post | 2023-02-11 19:24 +0000 |
| Articles | 20 on this page of 65 — 15 participants |
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An open letter to Elon Musk Spiros Bousbouras <spibou@gmail.com> - 2022-07-21 01:41 +0000
Re: An open letter to Elon Musk "25B.Z959" <25B.Z959@nada.net> - 2022-07-20 22:22 -0400
Re: An open letter to Elon Musk not@telling.you.invalid (Computer Nerd Kev) - 2022-07-23 09:02 +1000
Re: An open letter to Elon Musk "25B.Z959" <25B.Z959@nada.net> - 2022-07-23 00:15 -0400
Re: An open letter to Elon Musk Andy Burns <usenet@andyburns.uk> - 2022-07-23 09:01 +0100
Re: An open letter to Elon Musk "25B.Z959" <25B.Z959@nada.net> - 2022-07-23 14:33 -0400
Re: An open letter to Elon Musk Andy Burns <usenet@andyburns.uk> - 2022-07-25 19:18 +0100
Re: An open letter to Elon Musk "25B.Z959" <25B.Z959@nada.net> - 2022-07-25 23:15 -0400
Re: An open letter to Elon Musk Richard Kettlewell <invalid@invalid.invalid> - 2022-07-23 11:39 +0100
Re: An open letter to Elon Musk Spiros Bousbouras <spibou@gmail.com> - 2022-08-02 17:14 +0000
Re: An open letter to Elon Musk Rich <rich@example.invalid> - 2022-08-02 18:36 +0000
Re: An open letter to Elon Musk Richard Kettlewell <invalid@invalid.invalid> - 2022-08-02 21:27 +0100
Re: An open letter to Elon Musk Spiros Bousbouras <spibou@gmail.com> - 2022-08-03 12:44 +0000
Re: An open letter to Elon Musk Richard Kettlewell <invalid@invalid.invalid> - 2022-08-03 16:26 +0100
Re: An open letter to Elon Musk Jan van den Broek <balglaas@dds.nl> - 2022-08-03 18:35 +0000
Re: An open letter to Elon Musk Theo <theom+news@chiark.greenend.org.uk> - 2022-08-03 22:26 +0100
Re: An open letter to Elon Musk Spiros Bousbouras <spibou@gmail.com> - 2022-08-13 14:51 +0000
Re: An open letter to Elon Musk Richard Kettlewell <invalid@invalid.invalid> - 2022-08-04 09:17 +0100
Re: An open letter to Elon Musk Spiros Bousbouras <spibou@gmail.com> - 2022-08-14 12:47 +0000
Re: An open letter to Elon Musk Richard Kettlewell <invalid@invalid.invalid> - 2022-08-14 14:17 +0100
Re: An open letter to Elon Musk Spiros Bousbouras <spibou@gmail.com> - 2022-08-14 14:01 +0000
Re: An open letter to Elon Musk Spiros Bousbouras <spibou@gmail.com> - 2022-08-13 14:42 +0000
Re: An open letter to Elon Musk Richard Kettlewell <invalid@invalid.invalid> - 2022-08-13 21:25 +0100
Re: An open letter to Elon Musk Spiros Bousbouras <spibou@gmail.com> - 2022-08-14 14:22 +0000
Re: An open letter to Elon Musk Richard Kettlewell <invalid@invalid.invalid> - 2022-08-14 18:00 +0100
Re: An open letter to Elon Musk Spiros Bousbouras <spibou@gmail.com> - 2022-08-14 18:13 +0000
Re: An open letter to Elon Musk "25B.Z969" <25B.Z969@noda.net> - 2022-08-16 12:14 -0400
Re: An open letter to Elon Musk Spiros Bousbouras <spibou@gmail.com> - 2022-08-16 18:15 +0000
Re: An open letter to Elon Musk "25B.Z969" <25B.Z969@noda.net> - 2022-08-16 20:51 -0400
Re: An open letter to Elon Musk Richard Kettlewell <invalid@invalid.invalid> - 2022-08-17 08:02 +0100
Re: An open letter to Elon Musk Mike Spencer <mds@bogus.nodomain.nowhere> - 2022-08-17 20:12 -0300
Re: An open letter to Elon Musk kludge@panix.com (Scott Dorsey) - 2022-08-18 02:15 +0000
Re: An open letter to Elon Musk James Warren <jwwarren987@gmail.com> - 2022-09-05 19:50 -0300
Re: An open letter to Elon Musk Rich <rich@example.invalid> - 2022-08-03 15:27 +0000
Re: An open letter to Elon Musk kludge@panix.com (Scott Dorsey) - 2022-07-23 13:23 +0000
Re: An open letter to Elon Musk Spiros Bousbouras <spibou@gmail.com> - 2022-08-02 17:31 +0000
Re: An open letter to Elon Musk kludge@panix.com (Scott Dorsey) - 2022-08-03 01:10 +0000
Re: An open letter to Elon Musk "25B.Z969" <25B.Z969@noda.net> - 2022-08-02 22:34 -0400
Re: An open letter to Elon Musk Spiros Bousbouras <spibou@gmail.com> - 2022-08-03 13:04 +0000
Re: An open letter to Elon Musk "25B.Z969" <25B.Z969@noda.net> - 2022-08-04 00:05 -0400
Re: An open letter to Elon Musk Spiros Bousbouras <spibou@gmail.com> - 2022-08-14 09:36 +0000
Re: An open letter to Elon Musk kludge@panix.com (Scott Dorsey) - 2022-08-05 23:40 +0000
Re: An open letter to Elon Musk "25B.Z969" <25B.Z969@noda.net> - 2022-08-05 22:12 -0400
Re: An open letter to Elon Musk Mike Spencer <mds@bogus.nodomain.nowhere> - 2022-08-06 02:40 -0300
Re: An open letter to Elon Musk kludge@panix.com (Scott Dorsey) - 2022-08-06 18:09 +0000
Re: An open letter to Elon Musk Spiros Bousbouras <spibou@gmail.com> - 2022-08-14 13:58 +0000
Re: An open letter to Elon Musk kludge@panix.com (Scott Dorsey) - 2022-08-14 17:22 +0000
Re: An open letter to Elon Musk Spiros Bousbouras <spibou@gmail.com> - 2022-08-16 18:58 +0000
Re: An open letter to Elon Musk Spiros Bousbouras <spibou@gmail.com> - 2022-08-16 19:10 +0000
Re: An open letter to Elon Musk kludge@panix.com (Scott Dorsey) - 2022-08-18 02:12 +0000
Re: An open letter to Elon Musk kludge@panix.com (Scott Dorsey) - 2022-08-18 02:11 +0000
Re: An open letter to Elon Musk Spiros Bousbouras <spibou@gmail.com> - 2022-08-23 08:35 +0000
Re: An open letter to Elon Musk "voyager55" <voyager55@none.none> - 2022-07-23 17:13 -0400
Re: An open letter to Elon Musk Bud Spencer <bud@campo.verano.it> - 2022-07-24 00:50 +0300
Re: An open letter to Elon Musk "voyager55" <voyager55@none.none> - 2022-07-24 12:14 -0400
Re: An open letter to Elon Musk Bud Spencer <bud@campo.verano.it> - 2022-07-25 03:18 +0300
Re: An open letter to Elon Musk "25B.Z959" <25B.Z959@nada.net> - 2022-07-24 22:26 -0400
Re: An open letter to Elon Musk Bud Spencer <bud@campo.verano.it> - 2022-07-25 16:17 +0300
Re: An open letter to Elon Musk "25B.Z959" <25B.Z959@nada.net> - 2022-07-25 09:49 -0400
Re: An open letter to Elon Musk Bud Spencer <bud@campo.verano.it> - 2022-07-25 17:09 +0300
Re: An open letter to Elon Musk "25B.Z959" <25B.Z959@nada.net> - 2022-07-25 23:01 -0400
Re: An open letter to Elon Musk Spiros Bousbouras <spibou@gmail.com> - 2022-08-03 12:02 +0000
Re: An open letter to Elon Musk Spiros Bousbouras <spibou@gmail.com> - 2022-08-14 15:09 +0000
Re: An open letter to Elon Musk Y A <y000000000000@ya.ee> - 2023-02-11 08:13 -0800
Re: An open letter to Elon Musk Spiros Bousbouras <spibou@gmail.com> - 2023-02-11 19:24 +0000
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| From | Spiros Bousbouras <spibou@gmail.com> |
|---|---|
| Date | 2022-08-14 09:36 +0000 |
| Message-ID | <80yIiLZ56Ncd10Dp7@bongo-ra.co> |
| In reply to | #22088 |
On Thu, 4 Aug 2022 00:05:57 -0400 "25B.Z969" <25B.Z969@noda.net> wrote: > On 8/3/22 9:04 AM, Spiros Bousbouras wrote: > > On Tue, 2 Aug 2022 22:34:38 -0400 > > "25B.Z969" <25B.Z969@noda.net> wrote: [...] > >> "Should be removed" ?????? Gee, how TOTALITARIAN of you ! > >> > >> NOBODY "should be removed from Usenet" - not even the > >> worst pin-headed trolls. If you don't like them, there > >> doesn't exist a newsreader where you can't plonk them > >> so you're no longer bothered. > > > > Yes , that's my feeling too. Having said that , with a huge amount of servers > > available , I expect some would do filtering. [...] > Everybody has favorite perspectives - and, even unconsciously, > kinda tramps-down the "heretics". This is why we need some > sources where such activity is just not tolerated, or possible. > IMHO, the ability to make yourself heard is still too low - > it NEEDS to be where even aggressive govts can't stop it. > Bounce lasers off the moon if need-be. If a source of a signal can be located then entities which have sufficient resources can eliminate the signal. So the best possibility I see is for the source of the signal (speech) not to be detectable. A large number of servers would help for that much like the Tor network does things.
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| From | kludge@panix.com (Scott Dorsey) |
|---|---|
| Date | 2022-08-05 23:40 +0000 |
| Message-ID | <tck9qa$ror$1@panix2.panix.com> |
| In reply to | #22079 |
25B.Z969 <25B.Z969@noda.net> wrote: > > "Should be removed" ?????? Gee, how TOTALITARIAN of you ! > > NOBODY "should be removed from Usenet" - not even the > worst pin-headed trolls. If you don't like them, there > doesn't exist a newsreader where you can't plonk them > so you're no longer bothered. And that, in short, is what killed Usenet. --scott -- "C'est un Nagra. C'est suisse, et tres, tres precis."
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| From | "25B.Z969" <25B.Z969@noda.net> |
|---|---|
| Date | 2022-08-05 22:12 -0400 |
| Message-ID | <S5udnZ7ftOa9U3D_nZ2dnUU7-cmdnZ2d@earthlink.com> |
| In reply to | #22094 |
On 8/5/22 7:40 PM, Scott Dorsey wrote: > 25B.Z969 <25B.Z969@noda.net> wrote: >> >> "Should be removed" ?????? Gee, how TOTALITARIAN of you ! >> >> NOBODY "should be removed from Usenet" - not even the >> worst pin-headed trolls. If you don't like them, there >> doesn't exist a newsreader where you can't plonk them >> so you're no longer bothered. > > And that, in short, is what killed Usenet. Gimmicks, eye-candy and GOOD ADVERTISING killed Usenet. Everybody wanted to post pictures and video of their lunch or cats. Usenet isn't good for that (and be very very happy it isn't).
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| From | Mike Spencer <mds@bogus.nodomain.nowhere> |
|---|---|
| Date | 2022-08-06 02:40 -0300 |
| Message-ID | <87fsiaq68n.fsf@bogus.nodomain.nowhere> |
| In reply to | #22095 |
"25B.Z969" <25B.Z969@noda.net> writes: > On 8/5/22 7:40 PM, Scott Dorsey wrote: > >> 25B.Z969 <25B.Z969@noda.net> wrote: >> >>> "Should be removed" ?????? Gee, how TOTALITARIAN of you ! >>> >>> NOBODY "should be removed from Usenet" - not even the >>> worst pin-headed trolls. If you don't like them, there >>> doesn't exist a newsreader where you can't plonk them >>> so you're no longer bothered. >> >> And that, in short, is what killed Usenet. Does no one remember the hipcrime flooder? Screening/scoring 25,000 posts a day means sucking down at least the headers for 25,000 posts. So yeah, I'm kinda selfrightrously authoritarian about someone trying to burn the medium down. Were you trolling with accusations of "totalitarian"? > Gimmicks, eye-candy and GOOD ADVERTISING killed Usenet. > > Everybody wanted to post pictures and video of their lunch > or cats. Usenet isn't good for that (and be very very > happy it isn't). Has everybody read "Where Were You Last Pluterday"? An extra day in the week accessible only to the plutocracy. Where's my Pluternet for the sane, rational, literate & articulate? IIRC, at the end of the story, it tunrs out that there's an *extra* extra day for those dismayed that Pluterday is being too much invaded by the proles. -- Mike Spencer Nova Scotia, Canada
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| From | kludge@panix.com (Scott Dorsey) |
|---|---|
| Date | 2022-08-06 18:09 +0000 |
| Message-ID | <tcmap3$7j3$1@panix2.panix.com> |
| In reply to | #22096 |
Mike Spencer <mds@bogus.nodomain.nowhere> wrote: >"25B.Z969" <25B.Z969@noda.net> writes: >> On 8/5/22 7:40 PM, Scott Dorsey wrote: >>> 25B.Z969 <25B.Z969@noda.net> wrote: >>> >>>> "Should be removed" ?????? Gee, how TOTALITARIAN of you ! >>>> >>>> NOBODY "should be removed from Usenet" - not even the >>>> worst pin-headed trolls. If you don't like them, there >>>> doesn't exist a newsreader where you can't plonk them >>>> so you're no longer bothered. >>> >>> And that, in short, is what killed Usenet. > >Does no one remember the hipcrime flooder? Screening/scoring 25,000 >posts a day means sucking down at least the headers for 25,000 posts. >So yeah, I'm kinda selfrightrously authoritarian about someone trying >to burn the medium down. Were you trolling with accusations of >"totalitarian"? I was thinking more about alt.religion.scientology and the cancelbunny wars than about hipcrime but indeed the problems are similar. I think there is a broad middle road between totalitarianism and complete absence of editorial control. And I think a lot of people don't seem to realize that road exists. Usenet (and to a much greater extent altnet) tend toward the latter, which is why we still can't get rid of alt.hairy-douchebag.meredith-tanner thirty years after Carasso mkgrouped it. --scott -- "C'est un Nagra. C'est suisse, et tres, tres precis."
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| From | Spiros Bousbouras <spibou@gmail.com> |
|---|---|
| Date | 2022-08-14 13:58 +0000 |
| Message-ID | <T6ev0ls296eo=45iS@bongo-ra.co> |
| In reply to | #22097 |
On 6 Aug 2022 18:09:39 -0000 kludge@panix.com (Scott Dorsey) wrote: > Mike Spencer <mds@bogus.nodomain.nowhere> wrote: > >"25B.Z969" <25B.Z969@noda.net> writes: > >> On 8/5/22 7:40 PM, Scott Dorsey wrote: > >>> 25B.Z969 <25B.Z969@noda.net> wrote: > >>> > >>>> "Should be removed" ?????? Gee, how TOTALITARIAN of you ! > >>>> > >>>> NOBODY "should be removed from Usenet" - not even the > >>>> worst pin-headed trolls. If you don't like them, there > >>>> doesn't exist a newsreader where you can't plonk them > >>>> so you're no longer bothered. > >>> > >>> And that, in short, is what killed Usenet. > > > >Does no one remember the hipcrime flooder? Screening/scoring 25,000 > >posts a day means sucking down at least the headers for 25,000 posts. > >So yeah, I'm kinda selfrightrously authoritarian about someone trying > >to burn the medium down. Were you trolling with accusations of > >"totalitarian"? > > I was thinking more about alt.religion.scientology and the cancelbunny > wars than about hipcrime but indeed the problems are similar. Yes , DOS attacks can be a problem but I consider it of a very different nature than freedom of speech. > I think there is a broad middle road between totalitarianism and complete > absence of editorial control. And I think a lot of people don't seem to > realize that road exists. Unless someone has had very limited exposure to online discussions , I can't imagine how they would fail to realise that there are many possibilities for editorial control including total absence of it. They may have a strong preference for some small subrange of what's available but they must have come across the many possibilities. However , in this day and age where usenet is not that well known , it may be that there are many people who don't realise that it's possible to have a group like comp.misc which has no moderation but you still get civil and educated discussion. > Usenet (and to a much greater extent altnet) > tend toward the latter, which is why we still can't get rid of > alt.hairy-douchebag.meredith-tanner thirty years after Carasso mkgrouped it. What's altnet ? Googling did not give me a definite answer. I've never used newsserver software but I assume that it tends to have some configuration file and , based on the content , the server carries whichever groups. Is it more complicated than this ? If not then can't any server operator who wants to get rid of some newsgroup simply edit the file and that's all there is to it ? By the way , the list of groups offered by a server I used in the past includes alt.flame.hairy-douchebag.meredith-tanner and alt.flame.hairy-douchebag.roger-david-carasso but no alt.hairy-douchebag.meredith-tanner .In any case , having such groups (or twitter for that matter) available where people can express their base instincts so to speak and having other parts of usenet for more in control discussion , seems perfectly reasonable to me. So I don't necessarily think it is bad to have alt.flame* newsgroups. I have even come across message boards which have some subforum where anything goes (or close) and other subforums have stricter rules. -- If war is the continuation of politics by other means, terrorism is the continuation of war by other means. Where the Right Went Wrong http://buchanan.org/blog/quotes
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| From | kludge@panix.com (Scott Dorsey) |
|---|---|
| Date | 2022-08-14 17:22 +0000 |
| Message-ID | <tdbavr$q8n$1@panix2.panix.com> |
| In reply to | #22112 |
Spiros Bousbouras <spibou@gmail.com> wrote: >kludge@panix.com (Scott Dorsey) wrote: > >> I think there is a broad middle road between totalitarianism and complete >> absence of editorial control. And I think a lot of people don't seem to >> realize that road exists. > >Unless someone has had very limited exposure to online discussions , I can't >imagine how they would fail to realise that there are many possibilities for >editorial control including total absence of it. They may have a strong >preference for some small subrange of what's available but they must have come >across the many possibilities. However , in this day and age where usenet is >not that well known , it may be that there are many people who don't realise >that it's possible to have a group like comp.misc which has no moderation >but you still get civil and educated discussion. comp.misc has no moderation, but being a Usenet group, the server is allowed to carry it because they are not abusive. Carrying Usenet groups (unlike altnet groups) is a privilege and not a right. >> Usenet (and to a much greater extent altnet) >> tend toward the latter, which is why we still can't get rid of >> alt.hairy-douchebag.meredith-tanner thirty years after Carasso mkgrouped it. > >What's altnet ? Googling did not give me a definite answer. Okay, there are basically three kinds of newsgroups. There are Usenet groups, which is to say the Big Eight heirarchy. Groups in the Big Eight are managed by the backbone cabal. There is a published procedure for creating and removing groups, which involves a whole lot of discussion and voting before a cmesg newgroup is issued. Altnet came about in the nineties because some people thought this was too restrictive. Anyone can create an alt. group and it is pretty much impossible to ever get rid of one. There is no Usenet Death Penalty for alt. groups and no backbone cabal like there is for the Big Eight groups. For the most part this has made many altnet groups totally unusable because of the lack of control and the history of the alt.sex groups is a very enlightening example. The third kind of groups are local or regional groups, like mit.general or dc.dining, which are managed by a single admin or a small number of admins and which don't have wide propagation. >I've never used newsserver software but I assume that it tends to have some >configuration file and , based on the content , the server carries whichever >groups. Is it more complicated than this ? If not then can't any server >operator who wants to get rid of some newsgroup simply edit the file and >that's all there is to it ? If you carry the Big Eight, you carry all the Big Eight groups. That is part of the agreement. You do not create or remove groups except with control messages sent throughout the entire heirarchy, after a vote has been performed. If you carry the alt. groups you can remove groups from your local server but if you do, sooner or later there will be a control message coming down the line causing the recreation of those groups. People have tried to get rid of some of the altnet groups for decades and they keep coming back. Altnet is not Usenet and does not follow Usenet rules but it uses the Usenet mechanisms. In the case of local groups, if you own the group, sure you can remove it. It's yours, you own it. The newsmaster at mit can add or remove whatever mit. groups he or she wants. >By the way , the list of groups offered by a server I used in the past >includes alt.flame.hairy-douchebag.meredith-tanner and >alt.flame.hairy-douchebag.roger-david-carasso but no >alt.hairy-douchebag.meredith-tanner .In any case , having such groups (or >twitter for that matter) available where people can express their base >instincts so to speak and having other parts of usenet for more in control >discussion , seems perfectly reasonable to me. So I don't necessarily think >it is bad to have alt.flame* newsgroups. I have even come across message >boards which have some subforum where anything goes (or close) and other >subforums have stricter rules. Altnet is not Usenet. Many sites that carry Usenet do not carry Altnet. You may wish to read some of the discussion in news.admin.newusers. --scott -- "C'est un Nagra. C'est suisse, et tres, tres precis."
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| From | Spiros Bousbouras <spibou@gmail.com> |
|---|---|
| Date | 2022-08-16 18:58 +0000 |
| Message-ID | <jGlHWs0tjC4voxy+r@bongo-ra.co> |
| In reply to | #22117 |
On 14 Aug 2022 17:22:03 -0000
kludge@panix.com (Scott Dorsey) wrote:
> Spiros Bousbouras <spibou@gmail.com> wrote:
> comp.misc has no moderation, but being a Usenet group, the server is allowed
> to carry it because they are not abusive. Carrying Usenet groups (unlike
> altnet groups) is a privilege and not a right.
You've lost me completely here. Which server ? And privilege for who ? Anyone
can install newsserver software and run it.
> >> Usenet (and to a much greater extent altnet)
> >> tend toward the latter, which is why we still can't get rid of
> >> alt.hairy-douchebag.meredith-tanner thirty years after Carasso mkgrouped it.
> >
> >What's altnet ? Googling did not give me a definite answer.
>
> Okay, there are basically three kinds of newsgroups. There are Usenet groups,
> which is to say the Big Eight heirarchy. Groups in the Big Eight are managed
> by the backbone cabal. There is a published procedure for creating and
> removing groups, which involves a whole lot of discussion and voting before
> a cmesg newgroup is issued.
So according to your terminology alt.usage.english for example does not count
as usenet ? I don't think this is standard terminology. The way I have
encountered the terms , if it gets transmitted through NNTP and the headers
have the usual format then it's usenet. Perhaps just the NNTP part is sufficient.
> Altnet came about in the nineties because some people thought this was too
> restrictive. Anyone can create an alt. group and it is pretty much
> impossible to ever get rid of one. There is no Usenet Death Penalty for
> alt. groups and no backbone cabal like there is for the Big Eight groups.
But there is still a process , see
http://www.faqs.org/faqs/alt-creation-guide .
> For the most part this has made many altnet groups totally unusable because
> of the lack of control and the history of the alt.sex groups is a very
> enlightening example.
I have found them perfectly usable myself. alt.usage.english and several
alt.os.linux.* groups have high quality content. I haven't visited much
the alt.sex groups but at least they have led to www.asstr.org which is
a fine website (although I've just tried it and it doesn't respond).
> The third kind of groups are local or regional groups, like mit.general or
> dc.dining, which are managed by a single admin or a small number of admins
> and which don't have wide propagation.
In your classification where does the free.* hierarchy fall ? How about
uk.* or language specific hierarchies like de.* ?
> >I've never used newsserver software but I assume that it tends to have some
> >configuration file and , based on the content , the server carries whichever
> >groups. Is it more complicated than this ? If not then can't any server
> >operator who wants to get rid of some newsgroup simply edit the file and
> >that's all there is to it ?
>
> If you carry the Big Eight, you carry all the Big Eight groups. That is
> part of the agreement. You do not create or remove groups except with
> control messages sent throughout the entire heirarchy, after a vote has
> been performed.
Agreement between which people ? If servers A and B do peering and A stops
carrying , say comp.misc , but still carries the other big 8 groups , how
is the operator of server B going to find out and why should he care ? It
won't cause any problems for server B not to be able to exchange comp.misc
messages with server A.
> If you carry the alt. groups you can remove groups from your local server
> but if you do, sooner or later there will be a control message coming down
> the line causing the recreation of those groups. People have tried to get
> rid of some of the altnet groups for decades and they keep coming back.
> Altnet is not Usenet and does not follow Usenet rules but it uses the Usenet
> mechanisms.
Why can't a server operator simply configure the software to for example
ignore all control messages for alt.flames* newsgroups ?
http://www.faqs.org/faqs/alt-creation-guide/ :
* How do alt groups get created?
Like any group in Usenet, a group gets created (typically) when
someone sends out a special "control" message to "newgroup" it.
This is injected into the news system mostly like any other
article that you read, except it has special syntax. Different
sites on the net behave differently when one of these messages
arrives. The news software has various ways of acting
automatically on the message based on who sent it, and what
hierarchy the group to be created is in (alt in our case). With
respect to alt, some sites will automatically honor any "newgroup"
control message it sees, and some will mail the message to the
news admin who will make the decision to carry the group or not.
Who are these people who have tried and in what way did they try ?
[...]
> Altnet is not Usenet. Many sites that carry Usenet do not carry Altnet.
> You may wish to read some of the discussion in news.admin.newusers.
news.admin.newusers is empty on news.aioe.org and on
news2.informatik.uni-stuttgart.de .From when is the most recent message you
see on the newsserver you are using ?
--
vlaho.ninja/prog
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| From | Spiros Bousbouras <spibou@gmail.com> |
|---|---|
| Date | 2022-08-16 19:10 +0000 |
| Message-ID | <wb6SZiSzcXg3iSlXs@bongo-ra.co> |
| In reply to | #22127 |
On Tue, 16 Aug 2022 18:58:14 -0000 (UTC) Spiros Bousbouras <spibou@gmail.com> wrote: > On 14 Aug 2022 17:22:03 -0000 > kludge@panix.com (Scott Dorsey) wrote: > > For the most part this has made many altnet groups totally unusable because > > of the lack of control and the history of the alt.sex groups is a very > > enlightening example. > > I have found them perfectly usable myself. alt.usage.english and several > alt.os.linux.* groups have high quality content. I haven't visited much > the alt.sex groups but at least they have led to www.asstr.org which is > a fine website (although I've just tried it and it doesn't respond). How could I forget ? There is also alt.folklore.computers which is excellent.
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| From | kludge@panix.com (Scott Dorsey) |
|---|---|
| Date | 2022-08-18 02:12 +0000 |
| Message-ID | <tdk76c$jf2$1@panix2.panix.com> |
| In reply to | #22128 |
In article <wb6SZiSzcXg3iSlXs@bongo-ra.co>, Spiros Bousbouras <spibou@gmail.com> wrote: >On Tue, 16 Aug 2022 18:58:14 -0000 (UTC) >Spiros Bousbouras <spibou@gmail.com> wrote: >> On 14 Aug 2022 17:22:03 -0000 >> kludge@panix.com (Scott Dorsey) wrote: >> > For the most part this has made many altnet groups totally unusable because >> > of the lack of control and the history of the alt.sex groups is a very >> > enlightening example. >> >> I have found them perfectly usable myself. alt.usage.english and several >> alt.os.linux.* groups have high quality content. I haven't visited much >> the alt.sex groups but at least they have led to www.asstr.org which is >> a fine website (although I've just tried it and it doesn't respond). > >How could I forget ? There is also alt.folklore.computers which is >excellent. And don't forget alt.drugs.bongs.bongs.bongs. --scott -- "C'est un Nagra. C'est suisse, et tres, tres precis."
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| From | kludge@panix.com (Scott Dorsey) |
|---|---|
| Date | 2022-08-18 02:11 +0000 |
| Message-ID | <tdk747$1oo$1@panix2.panix.com> |
| In reply to | #22127 |
Spiros Bousbouras <spibou@gmail.com> wrote: >kludge@panix.com (Scott Dorsey) wrote: >> which is to say the Big Eight heirarchy. Groups in the Big Eight are managed >> by the backbone cabal. There is a published procedure for creating and >> removing groups, which involves a whole lot of discussion and voting before >> a cmesg newgroup is issued. > >So according to your terminology alt.usage.english for example does not count >as usenet ? I don't think this is standard terminology. The way I have >encountered the terms , if it gets transmitted through NNTP and the headers >have the usual format then it's usenet. Perhaps just the NNTP part is sufficient. alt.usage english is not a Usenet group. If it makes it less confusing to you, think about it as being not a Big 8 Group. Anyone can start a news server, but not everyone can connect it up to Usenet. If you want to get free. groups or alt. groups that is a different matter. >> Altnet came about in the nineties because some people thought this was too >> restrictive. Anyone can create an alt. group and it is pretty much >> impossible to ever get rid of one. There is no Usenet Death Penalty for >> alt. groups and no backbone cabal like there is for the Big Eight groups. > >But there is still a process , see >http://www.faqs.org/faqs/alt-creation-guide . If you read this, it says "you can do these things and ask around and be polite, but then again you can just forge a control message and that's fine." >In your classification where does the free.* hierarchy fall ? How about >uk.* or language specific hierarchies like de.* ? They are all individual nntp networks. If you run a news server, you can pick up whichever ones you want. de. and uk. are regional groups, and at one time there was a lot of argument about carrying regional groups outside of their region, but really nobody cares anymore. There are some regional groups that don't propagate. The mit. groups are not propagated outside of mit. You might want to carry them, but you will have a hard time finding someone to feed them to you. >> If you carry the Big Eight, you carry all the Big Eight groups. That is >> part of the agreement. You do not create or remove groups except with >> control messages sent throughout the entire heirarchy, after a vote has >> been performed. > >Agreement between which people ? If servers A and B do peering and A stops >carrying , say comp.misc , but still carries the other big 8 groups , how >is the operator of server B going to find out and why should he care ? It >won't cause any problems for server B not to be able to exchange comp.misc >messages with server A. There is discussion in news.groups. >> If you carry the alt. groups you can remove groups from your local server >> but if you do, sooner or later there will be a control message coming down >> the line causing the recreation of those groups. People have tried to get >> rid of some of the altnet groups for decades and they keep coming back. >> Altnet is not Usenet and does not follow Usenet rules but it uses the Usenet >> mechanisms. > >Why can't a server operator simply configure the software to for example >ignore all control messages for alt.flames* newsgroups ? They could, but then no new alt.flames* groups would get created on their system. When there were many hundreds of servers, the issue was more problematic than it is today of course. >Who are these people who have tried and in what way did they try ? I gave you the classic example of Meredith's newsgroup. --scott -- "C'est un Nagra. C'est suisse, et tres, tres precis."
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| From | Spiros Bousbouras <spibou@gmail.com> |
|---|---|
| Date | 2022-08-23 08:35 +0000 |
| Message-ID | <QaEXvqRrqXwrQYkJb@bongo-ra.co> |
| In reply to | #22152 |
On 18 Aug 2022 02:11:19 -0000
kludge@panix.com (Scott Dorsey) wrote:
> Spiros Bousbouras <spibou@gmail.com> wrote:
> >kludge@panix.com (Scott Dorsey) wrote:
[...]
> >So according to your terminology alt.usage.english for example does not count
> >as usenet ? I don't think this is standard terminology. The way I have
> >encountered the terms , if it gets transmitted through NNTP and the headers
> >have the usual format then it's usenet. Perhaps just the NNTP part is sufficient.
>
> alt.usage english is not a Usenet group. If it makes it less confusing to you,
> think about it as being not a Big 8 Group.
It's not a matter of confusion , I can get used to either terminology easily
enough , I just want to know what the standard terminology is. I did a bit of
googling :
https://www.newshosting.com/what-is-usenet/
There are currently over 110,000+ newsgroups on Usenet
Clearly here "usenet" doesn't mean just the big 8.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usenet
Some users prefer to use the term "Usenet" to refer only to the Big Eight
hierarchies; others include alt.* as well. The more general term "netnews"
incorporates the entire medium, including private organizational news systems.
It mentions both options.
https://networkencyclopedia.com/usenet/
Usenet is a global network of servers that supports approximately 50,000
newsgroups on every imaginable topic.
[...]
Top-Level Usenet Categories
Category Description
alt Alternative, which is a collection of various topics
Again , by "usenet" they don't mean just the big 8.
> Anyone can start a news server, but not everyone can connect it up to
> Usenet. If you want to get free. groups or alt. groups that is a different
> matter.
Isn't it just a matter of getting peers ? I've looked at the peering requirements
for a few newsservers and I didn't see any special requirements for big 8 groups.
For example https://news.aioe.org/documentation/how-to-setup-a-feed-with-aioeorg/
doesn't even mention big 8 ; same for
http://www.eternal-september.org/index.php?showpage=peering ; same for
https://usenetexpress.com/peering/ .
> >In your classification where does the free.* hierarchy fall ? How about
> >uk.* or language specific hierarchies like de.* ?
>
> They are all individual nntp networks. If you run a news server, you can pick
> up whichever ones you want.
>
> de. and uk. are regional groups, and at one time there was a lot of argument
> about carrying regional groups outside of their region, but really nobody
> cares anymore.
How is it determined that de.* is regional and not a hierarchy for
discussion in German but without any geographic restrictions ? Regardless ,
why would anyone object to regional groups being carried outside the regions
of the groups ? What were their arguments ? It seems to me that one of the
exciting things about the internet is being able to experience indirectly
people and places one would most likely never get to experience in real life.
[...]
> >> If you carry the Big Eight, you carry all the Big Eight groups. That is
> >> part of the agreement. You do not create or remove groups except with
> >> control messages sent throughout the entire heirarchy, after a vote has
> >> been performed.
> >
> >Agreement between which people ? If servers A and B do peering and A stops
> >carrying , say comp.misc , but still carries the other big 8 groups , how
> >is the operator of server B going to find out and why should he care ? It
> >won't cause any problems for server B not to be able to exchange comp.misc
> >messages with server A.
>
> There is discussion in news.groups.
This is much too vague to be useful. On the occasions I've visited
news.groups , I've never seen any discussion on the issue.
> >> If you carry the alt. groups you can remove groups from your local server
> >> but if you do, sooner or later there will be a control message coming down
> >> the line causing the recreation of those groups. People have tried to get
> >> rid of some of the altnet groups for decades and they keep coming back.
> >> Altnet is not Usenet and does not follow Usenet rules but it uses the Usenet
> >> mechanisms.
> >
> >Why can't a server operator simply configure the software to for example
> >ignore all control messages for alt.flames* newsgroups ?
>
> They could, but then no new alt.flames* groups would get created on their
> system. When there were many hundreds of servers, the issue was more
> problematic than it is today of course.
So in particular alt.flame.hairy-douchebag.meredith-tanner (AFHM) would not get
recreated on their server. Isn't this good enough ? They could even filter
messages which get crossposted to AFHM and announce in their policy that they
do so. So , as far as that server is concerned , AFHM does not exist anymore.
If other servers want to carry it , that's their business.
--
The bad dancer is hindered by his own arse.
Yiddish saying
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| From | "voyager55" <voyager55@none.none> |
|---|---|
| Date | 2022-07-23 17:13 -0400 |
| Message-ID | <jwZCK.299666$MWc5.41603@fx06.ams1> |
| In reply to | #22054 |
On 7/20/2022 9:41:45 PM, Spiros Bousbouras wrote:
> Dear Mr. Musk,
>
> I have read in the news that you are (or were) interested in buying
> Twitter in order to promote free speech. I applaud your goals , I care a
> lot about free speech myself. But let me suggest that the operational
> model of Twitter and free speech do not fit well together.
There are more than a handful of folks who believe that Musk's discussion
regarding purchasing Twitter had far less to do with a desire for the
preservation of Free Speech, and more to do with stock market manipulations.
Twitter's stock price has been all over the map since the announcement, Musk
leveraged Tesla stock more than his cash-on-hand, and Twitter having to disclose
the actual number of users and bots as a matter of public record through the SEC
filings altered the price advertisers were willing to pay for ad space. Whether
Twitter was an unwitting pawn in Musk restructuring his Tesla ownership or there
was some sort of feud between Musk and Twitter's execs is unclear, but a lot of
people - myself included - are not convinced that Musk's primary concern was
altruistic.
Personally, the reason I'm unconvinced that free speech was his goal was because
Musk has some pretty solid resources at his disposal, both human and
technological. I'm sure he could have gotten a thousand people together, bought
an office building (if he doesn't have a spare already), gotten a couple of racks
of servers and hard drives from Dell or HP, forked Mastodon and spun up his own
Twitter competitor whose selling point was "better terms of service, clear due
process for violations, and no ads or tracking scripts for two years"...and he
probably would have had modest success with it AND spent $43 billion less than he
offered Twitter.
> An absolute concept of free speech is that if persons A and B want to
> exchange views or information about whatever issue , no entity C (where
> "entity" means individual or corporation or government) should be able to
> prevent it. In other words , the decision should be entirely up to A and B
> and noone else.
I submit that this still exists, for the most part. E-mail is still mostly
unaffected by this, and while both Microsoft and Google are likely to hand over a
user's inbox to law enforcement whenever asked, they're unlikely to censor
contents. The protocol itself has all the functionality you describe; it's
decentralized and federated, and anyone can spin up a mail server if they so
choose. There are also a number of chat applications that handle synchronous
communication in a similar manner. Signal and Telegram have so far managed to
hold up to some scrutiny, while Rocketchat and Mattermost and Matrix allow users
to spin up their own chat servers and federate them as well.
The statement above assumes one-to-one communication, while Twitter's claim to
fame is one-to-many communication...and that's why the question arises with
Twitter in a way that it doesn't with E-mail.
> There are physical limitations which make such absolute free speech
> impossible and it may not even be desirable. But it is also very far from
> a desirable level of free speech if a single entity , like Twitter , can
> restrict people's ability to communicate with each other. Obviously
> Twitter isn't the only form of online communication but my overall point
> is that online discussion is too centralised at present , that this
> centralisation negatively affects freedom of speech and plurality of
> opinions therefore the right way forward is to give emphasis to more
> decentralised methods of online discussion.
Centralization also has its benefits, if we're going to be real about it. If it
didn't, Gmail wouldn't be the default it is today. Ever try to solve an e-mail
flow issue? User->Server->Filter->Internet- >Filter->Server->User, any one of
those links can go wrong. They're worth having for the very reasons you specify,
but we can't truly solve an issue if we're not honest about why it is chosen.
Yes, Twitter brings censorship with it, but it also brings message amplification
to it. Reddit does this as well. Though Reddit is admittedly susceptible to
groupthink, lets users upvote/downvote and sort by those votes, allowing
generally-more-desirable content to be sifted from the generally-less-desirable
content, without actually censoring anyone (in principle, anyway). As much as I
appreciate the true egalitarianism of Usenet, it is disingenuous to paint the
algorithms at Twitter (and the more human one at Reddit) as completely without
merit. Your post and some random cryptocurrency spam have two different values.
The relatively low user count of Usenet at the moment is pretty much the primary
reason why your post wasn't bordered by a thousand crypto bot spam messages and
the protocol makes it extremely difficult to solve this problem.
Retroshare, an interesting chatroom/IM/Usenet/E-mail/p2p file sharing app, has
the tech part on lock, but my time in their Usenet-esque section was rather
unnerving. Actual-antisemitism (i.e. calls to 'finish the job'), bomb-making
instructions, unhinged conspiracy theories and 'erotica' involving violence were
just a handful of the topics represented. I'm not quite sure where the line is
drawn, but "free speech for them too" meant Retroshare was philosophically
consistent at the expense of making the community somewhere I'd never recommend
to anyone else. A community that *can* become like that *will* become like that
eventually.
> And as it turns out , there is such a method. Not only that but it is one
> of the oldest forms of online dicussion : usenet !
>
> I will guess that you have already encountered usenet although perhaps not
> recently. It is a lot less popular than what it was some decades ago but
> it is still going strong. From the point of view of freedom of speech it
> has many advantages over Twitter : it is decentralised , meaning a large
> number of servers controlled by different entities instead of servers
> ultimately controlled by a single entity which can command that this or
> that should be censored. Usenet is based on open standards for which there
> exist already a large number of implementations both of servers and
> clients and also programming libraries for many programming languages. So
> whether one wants to use a preexisting client or server or implement their
> own , possibly one with a fancier interface , the possibilities are
> limitless.
Ironically, due to the aforementioned spam issue, something tells me that a
successful Usenet renaissance would yield one of two related solutions.
The first variant would be something like Mimecast or Mailprotector - users would
pay a company to implement spam filtering and 'good stuff prioritization'. This
has some advantages, in that services could compete on the efficacy of their
filtering solution, and also that users would have greater control over the
algorithm while being able to say "show me everything" in a verifiable way.
The second variant would be something like Gmail: "Usenet access, complete with
antispam and good stuff prioritization!" Which, Google Groups essentially is.
This sort of solution would end up being Twitter with extra steps. If Google were
to implement their Gmail filtering to their Usenet service, you're right next to
censorship.
The last variant is what you talk about below: having a myriad of servers users
can choose to subscribe to, and leave it up to the server ops to pick things to
remove. I'll address this below the section...
> You are a visionary so let me a suggest the following vision : every city
> block in every city in every technologically advanced country will have at
> least 1 usenet server operating. Note that the servers do not need any
> special facilities , it could just as well be a server operating from
> one's own home. It doesn't have to be a recent or powerful computer either
> , an old computer which one has lying somewhere and remains unused , would
> do the job just fine. The important thing is that all of these servers
> would be operated by different people. So lets say someone does not want a
> certain usenet group or messages on their server because they consider
> them as too right wing or too left wing or too whatever wing or they feel
> it's "hate speech" , etc. Not a problem. With so many servers the messages
> would still get transmitted between the people who are interested in them
> because there would be billions of different paths (passing through
> servers) between clients a message could follow. Now *that's* freedom of
> speech.
I don't think the lack of NNTP services is truly a problem:
https://www.reddit.com/r/usenet/wiki/providers/ For good or for ill, they don't
censor much of anything. As many of the existing Usenet services cater primarily
to binary downloads, the closest thing the existing companies seem to come to is
to handle DMCA takedowns. A handful of individual newsgroups are moderated, but
post removals on those aren't performed by server owners.
The sort of solution you're describing is either obscenely time consuming for
humans to perform (there are over 110,000 existing newsgroups), or those server
ops are stuck running a spam/content filter of their own and not letting end
users weigh in. Philosophically, is the solution to censorship "lots of different
censors to choose from"? Practically, can users on two federated servers have a
meaningful discourse if either one of them has a server op who deletes one half
of the conversation? We're back to the shadowbans of Twitter, but with two
potential chokepoints.
> So where do you come in ? No , I'm not suggesting that you pay for all
> those servers out of your own pocket. What you can do is express publicly
> your interest and support for usenet. Coming from someone as well known as
> you , this already will have a large positive impact. It may be that this
> is all that is needed. The infrastructure already exists : there is news
> client and news server software for the usual desktop operating systems ,
> there exist both free and commercial servers running and more can be
> created whether one is primarily motivated by profit or the desire to
> offer a public service.
I submit that there is plenty more that is needed. As you correctly point out,
all of this is in place already. This very discourse proves that. Tweaknews has
basically solved this. Their first party Usenetwire client is almost as simple to
use as Facebook (though some folks lament its terrible formatting), and €2 gets a
10GB block, i.e. more data than one could ever use for text-based discourse in a
lifetime. And yet, people aren't flocking to it.
Usenet has different sets of issues than Twitter. Creating a new newsgroup seems
more complicated than it needs to be, but paradoxically, there are many
newsgroups that are redundant and likely could be consolidated. Similarly, there
are swaths of abandoned newsgroups that haven't had a non-spam post since 2006,
and there's the awkward discussion about what to do with newsgroups that have
served their purpose (alt.windows95, anyone?).
The ability to avoid censorship by changing one's username and e-mail is
laudable, but it also means that genuinely bad behavior can't really be
regulated. Head over to alt.windows95 and look at the post from June 25,
2020...and let's try and figure out a solution for it. Deleting the post is
censorship, banning the author is basically impossible, and leaving it up there
validates the "why am I here" and "is this the upside to the absence of
censorship" questions that a whole lot of people would have. You and I can 'just
ignore it', but that's not a benefit to most people who would come by to look
around.
Twitter allows for pictures and GIFs to be part of posts, for good and for ill.
Usenet is still inconsistent with Unicode.
Usenet's asynchronous nature is helpful in that one needn't worry about missing a
post from last week. However, imagine the Twitter Users who already have a
tendency to mob and bandwagon getting infinite retention. It would make a flame
war last longer than it needed to, only for someone new to scroll up a bit and
restart the fire all over again. However, the paradox I find myself in as I write
this is the functional gatekeeping that the implicit alternative ("don't let them
on Usenet") recommends. I don't want to do that, but Usenet + Twitter Mob strikes
me as the worst of both worlds.
The presence of different Usenet clients has its benefits, but is also a
liability. Looking at Wikipedia's list of desktop Usenet clients, how many see a
meaningful amount of active development? Claws Mail, Thunderbird, and Seamonkey
were the only three I saw that had even one release in 2022, and none of them
have NNTP as their primary function any more than Chrome or Firefox were FTP
clients. Maybe one or two more applications on the list got updates in 2021, and
while I can appreciate Usenet clients avoiding a lot of the modern design cues
that software seems to focus upon, many that I've used seem to go too far in the
other direction. Of the thousands of desktop monitors I support in my job over
the past decade, there has been exactly one still running at 1024x768; the
overwhelming majority being 1920x1080 or higher. 16x16 toolbar icons are worth
revisiting. Usenet's connect/download/disconnect paradigm hails from the dial-up
or era; I appreciate UsenetWire's default download-on-select behavior. The
"Unified Inbox" in most modern email clients allows me to see recent mail from
all mailboxes in a single list. This should be a far more common option in NNTP
readers, but it's not. While SabNZBd and NZBGet and JDownloader get plenty of
active development reflective of their relatively high user count,
text-discussion clients seem to be subject to the other extreme.
Culturally, the handful of remaining Usenet post creators are of a particular
breed. We're generally tech savvy and generally can have a discussion that runs
its course and lets it sit. We can have a discussion over the course of days or
weeks, and it's fine. We can handle the technical issues and slower pace. Modern
social media and its users are unlikely to fit into such a culture, becoming a
bit of a chicken-and-egg problem.
> If you want to go further than that , you can announce a public competition
> for a new news client or a new news server with a prize for each of say
> 20,000 USD. That's not to say that there is anything wrong with already
> existing software but people get attracted to the new sexy thing and such
> new software , with the attendant publicity , would be the new sexy thing.
> I won't go into details of how such a competition could be run or what
> criteria should be used to rank the entries because it would make this too
> long and it would be a digression. The publicity would be more important
> than the precise rules of the competition anyway.
I addressed a lot of this already, but I submit that a grassroots return to
Usenet is going to be difficult to execute. Even if a few sexy newsreaders and
some additional servers were to be spun up, the differentiator you're proposing
over just being another Highwinds node is the huge number of different
moderators. That's what needs to be incentivized, which paradoxically, means
providing a financial incentive to censorship...which Twitter already has. I'm
all about giving Giganews some competition, but it's unclear how Usenet's
problems are solved by the presence of more servers, and even if moderation was
tied to servers, the problem has more to do with getting people dedicated to
performing the moderation on a continuing basis. Bandwidth and server maintenance
also play into the underlying question about how dedicated the grassroots sysops
would be. Some would be a 'labor of love' for a retired person, sure, but if they
get popular, it's a lot of work, and if they don't, it's work done in vain.
> You could create a charity which runs news servers. Again , the main
> advantage of such a thing would be the publicity caused by the association
> with your name rather than having a few extra servers.
Would the charities then be responsible for moderation the way grassroots servers
are? It's unclear how that's helpful.
> None of the above suggestions would cost more than thousands of USD. A lot
> cheaper than Twitter and they would do a lot more for freedom of speech. I
> will admit though that if your main goal in the endeavour is to make
> profit rather than enhance freedom of speech then a centralised medium
> offers more opportunity.
Although I agree with the statement expressly stated here, this goes all the way
back to Musk being able to accomplish 99% of what you're talking about with a
Mastodon fork, possibly with some volunteer moderators, and having a better
experience for everyone in the process.
> So these are my suggestions , I hope you will get to read them and give
> them some thought.
>
> Finally , for your convenience here is a list of some usenet servers :
> news.aioe.org , news.cyber23.de , news.eternal-september.org (requires
> registration) , news2.informatik.uni-stuttgart.de (read only).
>
> Best regards
> Spiros Bousbouras
>
I'm obviously not Elon Musk, and I do appreciate the fact that the problem is
being considered by someone besides me. I like the idea of more servers, more
grassroots servers, and even if there are occasional out-of-control flamewars, a
renaissance of Usenet would be worthwhile. As IRC got extensions and successors
in the form of Slack and Discord, so too could Usenet evolve in some way that
brings the best aspects of Usenet (client/server, organized discussion threads,
moderated/free-for-all choices, low bandwidth, asynchronous discussions with
splinters, etc.) while mitigating the worst (spam, total absence of even
light-touch moderation, no communities, no upvote/downvote system). I love the
handful of folks like you and me who still check in, but I think that bringing
the masses back here would ultimately be as much a fool's errand as buying
Twitter.
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| From | Bud Spencer <bud@campo.verano.it> |
|---|---|
| Date | 2022-07-24 00:50 +0300 |
| Message-ID | <alpine.BSF.2.21.9999.2207240040380.86686@cerebro.liukuma.net> |
| In reply to | #22062 |
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On Sat, 23 Jul 2022, voyager55 wrote: > Retroshare, an interesting chatroom/IM/Usenet/E-mail/p2p file sharing app, has > the tech part on lock, but my time in their Usenet-esque section was rather > unnerving. Actual-antisemitism (i.e. calls to 'finish the job'), bomb-making > instructions, unhinged conspiracy theories and 'erotica' involving violence were > just a handful of the topics represented. I'm not quite sure where the line is > drawn, but "free speech for them too" meant Retroshare was philosophically > consistent at the expense of making the community somewhere I'd never recommend > to anyone else. A community that *can* become like that *will* become like that > eventually. Not sure you understand how RetroShare works ... It's not »community« that you walk into. RetroShare is just a decentralised secure communication thingie you can use with your friends and such. In order you get that kind of content you described, YOU have to go to nodes that are serving that kind of content. Nothing to do with the RetroShare, really. Everyone have their own nodes, you did too when you used it. Not sure how and why you ended up with such places ... and what is this "usenet-esque" thing you are talking about? From RetroShare website: How does it work? Retroshare allows you to create a network of computers (called nodes). Every user has it's own node. The exact location (the IP-address) of nodes is only known to neighbor nodes. You invite a person to become a neighbor by exchanging your Retroshare certificates with that person. Links between nodes are authenticated using strong asymmetric keys (PGP format) and encrypted using Perfect Forward Secrecy (OpenSSL implementation of TLS). On top of the network mesh, Retroshare provides services to securely and anonymously exchange data with other nodes in the network beyond your own friends. --- Seems too nice to be true. What's the catch? There is no catch. Retroshare is provided free of charge and does not generate any kind of money. It is the result of hard work that is only driven by the goals of providing a tool to evade censorship. The only catch is that you will need to build your own network: in order to use Retroshare, you have to recruit friends and exchange certificates with them, or join an existing network of friends. --- Like it's said above "The only catch is that you will need to build your own network". -- ₪ BUD ₪
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| From | "voyager55" <voyager55@none.none> |
|---|---|
| Date | 2022-07-24 12:14 -0400 |
| Message-ID | <zdeDK.678917$83a5.327397@fx05.ams1> |
| In reply to | #22063 |
On 7/23/2022 5:50:29 PM, Bud Spencer wrote: > > On Sat, 23 Jul 2022, voyager55 wrote: > >>Retroshare, an interesting chatroom/IM/Usenet/E-mail/p2p file sharing app, >>has the tech part on lock, but my time in their Usenet-esque section >>was rather unnerving. Actual-antisemitism (i.e. calls to 'finish the >>job'), bomb-making instructions, unhinged conspiracy theories and >>'erotica' involving violence were just a handful of the topics represented. >>I'm not quite sure where the line is drawn, but "free speech for them too" >>meant Retroshare was philosophically consistent at the expense of making >>the community somewhere I'd never recommend to anyone else. A community >>that *can* become like that *will* become like that eventually. > > Not sure you understand how RetroShare works ... It's not »community > « that > you walk into. RetroShare is just a decentralised secure communication > thingie you can use with your friends and such. In order you get that kind > > of content you described, YOU have to go to nodes that are serving that > kind of content. Nothing to do with the RetroShare, really. Everyone have > > their own nodes, you did too when you used it. Not sure how and why you > ended up with such places ... and what is this "usenet-esque" thing you > are talking about? > > From RetroShare website: > > How does it work? > > Retroshare allows you to create a network of computers (called nodes). > Every user has it's own node. The exact location (the IP-address) of nodes > > is only known to neighbor nodes. You invite a person to become a neighbor > > by exchanging your Retroshare certificates with that person. > > Links between nodes are authenticated using strong asymmetric keys (PGP > format) and encrypted using Perfect Forward Secrecy (OpenSSL > implementation of TLS). > > On top of the network mesh, Retroshare provides services to securely and > anonymously exchange data with other nodes in the network beyond your own > > friends. > > --- > > Seems too nice to be true. What's the catch? > > There is no catch. Retroshare is provided free of charge and does not > generate any kind of money. It is the result of hard work that is only > driven by the goals of providing a tool to evade censorship. > > The only catch is that you will need to build your own network: in order > to use Retroshare, you have to recruit friends and exchange certificates > with them, or join an existing network of friends. > > --- > > Like it's said above "The only catch is that you will need to build your > own network". > > ₪ BUD ₪ > I get how Retroshare works, and from a technical standpoint, I think it's fantastic. In practice, however, the exception you take to my experience does two things: it proves my point and reflects the difference between Retroshare and Twitter. When one starts up Retroshare for the first time and makes the certs and so forth, it's an empty slate. This reveals the problem Retroshare has with the network effect: while everyone uses Twitter because everyone uses Twitter, telling your friends "use Retroshare so we can make our own network" is an incredibly uphill battle that doesn't involve finding new people one doesn't already know. So, the go-to solution for growing one's network in order to engage in a community is to do what I did: do some Google searches and add random users who post their public keys on message boards and start growing the network. This is what I did, which led to the Newcomers Lobby I ended up joining, where people exchanged keys readily. I had nearly 200 people in my network at this point; many of them were unconnectable (one of Retroshare's issues is that it's extremely limited when users have CGNAT)...but I did have a pretty decent number of 'friends of friends' that yielded some actual chatrooms and some posts on the asynchronous one-to-many message boards (the "usenet-esque" function I described). It was at this point where I started encountering the content I described. Retroshare works when the goal is for an insular community to connect, but that's not creating new connections. Moreover, even when a set of users do what I did, communication isn't necessarily effective - message board replies may not replicate all the way back to the person to whom one replies. Usenet solves this with NNTP peering, but Retroshare has no similar mechanism beyond nodes that are functionally centralized. All of that being said, the point I was making about Retroshare is that the community that I stumbled into was the sort of community that most people would consider 'unwelcoming' at the very least. "Just disconnect from those nodes" becomes extremely difficult to implement on any kind of scale, especially due to how Retroshare handles replication through 2nd-order nodes.
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| From | Bud Spencer <bud@campo.verano.it> |
|---|---|
| Date | 2022-07-25 03:18 +0300 |
| Message-ID | <alpine.BSF.2.21.9999.2207250314480.85593@cerebro.liukuma.net> |
| In reply to | #22064 |
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On Sun, 24 Jul 2022, voyager55 wrote: > On 7/23/2022 5:50:29 PM, Bud Spencer wrote: >> >> On Sat, 23 Jul 2022, voyager55 wrote: >> >>> Retroshare, an interesting chatroom/IM/Usenet/E-mail/p2p file sharing app, >>> has the tech part on lock, but my time in their Usenet-esque section >>> was rather unnerving. Actual-antisemitism (i.e. calls to 'finish the >>> job'), bomb-making instructions, unhinged conspiracy theories and >>> 'erotica' involving violence were just a handful of the topics represented. >>> I'm not quite sure where the line is drawn, but "free speech for them too" >>> meant Retroshare was philosophically consistent at the expense of making >>> the community somewhere I'd never recommend to anyone else. A community >>> that *can* become like that *will* become like that eventually. >> >> Not sure you understand how RetroShare works ... It's not ??community >> ?? that >> you walk into. RetroShare is just a decentralised secure communication >> thingie you can use with your friends and such. In order you get that kind >> >> of content you described, YOU have to go to nodes that are serving that >> kind of content. Nothing to do with the RetroShare, really. Everyone have >> >> their own nodes, you did too when you used it. Not sure how and why you >> ended up with such places ... and what is this "usenet-esque" thing you >> are talking about? >> >> From RetroShare website: >> >> How does it work? >> >> Retroshare allows you to create a network of computers (called nodes). >> Every user has it's own node. The exact location (the IP-address) of nodes >> >> is only known to neighbor nodes. You invite a person to become a neighbor >> >> by exchanging your Retroshare certificates with that person. >> >> Links between nodes are authenticated using strong asymmetric keys (PGP >> format) and encrypted using Perfect Forward Secrecy (OpenSSL >> implementation of TLS). >> >> On top of the network mesh, Retroshare provides services to securely and >> anonymously exchange data with other nodes in the network beyond your own >> >> friends. >> >> --- >> >> Seems too nice to be true. What's the catch? >> >> There is no catch. Retroshare is provided free of charge and does not >> generate any kind of money. It is the result of hard work that is only >> driven by the goals of providing a tool to evade censorship. >> >> The only catch is that you will need to build your own network: in order >> to use Retroshare, you have to recruit friends and exchange certificates >> with them, or join an existing network of friends. >> >> --- >> >> Like it's said above "The only catch is that you will need to build your >> own network". >> >> ??? BUD ??? >> > > I get how Retroshare works, and from a technical standpoint, I think it's > fantastic. In practice, however, the exception you take to my experience does two > things: it proves my point and reflects the difference between Retroshare and > Twitter. > > When one starts up Retroshare for the first time and makes the certs and so > forth, it's an empty slate. This reveals the problem Retroshare has with the > network effect: while everyone uses Twitter because everyone uses Twitter, > telling your friends "use Retroshare so we can make our own network" is an > incredibly uphill battle that doesn't involve finding new people one doesn't > already know. > So, the go-to solution for growing one's network in order to engage in a > community is to do what I did: do some Google searches and add random users who > post their public keys on message boards and start growing the network. This is > what I did, which led to the Newcomers Lobby I ended up joining, where people > exchanged keys readily. I had nearly 200 people in my network at this point; many > of them were unconnectable (one of Retroshare's issues is that it's extremely > limited when users have CGNAT)...but I did have a pretty decent number of > 'friends of friends' that yielded some actual chatrooms and some posts on the > asynchronous one-to-many message boards (the "usenet-esque" function I > described). It was at this point where I started encountering the content I > described. > > Retroshare works when the goal is for an insular community to connect, but that's > not creating new connections. Moreover, even when a set of users do what I did, > communication isn't necessarily effective - message board replies may not > replicate all the way back to the person to whom one replies. Usenet solves this > with NNTP peering, but Retroshare has no similar mechanism beyond nodes that are > functionally centralized. > > All of that being said, the point I was making about Retroshare is that the > community that I stumbled into was the sort of community that most people would > consider 'unwelcoming' at the very least. "Just disconnect from those nodes" > becomes extremely difficult to implement on any kind of scale, especially due to > how Retroshare handles replication through 2nd-order nodes. All the tings you describet above haven't anything but ones own doing. Yet, you still kinda blame the means for your actions ... peculiar might some say. I'm not one of those. I just say, meh. -- ₪ BUD ₪
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| From | "25B.Z959" <25B.Z959@nada.net> |
|---|---|
| Date | 2022-07-24 22:26 -0400 |
| Message-ID | <3e2dnVpjitzpYkD_nZ2dnUU7-RHNnZ2d@earthlink.com> |
| In reply to | #22065 |
On 7/24/22 8:18 PM, Bud Spencer wrote: > On Sun, 24 Jul 2022, voyager55 wrote: > >> On 7/23/2022 5:50:29 PM, Bud Spencer wrote: >>> >>> On Sat, 23 Jul 2022, voyager55 wrote: >>> >>>> Retroshare, an interesting chatroom/IM/Usenet/E-mail/p2p file >>>> sharing app, >>>> has the tech part on lock, but my time in their Usenet-esque section >>>> was rather unnerving. Actual-antisemitism (i.e. calls to 'finish the >>>> job'), bomb-making instructions, unhinged conspiracy theories and >>>> 'erotica' involving violence were just a handful of the topics >>>> represented. >>>> I'm not quite sure where the line is drawn, but "free speech for >>>> them too" >>>> meant Retroshare was philosophically consistent at the expense of >>>> making >>>> the community somewhere I'd never recommend to anyone else. A community >>>> that *can* become like that *will* become like that eventually. >>> >>> Not sure you understand how RetroShare works ... It's not ??community >>> ?? that >>> you walk into. RetroShare is just a decentralised secure communication >>> thingie you can use with your friends and such. In order you get that >>> kind >>> >>> of content you described, YOU have to go to nodes that are serving that >>> kind of content. Nothing to do with the RetroShare, really. Everyone >>> have >>> >>> their own nodes, you did too when you used it. Not sure how and why you >>> ended up with such places ... and what is this "usenet-esque" thing you >>> are talking about? >>> >>> From RetroShare website: >>> >>> How does it work? >>> >>> Retroshare allows you to create a network of computers (called nodes). >>> Every user has it's own node. The exact location (the IP-address) of >>> nodes >>> >>> is only known to neighbor nodes. You invite a person to become a >>> neighbor >>> >>> by exchanging your Retroshare certificates with that person. >>> >>> Links between nodes are authenticated using strong asymmetric keys (PGP >>> format) and encrypted using Perfect Forward Secrecy (OpenSSL >>> implementation of TLS). >>> >>> On top of the network mesh, Retroshare provides services to securely and >>> anonymously exchange data with other nodes in the network beyond your >>> own >>> >>> friends. >>> >>> --- >>> >>> Seems too nice to be true. What's the catch? >>> >>> There is no catch. Retroshare is provided free of charge and does not >>> generate any kind of money. It is the result of hard work that is only >>> driven by the goals of providing a tool to evade censorship. >>> >>> The only catch is that you will need to build your own network: in order >>> to use Retroshare, you have to recruit friends and exchange certificates >>> with them, or join an existing network of friends. >>> >>> --- >>> >>> Like it's said above "The only catch is that you will need to build your >>> own network". >>> >>> ??? BUD ??? >>> >> >> I get how Retroshare works, and from a technical standpoint, I think it's >> fantastic. In practice, however, the exception you take to my >> experience does two >> things: it proves my point and reflects the difference between >> Retroshare and >> Twitter. >> >> When one starts up Retroshare for the first time and makes the certs >> and so >> forth, it's an empty slate. This reveals the problem Retroshare has >> with the >> network effect: while everyone uses Twitter because everyone uses >> Twitter, >> telling your friends "use Retroshare so we can make our own network" >> is an >> incredibly uphill battle that doesn't involve finding new people one >> doesn't >> already know. >> So, the go-to solution for growing one's network in order to engage in a >> community is to do what I did: do some Google searches and add random >> users who >> post their public keys on message boards and start growing the >> network. This is >> what I did, which led to the Newcomers Lobby I ended up joining, where >> people >> exchanged keys readily. I had nearly 200 people in my network at this >> point; many >> of them were unconnectable (one of Retroshare's issues is that it's >> extremely >> limited when users have CGNAT)...but I did have a pretty decent number of >> 'friends of friends' that yielded some actual chatrooms and some posts >> on the >> asynchronous one-to-many message boards (the "usenet-esque" function I >> described). It was at this point where I started encountering the >> content I >> described. >> >> Retroshare works when the goal is for an insular community to connect, >> but that's >> not creating new connections. Moreover, even when a set of users do >> what I did, >> communication isn't necessarily effective - message board replies may not >> replicate all the way back to the person to whom one replies. Usenet >> solves this >> with NNTP peering, but Retroshare has no similar mechanism beyond >> nodes that are >> functionally centralized. >> >> All of that being said, the point I was making about Retroshare is >> that the >> community that I stumbled into was the sort of community that most >> people would >> consider 'unwelcoming' at the very least. "Just disconnect from those >> nodes" >> becomes extremely difficult to implement on any kind of scale, >> especially due to >> how Retroshare handles replication through 2nd-order nodes. > > All the tings you describet above haven't anything but ones own doing. > Yet, you still kinda blame the means for your actions ... peculiar might > some say. I'm not one of those. I just say, meh. > The "tings you describet" he went into are quite relevant. Building Twitter/FB/IG replacements is a FORMIDIBLE task. As said, people sign up for these things because everybody else did so - they KNOW there will be a big 'community' to make things interesting - to see and be seen. Sorry, but at this juncture, if you value Free Speech/Ideas you CAN'T really build a new service - you have to seize control of the existing services. It does not require force of arms or a revolution - it requires MONEY, lots and lots of MONEY, and the WILL to change things. As much as 'conservatives' (rightfully) bitch I haven't seen them just BUYING these services even though the money IS out there. I think this is quite deliberate - in order to preserve a useful enemy. Machiavelli said that there is just no substitute for an Enemy Of The People ... and if there aren't any then you must INVENT/CULTIVATE such Enemies. THEN you can crusade against them, get vast public support and the power that goes with that AND the liberty to employ 'emergency authority'. The politics of power hasn't changed in thousands of years. Machiavelli was mostly referencing Roman political wisdom - which was still employed in his day AND still in OUR day. Modern communications tech has slightly changed the look and feel of The Big Game, but the fundamentals do NOT change. Humans still have the same "buttons" to press and NEVER seem to catch on that they're being played.
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| From | Bud Spencer <bud@campo.verano.it> |
|---|---|
| Date | 2022-07-25 16:17 +0300 |
| Message-ID | <alpine.BSF.2.21.9999.2207251615330.49913@cerebro.liukuma.net> |
| In reply to | #22066 |
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On Sun, 24 Jul 2022, 25B.Z959 wrote: > On 7/24/22 8:18 PM, Bud Spencer wrote: >> On Sun, 24 Jul 2022, voyager55 wrote: >> >>> On 7/23/2022 5:50:29 PM, Bud Spencer wrote: >>>> >>>> On Sat, 23 Jul 2022, voyager55 wrote: >>>> >>>>> Retroshare, an interesting chatroom/IM/Usenet/E-mail/p2p file sharing >>>>> app, >>>>> has the tech part on lock, but my time in their Usenet-esque section >>>>> was rather unnerving. Actual-antisemitism (i.e. calls to 'finish the >>>>> job'), bomb-making instructions, unhinged conspiracy theories and >>>>> 'erotica' involving violence were just a handful of the topics >>>>> represented. >>>>> I'm not quite sure where the line is drawn, but "free speech for them >>>>> too" >>>>> meant Retroshare was philosophically consistent at the expense of making >>>>> the community somewhere I'd never recommend to anyone else. A community >>>>> that *can* become like that *will* become like that eventually. >>>> >>>> Not sure you understand how RetroShare works ... It's not ??community >>>> ?? that >>>> you walk into. RetroShare is just a decentralised secure communication >>>> thingie you can use with your friends and such. In order you get that >>>> kind >>>> >>>> of content you described, YOU have to go to nodes that are serving that >>>> kind of content. Nothing to do with the RetroShare, really. Everyone have >>>> >>>> their own nodes, you did too when you used it. Not sure how and why you >>>> ended up with such places ... and what is this "usenet-esque" thing you >>>> are talking about? >>>> >>>> From RetroShare website: >>>> >>>> How does it work? >>>> >>>> Retroshare allows you to create a network of computers (called nodes). >>>> Every user has it's own node. The exact location (the IP-address) of >>>> nodes >>>> >>>> is only known to neighbor nodes. You invite a person to become a neighbor >>>> >>>> by exchanging your Retroshare certificates with that person. >>>> >>>> Links between nodes are authenticated using strong asymmetric keys (PGP >>>> format) and encrypted using Perfect Forward Secrecy (OpenSSL >>>> implementation of TLS). >>>> >>>> On top of the network mesh, Retroshare provides services to securely and >>>> anonymously exchange data with other nodes in the network beyond your own >>>> >>>> friends. >>>> >>>> --- >>>> >>>> Seems too nice to be true. What's the catch? >>>> >>>> There is no catch. Retroshare is provided free of charge and does not >>>> generate any kind of money. It is the result of hard work that is only >>>> driven by the goals of providing a tool to evade censorship. >>>> >>>> The only catch is that you will need to build your own network: in order >>>> to use Retroshare, you have to recruit friends and exchange certificates >>>> with them, or join an existing network of friends. >>>> >>>> --- >>>> >>>> Like it's said above "The only catch is that you will need to build your >>>> own network". >>>> >>>> ??? BUD ??? >>>> >>> >>> I get how Retroshare works, and from a technical standpoint, I think it's >>> fantastic. In practice, however, the exception you take to my experience >>> does two >>> things: it proves my point and reflects the difference between Retroshare >>> and >>> Twitter. >>> >>> When one starts up Retroshare for the first time and makes the certs and >>> so >>> forth, it's an empty slate. This reveals the problem Retroshare has with >>> the >>> network effect: while everyone uses Twitter because everyone uses Twitter, >>> telling your friends "use Retroshare so we can make our own network" is an >>> incredibly uphill battle that doesn't involve finding new people one >>> doesn't >>> already know. >>> So, the go-to solution for growing one's network in order to engage in a >>> community is to do what I did: do some Google searches and add random >>> users who >>> post their public keys on message boards and start growing the network. >>> This is >>> what I did, which led to the Newcomers Lobby I ended up joining, where >>> people >>> exchanged keys readily. I had nearly 200 people in my network at this >>> point; many >>> of them were unconnectable (one of Retroshare's issues is that it's >>> extremely >>> limited when users have CGNAT)...but I did have a pretty decent number of >>> 'friends of friends' that yielded some actual chatrooms and some posts on >>> the >>> asynchronous one-to-many message boards (the "usenet-esque" function I >>> described). It was at this point where I started encountering the content >>> I >>> described. >>> >>> Retroshare works when the goal is for an insular community to connect, but >>> that's >>> not creating new connections. Moreover, even when a set of users do what I >>> did, >>> communication isn't necessarily effective - message board replies may not >>> replicate all the way back to the person to whom one replies. Usenet >>> solves this >>> with NNTP peering, but Retroshare has no similar mechanism beyond nodes >>> that are >>> functionally centralized. >>> >>> All of that being said, the point I was making about Retroshare is that >>> the >>> community that I stumbled into was the sort of community that most people >>> would >>> consider 'unwelcoming' at the very least. "Just disconnect from those >>> nodes" >>> becomes extremely difficult to implement on any kind of scale, especially >>> due to >>> how Retroshare handles replication through 2nd-order nodes. >> >> All the tings you describet above haven't anything but ones own doing. Yet, >> you still kinda blame the means for your actions ... peculiar might some >> say. I'm not one of those. I just say, meh. >> > > The "tings you describet" he went into are quite relevant. > > Building Twitter/FB/IG replacements is a FORMIDIBLE task. > As said, people sign up for these things because everybody > else did so - they KNOW there will be a big 'community' > to make things interesting - to see and be seen. > > Sorry, but at this juncture, if you value Free Speech/Ideas > you CAN'T really build a new service - you have to seize > control of the existing services. > > It does not require force of arms or a revolution - it > requires MONEY, lots and lots of MONEY, and the WILL to > change things. As much as 'conservatives' (rightfully) > bitch I haven't seen them just BUYING these services > even though the money IS out there. I think this is quite > deliberate - in order to preserve a useful enemy. > > Machiavelli said that there is just no substitute for > an Enemy Of The People ... and if there aren't any then > you must INVENT/CULTIVATE such Enemies. THEN you can > crusade against them, get vast public support and the > power that goes with that AND the liberty to employ > 'emergency authority'. > > The politics of power hasn't changed in thousands > of years. Machiavelli was mostly referencing Roman > political wisdom - which was still employed in > his day AND still in OUR day. Modern communications > tech has slightly changed the look and feel of > The Big Game, but the fundamentals do NOT change. > Humans still have the same "buttons" to press and > NEVER seem to catch on that they're being played. Sorry ... but your incoherent rambling doesn't make any sense ... WTF you mean with "Humans still have the same "buttons" to press" Please elaborate, or am I just too fucking dumb? -- ₪ BUD ₪
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| From | "25B.Z959" <25B.Z959@nada.net> |
|---|---|
| Date | 2022-07-25 09:49 -0400 |
| Message-ID | <Fb-dnRWGZLzMAkP_nZ2dnUU7-cnNnZ2d@earthlink.com> |
| In reply to | #22067 |
On 7/25/22 9:17 AM, Bud Spencer wrote: > On Sun, 24 Jul 2022, 25B.Z959 wrote: > >> On 7/24/22 8:18 PM, Bud Spencer wrote: >>> On Sun, 24 Jul 2022, voyager55 wrote: >>> >>>> On 7/23/2022 5:50:29 PM, Bud Spencer wrote: >>>>> >>>>> On Sat, 23 Jul 2022, voyager55 wrote: >>>>> >>>>>> Retroshare, an interesting chatroom/IM/Usenet/E-mail/p2p file >>>>>> sharing app, >>>>>> has the tech part on lock, but my time in their Usenet-esque section >>>>>> was rather unnerving. Actual-antisemitism (i.e. calls to 'finish the >>>>>> job'), bomb-making instructions, unhinged conspiracy theories and >>>>>> 'erotica' involving violence were just a handful of the topics >>>>>> represented. >>>>>> I'm not quite sure where the line is drawn, but "free speech for >>>>>> them too" >>>>>> meant Retroshare was philosophically consistent at the expense of >>>>>> making >>>>>> the community somewhere I'd never recommend to anyone else. A >>>>>> community >>>>>> that *can* become like that *will* become like that eventually. >>>>> >>>>> Not sure you understand how RetroShare works ... It's not ??community >>>>> ?? that >>>>> you walk into. RetroShare is just a decentralised secure communication >>>>> thingie you can use with your friends and such. In order you get >>>>> that kind >>>>> >>>>> of content you described, YOU have to go to nodes that are serving >>>>> that >>>>> kind of content. Nothing to do with the RetroShare, really. >>>>> Everyone have >>>>> >>>>> their own nodes, you did too when you used it. Not sure how and why >>>>> you >>>>> ended up with such places ... and what is this "usenet-esque" thing >>>>> you >>>>> are talking about? >>>>> >>>>> From RetroShare website: >>>>> >>>>> How does it work? >>>>> >>>>> Retroshare allows you to create a network of computers (called nodes). >>>>> Every user has it's own node. The exact location (the IP-address) >>>>> of nodes >>>>> >>>>> is only known to neighbor nodes. You invite a person to become a >>>>> neighbor >>>>> >>>>> by exchanging your Retroshare certificates with that person. >>>>> >>>>> Links between nodes are authenticated using strong asymmetric keys >>>>> (PGP >>>>> format) and encrypted using Perfect Forward Secrecy (OpenSSL >>>>> implementation of TLS). >>>>> >>>>> On top of the network mesh, Retroshare provides services to >>>>> securely and >>>>> anonymously exchange data with other nodes in the network beyond >>>>> your own >>>>> >>>>> friends. >>>>> >>>>> --- >>>>> >>>>> Seems too nice to be true. What's the catch? >>>>> >>>>> There is no catch. Retroshare is provided free of charge and does not >>>>> generate any kind of money. It is the result of hard work that is only >>>>> driven by the goals of providing a tool to evade censorship. >>>>> >>>>> The only catch is that you will need to build your own network: in >>>>> order >>>>> to use Retroshare, you have to recruit friends and exchange >>>>> certificates >>>>> with them, or join an existing network of friends. >>>>> >>>>> --- >>>>> >>>>> Like it's said above "The only catch is that you will need to build >>>>> your >>>>> own network". >>>>> >>>>> ??? BUD ??? >>>>> >>>> >>>> I get how Retroshare works, and from a technical standpoint, I think >>>> it's >>>> fantastic. In practice, however, the exception you take to my >>>> experience does two >>>> things: it proves my point and reflects the difference between >>>> Retroshare and >>>> Twitter. >>>> >>>> When one starts up Retroshare for the first time and makes the certs >>>> and so >>>> forth, it's an empty slate. This reveals the problem Retroshare has >>>> with the >>>> network effect: while everyone uses Twitter because everyone uses >>>> Twitter, >>>> telling your friends "use Retroshare so we can make our own network" >>>> is an >>>> incredibly uphill battle that doesn't involve finding new people one >>>> doesn't >>>> already know. >>>> So, the go-to solution for growing one's network in order to engage >>>> in a >>>> community is to do what I did: do some Google searches and add >>>> random users who >>>> post their public keys on message boards and start growing the >>>> network. This is >>>> what I did, which led to the Newcomers Lobby I ended up joining, >>>> where people >>>> exchanged keys readily. I had nearly 200 people in my network at >>>> this point; many >>>> of them were unconnectable (one of Retroshare's issues is that it's >>>> extremely >>>> limited when users have CGNAT)...but I did have a pretty decent >>>> number of >>>> 'friends of friends' that yielded some actual chatrooms and some >>>> posts on the >>>> asynchronous one-to-many message boards (the "usenet-esque" function I >>>> described). It was at this point where I started encountering the >>>> content I >>>> described. >>>> >>>> Retroshare works when the goal is for an insular community to >>>> connect, but that's >>>> not creating new connections. Moreover, even when a set of users do >>>> what I did, >>>> communication isn't necessarily effective - message board replies >>>> may not >>>> replicate all the way back to the person to whom one replies. Usenet >>>> solves this >>>> with NNTP peering, but Retroshare has no similar mechanism beyond >>>> nodes that are >>>> functionally centralized. >>>> >>>> All of that being said, the point I was making about Retroshare is >>>> that the >>>> community that I stumbled into was the sort of community that most >>>> people would >>>> consider 'unwelcoming' at the very least. "Just disconnect from >>>> those nodes" >>>> becomes extremely difficult to implement on any kind of scale, >>>> especially due to >>>> how Retroshare handles replication through 2nd-order nodes. >>> >>> All the tings you describet above haven't anything but ones own >>> doing. Yet, you still kinda blame the means for your actions ... >>> peculiar might some say. I'm not one of those. I just say, meh. >>> >> >> The "tings you describet" he went into are quite relevant. >> >> Building Twitter/FB/IG replacements is a FORMIDIBLE task. >> As said, people sign up for these things because everybody >> else did so - they KNOW there will be a big 'community' >> to make things interesting - to see and be seen. >> >> Sorry, but at this juncture, if you value Free Speech/Ideas >> you CAN'T really build a new service - you have to seize >> control of the existing services. >> >> It does not require force of arms or a revolution - it >> requires MONEY, lots and lots of MONEY, and the WILL to >> change things. As much as 'conservatives' (rightfully) >> bitch I haven't seen them just BUYING these services >> even though the money IS out there. I think this is quite >> deliberate - in order to preserve a useful enemy. >> >> Machiavelli said that there is just no substitute for >> an Enemy Of The People ... and if there aren't any then >> you must INVENT/CULTIVATE such Enemies. THEN you can >> crusade against them, get vast public support and the >> power that goes with that AND the liberty to employ >> 'emergency authority'. >> >> The politics of power hasn't changed in thousands >> of years. Machiavelli was mostly referencing Roman >> political wisdom - which was still employed in >> his day AND still in OUR day. Modern communications >> tech has slightly changed the look and feel of >> The Big Game, but the fundamentals do NOT change. >> Humans still have the same "buttons" to press and >> NEVER seem to catch on that they're being played. > > Sorry ... but your incoherent rambling doesn't make any sense ... WTF > you mean with "Humans still have the same "buttons" to press" > > Please elaborate, or am I just too fucking dumb? When (if) you went to school - did you ride in the big bus, or the short bus ? Study Machiavelli yourself. I'd recommend 'Discourses' over 'Prince' because the previous supplies the WHY for the latter. As for "buttons", try "The Technological Society" by Jaques Ellul, old but good.
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| From | Bud Spencer <bud@campo.verano.it> |
|---|---|
| Date | 2022-07-25 17:09 +0300 |
| Message-ID | <alpine.BSF.2.21.9999.2207251708100.49913@cerebro.liukuma.net> |
| In reply to | #22068 |
[Multipart message — attachments visible in raw view] — view raw
On Mon, 25 Jul 2022, 25B.Z959 wrote: > On 7/25/22 9:17 AM, Bud Spencer wrote: >> On Sun, 24 Jul 2022, 25B.Z959 wrote: >> >>> On 7/24/22 8:18 PM, Bud Spencer wrote: >>>> On Sun, 24 Jul 2022, voyager55 wrote: >>>> >>>>> On 7/23/2022 5:50:29 PM, Bud Spencer wrote: >>>>>> >>>>>> On Sat, 23 Jul 2022, voyager55 wrote: >>>>>> >>>>>>> Retroshare, an interesting chatroom/IM/Usenet/E-mail/p2p file sharing >>>>>>> app, >>>>>>> has the tech part on lock, but my time in their Usenet-esque section >>>>>>> was rather unnerving. Actual-antisemitism (i.e. calls to 'finish the >>>>>>> job'), bomb-making instructions, unhinged conspiracy theories and >>>>>>> 'erotica' involving violence were just a handful of the topics >>>>>>> represented. >>>>>>> I'm not quite sure where the line is drawn, but "free speech for them >>>>>>> too" >>>>>>> meant Retroshare was philosophically consistent at the expense of >>>>>>> making >>>>>>> the community somewhere I'd never recommend to anyone else. A >>>>>>> community >>>>>>> that *can* become like that *will* become like that eventually. >>>>>> >>>>>> Not sure you understand how RetroShare works ... It's not ??community >>>>>> ?? that >>>>>> you walk into. RetroShare is just a decentralised secure communication >>>>>> thingie you can use with your friends and such. In order you get that >>>>>> kind >>>>>> >>>>>> of content you described, YOU have to go to nodes that are serving that >>>>>> kind of content. Nothing to do with the RetroShare, really. Everyone >>>>>> have >>>>>> >>>>>> their own nodes, you did too when you used it. Not sure how and why you >>>>>> ended up with such places ... and what is this "usenet-esque" thing you >>>>>> are talking about? >>>>>> >>>>>> From RetroShare website: >>>>>> >>>>>> How does it work? >>>>>> >>>>>> Retroshare allows you to create a network of computers (called nodes). >>>>>> Every user has it's own node. The exact location (the IP-address) of >>>>>> nodes >>>>>> >>>>>> is only known to neighbor nodes. You invite a person to become a >>>>>> neighbor >>>>>> >>>>>> by exchanging your Retroshare certificates with that person. >>>>>> >>>>>> Links between nodes are authenticated using strong asymmetric keys (PGP >>>>>> format) and encrypted using Perfect Forward Secrecy (OpenSSL >>>>>> implementation of TLS). >>>>>> >>>>>> On top of the network mesh, Retroshare provides services to securely >>>>>> and >>>>>> anonymously exchange data with other nodes in the network beyond your >>>>>> own >>>>>> >>>>>> friends. >>>>>> >>>>>> --- >>>>>> >>>>>> Seems too nice to be true. What's the catch? >>>>>> >>>>>> There is no catch. Retroshare is provided free of charge and does not >>>>>> generate any kind of money. It is the result of hard work that is only >>>>>> driven by the goals of providing a tool to evade censorship. >>>>>> >>>>>> The only catch is that you will need to build your own network: in >>>>>> order >>>>>> to use Retroshare, you have to recruit friends and exchange >>>>>> certificates >>>>>> with them, or join an existing network of friends. >>>>>> >>>>>> --- >>>>>> >>>>>> Like it's said above "The only catch is that you will need to build >>>>>> your >>>>>> own network". >>>>>> >>>>>> ??? BUD ??? >>>>>> >>>>> >>>>> I get how Retroshare works, and from a technical standpoint, I think >>>>> it's >>>>> fantastic. In practice, however, the exception you take to my experience >>>>> does two >>>>> things: it proves my point and reflects the difference between >>>>> Retroshare and >>>>> Twitter. >>>>> >>>>> When one starts up Retroshare for the first time and makes the certs and >>>>> so >>>>> forth, it's an empty slate. This reveals the problem Retroshare has with >>>>> the >>>>> network effect: while everyone uses Twitter because everyone uses >>>>> Twitter, >>>>> telling your friends "use Retroshare so we can make our own network" is >>>>> an >>>>> incredibly uphill battle that doesn't involve finding new people one >>>>> doesn't >>>>> already know. >>>>> So, the go-to solution for growing one's network in order to engage in a >>>>> community is to do what I did: do some Google searches and add random >>>>> users who >>>>> post their public keys on message boards and start growing the network. >>>>> This is >>>>> what I did, which led to the Newcomers Lobby I ended up joining, where >>>>> people >>>>> exchanged keys readily. I had nearly 200 people in my network at this >>>>> point; many >>>>> of them were unconnectable (one of Retroshare's issues is that it's >>>>> extremely >>>>> limited when users have CGNAT)...but I did have a pretty decent number >>>>> of >>>>> 'friends of friends' that yielded some actual chatrooms and some posts >>>>> on the >>>>> asynchronous one-to-many message boards (the "usenet-esque" function I >>>>> described). It was at this point where I started encountering the >>>>> content I >>>>> described. >>>>> >>>>> Retroshare works when the goal is for an insular community to connect, >>>>> but that's >>>>> not creating new connections. Moreover, even when a set of users do what >>>>> I did, >>>>> communication isn't necessarily effective - message board replies may >>>>> not >>>>> replicate all the way back to the person to whom one replies. Usenet >>>>> solves this >>>>> with NNTP peering, but Retroshare has no similar mechanism beyond nodes >>>>> that are >>>>> functionally centralized. >>>>> >>>>> All of that being said, the point I was making about Retroshare is that >>>>> the >>>>> community that I stumbled into was the sort of community that most >>>>> people would >>>>> consider 'unwelcoming' at the very least. "Just disconnect from those >>>>> nodes" >>>>> becomes extremely difficult to implement on any kind of scale, >>>>> especially due to >>>>> how Retroshare handles replication through 2nd-order nodes. >>>> >>>> All the tings you describet above haven't anything but ones own doing. >>>> Yet, you still kinda blame the means for your actions ... peculiar might >>>> some say. I'm not one of those. I just say, meh. >>>> >>> >>> ?The "tings you describet" he went into are quite relevant. >>> >>> ?Building Twitter/FB/IG replacements is a FORMIDIBLE task. >>> ?As said, people sign up for these things because everybody >>> ?else did so - they KNOW there will be a big 'community' >>> ?to make things interesting - to see and be seen. >>> >>> ?Sorry, but at this juncture, if you value Free Speech/Ideas >>> ?you CAN'T really build a new service - you have to seize >>> ?control of the existing services. >>> >>> ?It does not require force of arms or a revolution - it >>> ?requires MONEY, lots and lots of MONEY, and the WILL to >>> ?change things. As much as 'conservatives' (rightfully) >>> ?bitch I haven't seen them just BUYING these services >>> ?even though the money IS out there. I think this is quite >>> ?deliberate - in order to preserve a useful enemy. >>> >>> ?Machiavelli said that there is just no substitute for >>> ?an Enemy Of The People ... and if there aren't any then >>> ?you must INVENT/CULTIVATE such Enemies. THEN you can >>> ?crusade against them, get vast public support and the >>> ?power that goes with that AND the liberty to employ >>> ?'emergency authority'. >>> >>> ?The politics of power hasn't changed in thousands >>> ?of years. Machiavelli was mostly referencing Roman >>> ?political wisdom - which was still employed in >>> ?his day AND still in OUR day. Modern communications >>> ?tech has slightly changed the look and feel of >>> ?The Big Game, but the fundamentals do NOT change. >>> ?Humans still have the same "buttons" to press and >>> ?NEVER seem to catch on that they're being played. >> >> Sorry ... but your incoherent rambling doesn't make any sense ... WTF you >> mean with "Humans still have the same "buttons" to press" >> >> Please elaborate, or am I just too fucking dumb? > > > When (if) you went to school - did you ride in the > big bus, or the short bus ? Study Machiavelli yourself. > I'd recommend 'Discourses' over 'Prince' because the > previous supplies the WHY for the latter. > > As for "buttons", try "The Technological Society" > by Jaques Ellul, old but good. Yes. Yes. Done. Done. Try better. -- ₪ BUD ₪
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