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Why would anyone decide to use USENET these days?
(lemmy.darkc0de.one)
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this post was submitted on 14 Aug 2026
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I loved USENET back in the day, but it doesn't do what it used to.
Pure, or nearly pure text boards are still useful, but that's how I use Lemmy now. I just wish it had more general buy-in.
Honestly, you could look at USENET as federation before federation needed to be a thing. Way back when it was all hosted mostly on university servers. Lemmy seems to me to be very much the heir to USENET.
I also prefer the text based nature of USENET, it was simpler and honestly easier to create whole fleshed out ideas. Your article had a nice stage and a spotlight all to its own in each message pane, meanwhile the modern forums have you view the text within surrounding comments or text. I just think it makes it less intimate than it was before. Though, easier to scroll through
I would say that I liked the simpler technology stack that it used to communicate, even working over high-latency high-throughput transfer links (i.e. Tape drives over 747s back in the day). Though that is specifically UUCP related rather than USENET as a whole.