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USENET, the OG social network, rises again like a text-only phoenix
(www.theregister.com)
This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
Yeah that was its downfall really.. anyone could run a server, but getting actual stuff onto it, and getting your posts recognised, required peering, which required being on someone's good side. I remember setting up a server back in the day and searching for someone that would do peering, and it just wasn't happening unless I agreed to take everything which on my small connection just wasn't feasable.
Binary groups becoming piracy hubs didn't help either.. it meant most of the small groups that ran servers gave up as the data requirements got too large.