I thought Trump was a shoo-in? Christ knows that's the message these people are getting over and over again, drummed into their heads so they can get good and pissed off when they're told the truth.
Windows 10 users, I've been using kill-update.exe for years now to only update Windows when I damn well want to.
Disclaimer: before the inevitable dogpile, yes, this is bad practice. Yes there are many reasons why you might not want to do this. Yes, allowing your software to update itself whenever it wants is safer. No, I don't care. If you don't care either, this software might be for you.
Huh. Well, everybody I hung out with knew about it. IIRC moderation was tacked on after USENET had already taken off. If a newsgroup wasn't proposed with moderation then it couldn't be moderated, so most of them weren't. It's pretty wild that they didn't understand how desperately necessary it would be. In order to get a group to be moderated you'd have to get a proposal for an entirely new group through the committee, which was nearly impossible. The process was so slow and bureaucratic that the web literally just showed up and stole it all in what seemed like overnight. I remember when I switched over... it was like 2002, 2003? I've never had as much fun on any web forum as I had on USENET though. Those were fun times. And don't get me started on the web's lack of threaded discussions. Drove me NUTS.
I asked my SO what she thought his wallpaper might be. First answer: himself.
Yes pardon me I left off the word "largely" before "unmoderated." We all knew it was possible, but it didn't matter because, as you point out - nobody really did.
Which doesn't really change the point does it. These people are de-facto kings ruling us; their wealth subverts the entire idea of democracy. You can't tax them out of existence without taxing their wealth because none of them have any actual income. Banks fall all over themselves to fund anything they care to do.
In any case, 2% isn't going to do fuck-all even if it gets passed which is hardly a certainty.
Google buying Dejanews, the largest archive of all messages, and merging it with the travesty that was (and still is) Google Groups just about killed the whole thing.
Well that and the fact that it was unmoderated which eventually led to it being populated almost exclusively with mentally ill troll savants. USENET by the end was the digital equivalent of a horror zoo of abused monkeys slinging shit all over everyone and themselves.
Problem? Singular?
A concentrated effort by bad-faith actors who understand that the only thing Americans love more than being told they're right is being able to feel smugly superior. Tap into that with the power of social media and voila.
Well, I mean... not much better.