Usenet/Newsgroups: the last bastion of freedom online? - And if so, can someone tell us how to get into it?

[MirrorNoir]

So is usenet/newsgroups the last bastion of free speech were you can say whatever you want without fear of being censored or doxed? Or is it like IRC, an abandoned wasteland which no one uses anymore?

And if it is still a valid place to talk, discuss, and post freely, how does one get onto it? Anyone got any good guides to get onto usenet/newsgroups and do stuff? And is it true that downloading stuff from usenet is 100% safer and "easier" than downloading via torrents?

 

[From The Uncanny Valley]

They're still around?

 

[Beautiful Border]

Nobody has really bothered with Usenet for about fifteen years. There are probably a few small communities of hobbyists out there still using it but I would imagine the vast majority of it is now spam.

 

[The Intern]

They're still around?

No theyre all gone, please do not go looking for them.

but I would imagine the vast majority of it is now spam.

Its great for downloading pirated content

 

[Jeromeo]

ye theres lots of skitzo boomers on there if you know where to look. I get my daily chuckle there in the mornings. try for yourself at http://www.neodome.net/. though they do not support downloading binaries.

 

[Pixy]

No, Steam chat is.

 

[Sage In All Fields]

I don't get what's so hard about starting your own website.

 

[iots]

I don't get what's so hard about starting your own websit

Scalability

 

[Ponchik]

Nobody has really bothered with Usenet for about fifteen years. There are probably a few small communities of hobbyists out there still using it but I would imagine the vast majority of it is now spam.

most of the discussion-centric boards are either spam or boomers checking in every few months out of morbid curiosity, but usenet itself is still actively used for file sharing iirc

 

[MarvinTheParanoidAndroid]

No, there's Fediverse.

 

[Syaoran Li]

Usenet's been dead since the early 2000's.

Really, the only thing it's good for is reading through the archives of it on Google to get a feel of what Web 1.0 was like back in the day.

Still, colonizing older forums that are in decline but still get enough traffic from sheer inertia and oldfag diehards alone isn't a bad idea necessarily.

 

[Sage In All Fields]

Scalability

Why would you want scalability? So you can get eternal septembered?

 

[Harlay de Champvallon]

I know of it a quite good place for sharing high quality Jolly Roger films. Standard torrents are no longer useful, and fake torrents have long been a thing. I know someone who said he bundled rubbish including viruses, which the more careless would download and share, for some Chinese lads.

 

[Never Scored]

So is usenet/newsgroups the last bastion of free speech were you can say whatever you want without fear of being censored or doxed? Or is it like IRC, an abandoned wasteland which no one uses anymore?

And if it is still a valid place to talk, discuss, and post freely, how does one get onto it? Anyone got any good guides to get onto usenet/newsgroups and do stuff?

It's an abandoned wasteland with little pockets of people still talking about stuff. You can generally say whatever you want on it and even the left leaning crowd that's left on there are 50 year old computer nerds who are anti-censorship. If you join something like a Star Wars or Star Trek community there may be 2-3 posts a month. There are providers such as AIOE that allow you to create and read text posts without an account over an encrypted connection. If you use a VPN and then an encrypted connection to connect to the provider's servers there is virtually no risk of getting doxed.

And is it true that downloading stuff from usenet is 100% safer and "easier" than downloading via torrents?

Safer yes, easier no. It is safer for two reasons:

1) You Usenet connection is generally encrypted, your connection to the torrent is not. This is why people say you should only use torrents if you're using a VPN.

2) Torrents are peer to peer. You upload to others as you download. Usenet is one way, you only download. When people are sued for tens of thousands of dollars while torrenting, it's done in civil court with the logic that every person you uploaded a part of the file too cost the movie studio a sale. So if you seeded a part of the torrent to 1,500 people and the movie costs $10 on itunes, they argue you cost them $15,000. If you were only downloading, you can at most be found liable for a single copy of the movie in civil court.

You generally have to pay for binary access on Usenet, and you have to pay for a good search engine to find things to download. There are plenty of tutorials for downloading from Usenet. I won't tell you how to do it here, because the last thing we need is more retards on it posting about it on Facebook and shit attracting government attention. If you can't figure out how to do it yourself by searching around, you're too retarded for it.

The biggest thing Usenet has going for it both in terms of downloads and censorship is it's too obtuse for most people to figure out. Yes, entering server addresses and port numbers is over most people's heads. Sad but true.

 

[garakfan69]

No, there's Fediverse.

Fediverse is to Twitter what usenet is to forums. All based on open protocols and federated.

D has interesting forum software that's based on usenet protocols but still provides a friendly web interface:

https://forum.dlang.org/

 

[Looney Troons]

I have been using Forte Agent for nearly 20 years to download TV show rips, movies, and shitty video games. I’m not stopping anytime soon.

 

[Beavis]

I have been using Forte Agent for nearly 20 years to download TV show rips, movies, and shitty video games. I’m not stopping anytime soon.

Forte agent. That takes me back. Every now and then I use newsgroups to downloading something that is no longer being seeded on torrent sites. I bought 1TB of transfer from Astraweb ten years ago and still have 700GB left.

 

[DeadFish]

Radio internet is possible. Youd have to set it up.

Really to have alternatives youd have to wait for the current monopolies on power and wealth to collapse

 

[Jeromeo]

It's an abandoned wasteland with little pockets of people still talking about stuff. You can generally say whatever you want on it and even the left leaning crowd that's left on there are 50 year old computer nerds who are anti-censorship. If you join something like a Star Wars or Star Trek community there may be 2-3 posts a month. There are providers such as AIOE that allow you to create and read text posts without an account over an encrypted connection. If you use a VPN and then an encrypted connection to connect to the provider's servers there is virtually no risk of getting doxed.



Safer yes, easier no. It is safer for two reasons:

1) You Usenet connection is generally encrypted, your connection to the torrent is not. This is why people say you should only use torrents if you're using a VPN.

2) Torrents are peer to peer. You upload to others as you download. Usenet is one way, you only download. When people are sued for tens of thousands of dollars while torrenting, it's done in civil court with the logic that every person you uploaded a part of the file too cost the movie studio a sale. So if you seeded a part of the torrent to 1,500 people and the movie costs $10 on itunes, they argue you cost them $15,000. If you were only downloading, you can at most be found liable for a single copy of the movie in civil court.

You generally have to pay for binary access on Usenet, and you have to pay for a good search engine to find things to download. There are plenty of tutorials for downloading from Usenet. I won't tell you how to do it here, because the last thing we need is more retards on it posting about it on Facebook and shit attracting government attention. If you can't figure out how to do it yourself by searching around, you're too retarded for it.

The biggest thing Usenet has going for it both in terms of downloads and censorship is it's too obtuse for most people to figure out. Yes, entering server addresses and port numbers is over most people's heads. Sad but true.

The newsgroups I'm on are very active lol. checkout alt.slack

 

[Bland Crumbs]

No, there's Fediverse.

Yeah but...it starts with Fed.