[ih] Preparing for the splinternet

[Toerless Eckert]

Its not only the federation abilities that we loose by moving away from Usenet to the million
of siloed "forums" on the Internet. It is not even clear to me how important the federation
character is for most forums. But what is IMHO even more important for the end-user is the loss
of freedom of user experience (through NNTP).

The same (loss of freedom of user experience) is true for any type of video streaming compared to prior
analog/digital TV experiences, where every vendor of end-user equipment could build a customized
user-experience. And make that end-user-experience be the aggregator.

Of course, end-users are feeling that missing customized/aggregated experience the more streaming
services are offered and/or subscribed, but they seemingly are not in a position of enough power to
change that fundamentally - primarily because the platforms are making it hard if not impossible for
third-parties to to do such aggregation.

In one recent instances, TiVo tried to provide such an aggregated experience on the Android platform,
just to bail out, when Google announced that they too want to do it, further monopolizing the platform
at all stages end-to-end.

Lets see if regulators will wake up one day to this vertical monopolization and break it apart,
like arguably they at least tried with OS/browser.

*sigh*

Toerless

On Tue, Mar 15, 2022 at 10:49:01AM -0400, Miles Fidelman via Internet-history wrote:
> John Levine via Internet-history wrote:
> > According to Dan York via Internet-history <york at isoc.org>:
> > > I think NNTP had similar issues with the UX of news readers… but I also think there were larger issues there with
> > > companies seeking to use news as a means to keep people inside their new walled gardens.. and also to provide moderated
> > > experiences. (But that could be a whole other email thread.)
> > I still run a moderated newsgroup which gets significant traffic.
> I THINK, that DoD's logistics folks, still use NNTP as the platform for
> JOPES groups (anybody know for sure?).
> 
> > 
> > The problem with usenet wasn't the UI, which for the most part was the same as for
> > mail programs (Thunderbird still does both.)  It was that like any freeish push medium,
> > it was overrun with spam.  By the time we got the spam under control, most of the users
> > had moved on to other places.
> > 
> > 
> For a very short time, AOL was distributing an open source new server, that
> supported private newsgroups.  It was a really great alternative to running
> a listserver.
> 
> Unfortunately When AOL was sold, it went away.
> 
> It's a shame - NNTP has all the hooks for global identity and access
> control, based on crypto.  There's a real opportunity to build an open,
> distributed forum capability that isn't some technical abortion like
> Discord.  (Anybody want to collaborate on such a beast?)
> 
> Miles
> 
> -- 
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> In practice, there is.  .... Yogi Berra
> 
> Theory is when you know everything but nothing works.
> Practice is when everything works but no one knows why.
> In our lab, theory and practice are combined:
> nothing works and no one knows why.  ... unknown
> 
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