I'm surprised I had to scroll down this far to see this. Usenet is still very much alive. It's not what it once was, but I regularly participate on several technical newsgroups that are still fairly active. The signal-to-noise ratio is not great, but killfiles (filters) can help with that.
"Yes, Usenet still exists, technically. In terms of active use, outside a very few limited newsgroups (mostly peers of technical mailing lists), it's dead to today's Internet users."
I suspect just as many users get just as much value today out of Usenet as they did in the early 90s, it just seems failed by comparison to explosive growth of the web.
I was a usenet user back in the day, but I don't actually know how I would access it now. Is there any other way than using a commercial provider? My ISP certainly doesn't provide access and haven't for I don't know how long.
_kst_|6 years ago
I use the https://www.eternal-september.org/ free NNTP server. There are others.
dredmorbius|6 years ago
https://old.reddit.com/r/dredmorbius/comments/3c3xyu/why_use...
(From one of the primary sources linked in TFA.)
smhenderson|6 years ago
Thanks!
pwg|6 years ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Usenet_newsreaders
And you can get free access to the text groups (no alt.binaries.*) from, at least, either of:
Eternal September:
https://www.eternal-september.org/
or
AIOE
https://www.aioe.org/
thom|6 years ago
rjsw|6 years ago
kreddor|6 years ago
lunias|6 years ago