network news transfer protocol

Posted Oct 26, 2017 22:08 UTC (Thu) by Cyberax (✭ supporter ✭, #52523)
In reply to: network news transfer protocol by Garak
Parent article: The trouble with text-only email

No it won't. You simply have an unhealthy obsession with SMTP (and NNTP).

NNTP died not because ISPs are cracking down on users the moment they start a listening socket on port 119. It died because the whole NNTP infrastructure requires a lot of attention and maintenance. And nobody cares about it, since simple web forums are MORE functional for an average user.

And there actually is a fair number of self-hosted blogs/forums.

network news transfer protocol

Posted Oct 26, 2017 23:49 UTC (Thu) by rodgerd (guest, #58896) [Link]

Even more important, in my opinion, is the ability of forums to exercise some sort of control over their own content without requiring (easily bypassed) per-post moderation.

network news transfer protocol

Posted Oct 29, 2017 3:40 UTC (Sun) by Garak (guest, #99377) [Link]

NNTP died not because ISPs are cracking down on users the moment they start a listening socket on port 119. It died because the whole NNTP infrastructure requires a lot of attention and maintenance. And nobody cares about it, since simple web forums are MORE functional for an average user.
And there actually is a fair number of self-hosted blogs/forums.

I didn't say an ISP crackdown was the cause of NNTP's death. I again highlight the aspect of my analysis that you seem indifferent to. Things didn't come to where they are all at one, it was a remarkably fascinating evolution of computer network communication tool development over the last several decades. My theory is that what NNTP required to be successful was *development*, because indeed, as it was/is, the attention and maintenance requirements were/are too high for it to succeed in competition with a multitude of smaller scale web forum platforms. My theory is that if there was a FreeSpeech/NetworkNeutrality protection that allowed anyone to compete and test further development without paying a premium to aws/linode or their own ISP for 'business class' service that allows the operation of an NNTP server, then we would see the *development* increase to a point where NNTP could outcompete the myriad of alternatives that have outcompeted it in the last decade or two.

At the end of the day, I see significant value in what usenet achieved for end-user experience in some important ways. An analogy would be the difference between the historical ubiquitous cable television channel line-ups, versus a different front-end app for netflix/hulu/disney/cbs/nbc/etc. We needn't explore all the nuance in this thread, but there was something pretty amazing about the breadth of channels all in one place, with users having full control over the development of the front-end. I think if users could have full control over the back-end as well, development would reach a critical mass point where NNTP could easily once again outshine the currently more popular alternatives.

And I have no particular attachment to NNTP(and I'll admit, you were right to throw SMTP alongside it) as it was or is. My attachment is to what it basically accomplished. I think there are important facets of what SMTP and NNTP accomplished, that as they fade away, would be a shame to lose. I think ordinary users with FOSS techniques could easily resolve the serious deficiencies that existed and still exist. But a big problem is that there are big money interests, Google with GMail and googlegroups, and Reddit amongst others that depend on the high bar to ordinary people being able to operate group/email back-end servers. I think that Google's Network Neutrality stance is entirely corrupted by their monetary interest in how things evolved. And I think that is having very negative effects on how things continue to evolve.