Re: But is UseNet "Social Media"??

On 2026-02-02 05:36, Steve Hayes wrote:
> On Sun, 1 Feb 2026 22:54:39 +0800, "Mr. Man-wai Chang" <[email protected]> wrote:
>> On 2/1/2026 9:33 PM, Frank Slootweg wrote:
>>
>>>
>>> "Usenet, conceived by Tom Truscott and Jim Ellis in 1979 at the
>>>    University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and Duke University, was
>>>    the first open social media app, established in 1980."
>>>
>>>     So I guess that settles it once and for all! :-)
>>
>>
>> "social media app"? Usenet was an "app"? I think it's a mistake. :)
> 
> A newsreader is an app (app is an abbreviation for "application
> program").
> 
> Windows 11 will have one set of apps to a\ccess Usenet, and Linux
> another.
> 
> But Usenet itself is not an app. What is it?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usenet

Usenet

Usenet (/ˈjuːznɛt/),[1] a portmanteau of User's Network,[1] is a 
worldwide distributed discussion system available on computers. It was 
developed from the general-purpose Unix-to-Unix Copy (UUCP) dial-up 
network architecture. Tom Truscott and Jim Ellis conceived the idea in 
1979, and it was established in 1980.[2] Users read and post messages 
(called articles or posts, and collectively termed news) to one or more 
topic categories, known as newsgroups. Usenet resembles a bulletin board 
system (BBS) in many respects and is the precursor to the Internet 
forums that were developed after the introduction of the World Wide Web. 
Discussions are threaded, as with web forums and BBSes, though posts are 
stored on the server sequentially.[3][4]

A major difference between a BBS or web message board and Usenet is the 
absence of a central server and dedicated administrator or hosting 
provider. Usenet is distributed among a large, constantly changing set 
of news servers that store and forward messages to one another via "news 
feeds". Individual users may read messages from and post to a local (or 
simply preferred) news server, which can be operated by anyone, and 
those posts will automatically be forwarded to any other news servers 
peered with the local one, while the local server will receive any news 
its peers have that it currently lacks. This results in the automatic 
proliferation of content posted by any user on any server to any other 
user subscribed to the same newsgroups on other servers.

As with BBSes and message boards, individual news servers or service 
providers are under no obligation to carry any specific content, and may 
refuse to do so for many reasons: a news server might attempt to control 
the spread of spam by refusing to accept or forward any posts that 
trigger spam filters, or a server without high-capacity data storage may 
refuse to carry any newsgroups used primarily for file sharing, limiting 
itself to discussion-oriented groups. However, unlike BBSes and web 
forums, the dispersed nature of Usenet usually permits users who are 
interested in receiving some content to access it simply by choosing to 
connect to news servers that carry the feeds they want.

Usenet is culturally and historically significant in the networked 
world, having given rise to, or popularized, many widely recognized 
concepts and terms such as "FAQ", "flame", "sockpuppet", and "spam".[5] 
In the early 1990s, shortly before access to the Internet became 
commonly affordable, Usenet connections via FidoNet's dial-up BBS 
networks made long-distance or worldwide discussions and other 
communication widespread.[6]

The name Usenet comes from the term "users' network".[3] The first 
Usenet group was NET.general, which quickly became net.general.[7] The 
first commercial spam on Usenet was from immigration attorneys Canter 
and Siegel advertising green card services.[7]

On the Internet, Usenet is transported via the Network News Transfer 
Protocol (NNTP) on Transmission Control Protocol (TCP) port 119 for 
standard, unprotected connections, and on TCP port 563 for Secure 
Sockets Layer (SSL) encrypted connections.

-- 
Cheers, Carlos.
ES🇪🇸, EU🇪🇺;