Re: Briding Usenet to other social networks?

On Tue, 10 Feb 2026 00:24:34 +0000, "J. P. Gilliver" <[email protected]>
wrote:

>On 2026/2/9 1:38:57, Lawrence D’Oliveiro wrote:
>> On Sun, 8 Feb 2026 13:14:32 +0800, Mr. Man-wai Chang wrote:
>> 
>>> If someone (maybe a student from IT) could write bridges or gateways
>>> to sync Usenet with modern social networks like Facebook, Threads,
>>> Reddit, etc!! It isn't difficult, right? Because Echomail of Fidonet
>>> did it!! :)
>> 
>> We already had all that spam crap from Google Groups back when they
>> were gatewaying Usenet, the last thing we need is for the spam crap to
>> return from a new source.
>
>Yes and no; I do agree with what you say, that GG was often a pain. But,
>usenet will die on the vine - I doubt it will make 20 years, it might be
>less than five - unless it gets _some_ new users.

I stumbled onto Usenet in 1982, where I was greeted with despair because
Usenet was dying. Pessimists gave it a year or two, moderates said 5
years, and optimists said it might hang on for 8-10 years. Here we are,
40+ years later, and Usenet is still "dying", for small values of dying.

>As I've already posted, I suspect such a gateway won't happen - not for
>technical reasons, but for administrative: the individual operators of
>the "modern social networks" won't have it, either because they have a
>personal objection to the idea, or (to be fair I suspect more likely)
>because they anticipate legal trouble if they were to carry material of
>such varied (and to some extent untraceable) source[s].

On a smaller scale, there are multiple such gateways around, like
Homeownershub, for example. https://www.homeownershub.com/

On the main page, pick a topic on the left:

 Home Building
 Home Climate
 Home Improvement
 Lawn and Garden
 Other Home Topics

then look at the sub-topics that appear to the right. Note that each of
those sub-topics is actually a mirrored Usenet newsgroup. When people
post directly to the listed newsgroup, their post appears on the website
as a new forum post. If someone replies on the web forum, it gets copied
back to the newsgroup, much to the chagrin of the Usenet users.