No, but that's mostly because NNTP yet had to be invented (RFC977 is from 1986, a good 6 years after Usenet started, and was mostly used for client access, not backbone propagation, which was usually 'whatever cnews does' over UUCP).
> This is a very fundamental difference between a distributed ecosystem like usenet and a centralized walled garden.
Yet much closer to 'censorship' than whatever goes on at your typical walled garden today. The whole idea that Usenet was some sort of egalitarian free-for-all is just wrong: if you stepped out of line, you would lose your soapbox fast, often by an entire group/hierarchy/site being cut off.
But even if it did not get that far, the last response you would ever get on a group being plonk (the sound of being added to a killfile, often side-wide) was common. Besides that, *.moderated groups were also a thing, where messages would only be published upon manual approval from the group owners.
> No, but that's mostly because NNTP yet had to be invented (RFC977 is from 1986
I started on usenet in the late 80s, so my worldview always had NNTP.
> Yet much closer to 'censorship' than whatever goes on at your typical walled garden today.
This is not true at any level. Again, in a walled garden there is only one master, it's in or out, you are in or out.
Usenet is completely distributed, there is no center. Each site and each person can choose to not distribute or see certain things, but that has no influence outside their sphere of control. My site might no carry a given group, but many others do so I have choices. I might plonk you, but everyone else in the world sees your posts.
No, but that's mostly because NNTP yet had to be invented (RFC977 is from 1986, a good 6 years after Usenet started, and was mostly used for client access, not backbone propagation, which was usually 'whatever cnews does' over UUCP).
> This is a very fundamental difference between a distributed ecosystem like usenet and a centralized walled garden.
Yet much closer to 'censorship' than whatever goes on at your typical walled garden today. The whole idea that Usenet was some sort of egalitarian free-for-all is just wrong: if you stepped out of line, you would lose your soapbox fast, often by an entire group/hierarchy/site being cut off.
But even if it did not get that far, the last response you would ever get on a group being plonk (the sound of being added to a killfile, often side-wide) was common. Besides that, *.moderated groups were also a thing, where messages would only be published upon manual approval from the group owners.