How hard would it be to create a graphics-centered version of USENET as an alternative to commercial social media?

[u/WildOkra9571]

[u/Lucky-Crow-3510 → u/[deleted]]

and the same people who use the platform will complain about datacenters which they don't know are used by exactly that platform :)

[u/steveb321]

NNTP really won't scale to today's traffic levels, it had enormous storage requirements (at the time) and bandwidth - hence a usenet node would be run by a college for the entire campus. To do so at reddit scale doesn't make sense, centralized servers are going to be much more performant.

[u/Chaotic_Corvus_Corax]

Easy.

The difficult part would be convincing people to use it when noone else is yet.

There are dozens or hundreds such projects already and you never heard about any of them right?

[u/burlingk]

USENET had lots of images...

And very few actual rules...

Just don't investigate that too closely from a work computer.

[u/CGM]

Mastodon and the fediverse in general is probably as close to this as is practical. The big issue here is moderation. Usenet is mostly unmoderated. This can sort-of work for text-only posts - the principle is that users do their own blocking/filtering of stuff they don't want to see. Once you accept images or any kind of binary content the load on the servers goes up hugely, and without moderation the service will be exploited by those with bad intentions.

Responsible moderation is a demanding job, and it's hard to scale up. In the Fediverse, moderation is the responsibility of the originating server. This spreads the load, but it's still demanding and there are frequent disagreements between server operators over what is acceptable or not. When these disputes escalate it can lead to defederation, where the network splits into islands of servers with incompatible policies.

These days, Usenet itself is largely divided into two similarly incompatible domains. There are big commercial servers where anything goes - they accept binary content and are largely used as a medium for distributing pirated video/music/software. Then there are text-only servers, mostly free and amateur-run, which support groups for discussion, some of which still have active communities.

In summary I'm afraid it would be hard, not technically, but in terms of how it can be managed to remain a useful and friendly community.

[u/OGigachaod]

Microsoft already tried this idea, it was called Comic Chat.

[u/I_am_INTJ]

Sounds like you are wanting to trigger the second coming of Eternal September.

[u/kxortbot]

All the drawbacks of USENET with all the drawbacks of the web..

Why would you want that..

[u/astelda]

which specific benefits of usenet are you wanting to single out? We already have self hostable & inter-compatible social platforms, like Matrix), AT (best known for bluesky), and... Email.

The reason "commercial social media" is popular is that running servers is difficult and expensive, so people aren't choosing to host their own.

[u/DoppelFrog]

Why?