After reading a bit about Usenet, it seems to me as if the whole Fediverse seems to be just a reinvention of Usenet.
What’s the big difference?
Note: Generated with GPT-4 (dont hate me :) )
The Fediverse (with ActivityPub as its main protocol) and Usenet are both decentralized systems for distributing content across networks of computers. They’re used for communication and often form the backbone of various social media platforms and discussion forums. However, they have significant differences in terms of their origin, architecture, protocols, and usage. Let’s take a look at the distinctions between them:
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Origin & Era:
- Usenet: Originated in 1979, Usenet was one of the earliest Internet systems for public discussions. It was the predecessor to many modern forms of online discussions, such as web forums and bulletin boards.
- Fediverse/ActivityPub: The concept of the Fediverse (a portmanteau of “federation” and “universe”) emerged in the 2010s. It’s an ensemble of interconnected servers that are used for web publishing (like blogging, microblogging, video hosting) and file hosting. ActivityPub is one of the newer protocols that allows different services on the Fediverse to communicate with one another.
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Architecture:
- Usenet: Uses a store-and-forward model where messages are propagated from one server to another, but not all servers retain all messages. It’s based on a newsgroup system where you can post articles that are then propagated to other Usenet servers worldwide.
- Fediverse/ActivityPub: Is based on a federated model where each instance (or server) can communicate with others, but they are independent in terms of governance, content, and users. Each instance can apply its own policies and rules, and users of one instance can follow and interact with users from another.
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Content Structure:
- Usenet: Organized around newsgroups, which are somewhat equivalent to today’s forums or bulletin boards. Each newsgroup covers a particular topic, and people post messages and replies in a threaded manner.
- Fediverse: More diverse in content structure. Different software on the Fediverse serves different purposes. For instance, Mastodon is for microblogging (similar to Twitter), PeerTube is for video hosting, and Lemmy (which you mentioned) is more like a link aggregator or discussion platform (similar to Reddit).
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Protocols:
- Usenet: Primarily uses the Network News Transfer Protocol (NNTP) for distributing, querying, and retrieving news articles.
- Fediverse/ActivityPub: Utilizes ActivityPub, which is a decentralized social networking protocol. It allows user activity to be shared and understood across different services and platforms.
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Moderation & Control:
- Usenet: Largely unmoderated and has been known for both the free exchange of ideas and for spam or unwanted content.
- Fediverse: Each instance has its own moderation policies. This means one instance might be heavily moderated, while another might be more lenient.
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Modern Relevance:
- Usenet: While still operational, Usenet has declined in mainstream popularity and is now mostly a niche platform.
- Fediverse: Gaining traction, especially among those who value decentralization, privacy, and are disillusioned with mainstream social media platforms.
In summary, while both Usenet and the Fediverse offer decentralized ways of communication, they stem from different eras, are based on different architectures and protocols, and are used in different ways today.
Thanks ChatGPT!
And you don’t hear PLONK around here as much, either.
Well, you don’t hear it, but it does happen.
Don’t. Use your own words or don’t even respond to the thread.
This looks like written by ChatGPT, and it is in many ways straight up off-topic or wrong.
- Origin/Era: yeah, duh. That was already stated in the question.
- Architecture: It doesn’t actually show any differences, it just doesn’t talk about different parts of the architecture. Usenet is also federated and Fediverse instances also don’t store all messages.
- Content structure: This is the closest to an actual answer. But from what it seems, the default use case of the Usenet is identical to Lemmy.
- Protocols: Stated in the question. NNTP is also federated.
- Moderation: This is straight-up wrong. There are moderated and unmoderated newsgroups, same as there are moderated and unmoderated instances/communities on the fediverse.
- Modern Relevance: This whole section is irrelevant to the question.
Sorry I should marked it as AI :) From my experience usenet is more uncesored compared to fediverse. The most issue with fedi is that there is no tru replication system (mayby except sometimes data might be cached on other instance).
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Not super educated on the subject but I’m pretty sure Usenet was just one platform/standard whereas the fediverse is a bunch of interoperable standards. That’s a pretty huge leap I functionality
The Usenet is a very old and federated system. Same as the Fediverse, the Usenet is based around a single protocol (NNTP vs ActivityPub which Fediverse uses). Same as on the Fediverse, there are lots of different applications for it, that represent data in a different way.
Fediverse is one standard - ActivityPub.
Yeah but there’s different ways to interact with the fediverse via activitypub, whereas Usenet was just. Usenet
It’s actually several standards, the primary one is activitypub but mastodon also uses webfinger, and for example peertube uses p2p transfers to serve video
But they aren’t compatible, are they? Which would make it multiple, disconnected fediverses.
Actual attempt at an answer!
ActivityPub has actors and activities. These are very broadly defined - yes, a user is an actor, but so is a magazine in kbin. A like, a thread, and a microblog are all activities. These come from an actor, and they are sent to and cc’d to other actors in the fediverse.
NNTP, however, is not actor to actor, it’s server to server, to my understanding.
In practice, the way this is implemented here, it’s not that much of a practical difference, but it’s interesting to know.
The other difference is that NNTP servers would forward messages to their other known NNTP servers, essentially creating a distributed network of information. Per the ActivityPub protocol however, no instance is obligated to do that on ActivityPub. The only obligation for forwarding is if a) The values of to, cc, and/or audience contain a Collection owned by the server (e.g. followers is a Collection) AND The values of inReplyTo, object, target and/or tag are objects owned by the server. So basically if I receive something from lemmy.world user actor, to lemmy.world community actor… Even if kbin.social hasn’t received it and errored out, I have no obligation as the.coolest.zone to send it out to them.
Good question! I’d say that the fediverse is semantically much more complex and thus allows for more progress. It’s like the difference between gopher and the web.
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