A thought prompted by seeing instances growing and struggling to have enough resources. Then and now, people in groups trying to communicate something. Hardware became incredibly faster over decades, storage became incredibly more huge, and software bloat kept pace?
Know someone to get on or know someone to talk back and forth with? I mean, you could use google groups interface which is awful but still sort of an on ramp to it (and free). Plenty of usenet services out there though. you could pay a buck or two to blocknews.net for a few gigs and now you have “premium” access. discussion groups will take a long time to eat up 5 gigs. the real problem is sorting through to find the active groups not to mention finding decent nntp newsreader software for your platform. actually someone just posted a few days back in alt.fan.usenet some decently active discussion groups. got to start somewhere i suppose.
alt.culture.usenet: alt.fan.usenet: alt.obituaries: alt.privacy: alt.tv.simpsons: ba.broadcast: comp.ai: comp.arch: comp.compilers: comp.dcom.telecom: comp.infosystems.gemini: comp.infosystems.gopher: comp.lang.c++: comp.lang.c: comp.lang.forth: comp.lang.misc: comp.lang.python.announce: comp.lang.python: comp.lang.raspberry-pi: comp.lang.tcl: comp.misc: comp.mobile.android: comp.mobile.misc: comp.os.cpm: comp.os.linux.announce: comp.os.linux.misc: comp.risks: comp.sys.apple2: comp.sys.ibm.pc.games.action: comp.text.tex: comp.unix.shell: gnu.emacs.help: misc.legal.moderated: misc.taxes.moderated: news.admin.moderation: news.announce.important: news.announce.newgroups: news.groups.proposals: news.groups: news.software.readers: rec.arts.drwho: rec.arts.movies.current-films: rec.arts.sf.tv: rec.arts.sf.written: rec.autos.sport.f1: rec.aviation.soaring: rec.bicycles.tech: rec.food.cooking: rec.games.backgammon: rec.music.beatles: rec.music.classical.recordings: rec.radio.amateur.antenna: rec.radio.amateur.boatanchors: rec.radio.amateur.equipment: rec.radio.amateur.homebrew: rec.radio.amateur.misc: rec.radio.amateur.moderated: rec.radio.amateur.policy: rec.radio.amateur.space: rec.radio.info: rec.radio.shortwave: rec.sport.rowing: rec.woodworking: sci.astro: sci.electronics.design: sci.electronics.repair: sci.logic: sci.physics.relativity: sci.physics.research: talk.origins: uk.comp.sys.mac: uk.radio.amateur.moderated: uk.rec.sheds: uk.sci.weather:Haven’t paid close attention, and just knew that when I see mention of Usenet, there’s all talk about invites nowadays.
Usenet is mainly used for pirating these days. The invites are probably referring to indexers which are sites that post nzb files that tell your Usenet client which posts to download for a certain movie/tv show/ etc.