"Last, I must express my deep disappointment and disbelief at the accusation of excluding people from minority or marginalized backgrounds. As someone who highly values diversity and inclusion, this accusation is not only unfounded but also insulting. Throughout my career, I have consistently supported work towards creating a welcoming and inclusive environment for all individuals, regardless of their background." -- Eelco Dolstra, (Nix Founder)
For those who might think that NNTP does not scale, keep in mind that in its heyday Usenet was not the only NNTP network. There were countless niche NNTP servers not necessarily peering with Usenet. Some niche NNTP communities continue to thrive to this day.
A small closed network of just a few peers can service hundreds to thousands of participants. Social media architecture has accustomed users to having the whole world flooding their feed or inbox, when it need not be this way. This is why I like NNTP. The lack of overwhelming mass participation is a feature, not a bug.
I love treasure hunting. Sometimes Usenet feels like the dusty old thrift store of the Internet. If you have ever found a thrift store with rows of shelves chock full of books, old compact discs, and ancient cassette tapes, then you know what I mean.
Usenet runs on the NNTP protocol. NNTP stands for "Network News Transfer Protocol." It is not a mailing list but many mailing list operators mirror their mailing lists in a NNTP newsgroup. This is done with a mail-to-news gateway script.
Usenet is typically accessed with a news reader application like Thunderbird. Thunderbird is not just a email client. It is also a news client that allows you to subscribe to and post to newsgroups.
You can enjoy threaded discussion in unmoderated groups without worrying about viewpoint censorship.
You can run your own NNTP peer and create your own newsgroups for your own community.
You can use a threaded newsreader application (like Thunderbird or Seamonkey or Claws Mail) which is much more efficient and organized than web forums.
People are working on this. In particular Retro Guy has one very good web front end that is really the only viable replacement for Google Groups at this point. Look for Rocksolid Light (rslight) on gitlab.
It has a retro look on purpose. There are several themes included and it is really easy to create a new theme CSS file.
You can run a peer to carry text groups on a raspberry pi or a cheap VPS. Visit the rocksolid.* hierarchy on Usenet if you have questions about running a peer. Please don't ask questions about Rocksolid here on HN, as that would not benefit the people learning in the newsgroups.
Disclosure: I am not the maintainer of Rocksolid Light and I am not promoting my own product. I just like the software and I think the maintainer has the right ideas and right attitude of retro-styled usability in his project.
Maybe I should pop a pineapple pizza in the oven and watch the drama.