Usenet still exists and is actually getting better with time. There's not much spam and the only people there left are geeks that care about the topic. The eternal september is over and it's time to start again. You can get text only access for your usenet client (or use a web interface) at https://www.eternal-september.org/ . I post on alt.startrek and alt.cyberpunk every now and then and get decent conversations. I also posted back in the 90s.
Usenet need not rely on google groups mangling of deja news.
Thanks for mentioning Eternal September [0]! I used their site in the past but had been using http://news.aioe.org [1] up until it went offline [2] possibly due to a disk failure [3], as it seemed more performant than Eternal September. As far as no-cost text-only newsgroup read/write access, I think we are down to Eternal September and possibly the BlueWorld Usenet Farm[4]. Though arguably, if I'm interested in keeping newsgroups alive, perhaps paying for access from a provider such as EasyNews, GigaNews, etc. [5].
Thanks for this. I was a heavy NNTP user back in the early 90s and will have a look at your recommendations.
I've got a lot of spare disk space ,(several TB)... maybe I could setup a mirror. Also, with current BTRFS compression, it should be possible to achieve good ratios for text files.
Usenet need not rely on google groups mangling of deja news.