The current state of #Mastodon does remind me much of the glory days of #Usenet so very long ago. But it's worth remembering that what ultimately "brought down" Usenet as an effective communication tool, was not the technical issues of communications between distributed hosts without any true centralization, but abuse problems caused by a percentage of users, which proved to be effectively intractable.

@lauren

You mean when the signal to noise ratio asymptotically approached zero?

@lauren The only advantage we have now is that there is awareness of the problem, and perhaps some thinking about how to build defenses without ruining what's good about the place.

@lauren

I could direct you to a group that is still active and largely free of spam and flame wars - well in recent years anyway. Not for the fainthearted, but usually self regulating. Also often a FOAK for some subjects that are strictly OT. Not going to though - want to keep it that way.