First Forth, C and Python, now comp.lang.tcl latest Usenet programming forum nuked by Google Groups
- Reference: 1622579597
- News link: https://www.theregister.co.uk/2021/06/01/google_usenet/
- Source link:
The reason, according to Arjen Markus, an engineer based in the Netherlands and Tcl programmer, is that [1]a spammer posted abusive content to the group.
"We have seen a single obnoxious poster who posts long Italian posts ranting about murderers and other criminals," said Markus in a Hacker News [2]post . "The posts are easily recognized because they are all in capitals with very long titles. As a group we have reported these postings as abuse and then they get hidden from the ordinary overview. For this sanitary action we seem to have been punished."
[3]
[4]
[5]
The group for a time displayed the following notice:
Banned content warning comp.lang.tcl has been identified as containing spam, malware, or other malicious content.
Google Groups users subsequently posted [6]support requests asking for comp.lang.tcl to be reinstated to Google Groups.
As of about 10:22 PDT, [7]access was restored .
The support moderator responding to the complaints about the takedown [8]said that there's no way to prevent a Usenet newsgroup from being banned or unbanned because the group has no owner.
[9]‘Elders of the Internet’ apologise for social media, recommend Trump filters to fix it
[10]Web Foundation launches internet hippie manifesto: 'We've lost control of our data, it is being used against us'
[11]If Google and Apple won't help us, we'll sort it out the Linux way: 21 companies form Mobile Native Foundation
[12]Yahoo ! Groups ! to ! shut ! down ! completely ! on ! December ! 15 ! ... Tens ! mourn !
Google did not immediately respond to a request to explain what happened, though it has been a longstanding problem that Google's response to unlawful or problematic content has been to remove entire discussion groups rather than individual posts.
The Usenet group's fortuitously brief exclusion from Google Groups is the latest in a series of content takedowns affecting historic Usenet newsgroups both related to programming and otherwise.
Usenet deja vu
Google took over the Usenet archive when it acquired Deja News in 2001.
Almost a year ago, [13]comp.lang.forth and [14]comp.lang.lisp , were also [15]removed from Google Groups . And they remain unavailable. Likewise, [16]comp.lang.c and [17]comp.lang.python are currently inaccessible via Google Groups.
The suppression of Usenet groups has cultural, academic, and technical consequences. Some active systems, for example, [18]still rely on Forth .
[19]
There are options, however, to find content banished from Google Groups. NNTP (Network News Transfer Protocol) client software may provide access denied by the Google Groups web interface (corporate firewall permitting). As an alternative, other copies of these discussions, some of which date back to the early 1980s, have been saved to the [20]Giganews Usenet Collection and to the [21]Usenet Historical Collection at the Internet Archives.
Recently, rec.games.video.sony disappeared.
"This is a historical group with Usenet messages going back to the 90's," wrote an individual identified as Chris Barbarello in a [22]Google Groups support request last month. "Right now I can't view any of them because Groups is throwing a 'banned content' warning. What can I do to view the historical posts? There has to be a way to salvage the historical data for viewing."
[23]
Presently, that way routes around Google Groups. And perhaps it's not too much to hope that Google might one day find a way to target troublesome content with more precision. ®
Get our [24]Tech Resources
[1] https://groups.google.com/g/comp.lang.tcl/c/9PifMRiaBg0
[2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27352517
[3] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_software/front&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=2&c=2YLcCYjIYYWXH80lk@JvbbwAAAJg&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D2%26raptor%3Dcondor%26pos%3Dtop%26test%3D0
[4] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_software/front&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=4&c=44YLcCYjIYYWXH80lk@JvbbwAAAJg&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D4%26raptor%3Dfalcon%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[5] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_software/front&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=3&c=33YLcCYjIYYWXH80lk@JvbbwAAAJg&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D3%26raptor%3Deagle%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[6] https://support.google.com/groups/thread/111934407/comp-lang-tcl-should-not-be-banned?hl=en
[7] https://groups.google.com/g/comp.lang.tcl/c/zLUMWyaUy4Y
[8] https://support.google.com/groups/thread/111934407/comp-lang-tcl-should-not-be-banned?hl=en&msgid=112006290
[9] https://www.theregister.com/2018/07/17/elders_of_the_internet_apologise_for_social_media_recommend_trump_filters_to_fix_it/
[10] https://www.theregister.com/2018/11/05/save_the_internet_hippie_manifesto/
[11] https://www.theregister.com/2021/03/04/mobile_native_foundation/
[12] https://www.theregister.com/2020/10/13/yahoo_groups_shutdown/
[13] https://groups.google.com/g/comp.lang.forth
[14] https://groups.google.com/g/comp.lang.lisp
[15] https://support.google.com/groups/thread/61391913/some-usenet-groups-suspended-in-goggle-groups
[16] https://groups.google.com/g/comp.lang.c
[17] https://groups.google.com/g/comp.lang.python
[18] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_Firmware
[19] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_software/front&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=4&c=44YLcCYjIYYWXH80lk@JvbbwAAAJg&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D4%26raptor%3Dfalcon%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[20] https://archive.org/details/giganews
[21] https://archive.org/details/usenethistorical
[22] https://support.google.com/groups/thread/109142267/how-can-i-get-a-group-unblocked-rec-games-video-sony?hl=en
[23] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_software/front&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=3&c=33YLcCYjIYYWXH80lk@JvbbwAAAJg&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D3%26raptor%3Deagle%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[24] https://whitepapers.theregister.com/
Amazing how bad publicity works wonders
[1]comp.lang.c and [2]comp.lang.python are back.
As is the spam so we'll see how long they last.
[1] https://groups.google.com/g/comp.lang.c
[2] https://groups.google.com/g/comp.lang.python
Re: Amazing how bad publicity works wonders
The spammer does so with their gmail account, why not just ban the spammer?
A sign of things to come
The group was automatically removed by an algorithm. Thankfully, there were enough people affected that the shouting was loud enough to force Google to wake up a human to investigate and the group was quickly reinstated.
If you are just one person and your post/video/blog gets removed by an algorithm, nobody will hear you shouting and your chances of doing anything about it are very close to zero.
With the EU's digital copyright directive now being implemented in EU countries, combined with the other censorship directives which are just around the corner, expect to see your posts, videos and other content subjected to arbitrary automated censorship. There will be no appeal. Your content will simply vanish and you will have no idea why and no recourse.
For any hosting company smaller than the current giants, the cost of buying and running the mandatory automated censorship systems will force you to close your business. This will further cement the domination of the Internet by a handful of mega-rich Internet companies and copyright troll organisations. Before the end of the decade, the Internet at large will have become something closely resembling the bland and stupefying television of today.
Free speech will only exist in remote, encrypted corners of the Internet, only accessible if you can work around the inevitable provider-level blocks which will be mandated to prevent you accessing these havens. Succeeding in securing access to what is left of the free Internet will end up with you being put on a watch list and your career and social possibilities becoming more and more restricted.
Welcome to the brave new world.
Recall what Deja Vu was...
Deja Vu was originally just an NNTP archive and search tool, and a well designed, easy to use one too. Until Google took it over. Personally, I thought it wasn't nearly as good a search tool as it had been after Google hacked it about and made it post as well: IMO they'd have done better to have left it alone and written their own newsreader to go with it since, at the time, the only really good newsreader was the excellent Forte Agent. Unfortunately, its Windows only. Like Mozilla Thunderbird, it handles both mail and newsgroups.
Meanwhile, if you want a decent newsreader with easy-to-use tools for blocking obnoxious posters and threads and that isn't windows-only, try installing Mozilla Thunderbird, which handles both mail and newsgroups. Pan used to be the top of the pack until its developers lost interest: it now seems to be abandonware.
Agent, Thunderbird (and Pan) all have good tools for blocking individual trolls and/or complete threads, and you can make a block permanent or just set it for a specified period.
Re: Recall what Deja Vu was...
"Pan used to be the top of the pack until its developers lost interest: it now seems to be abandonware."
Pan is still being maintained, after a fairly major re-write a few years back. It still does what's needed. It's even useful for binary downloads these days and can even import NZB files if that's what floats your boat.
Ban Google
I gave up on Usenet well over a decade ago. Google was a massive sewer pipe that operators never had the guts to disconnect. Many groups were getting 1000 to 10000 daily spams from Chinese criminals using Google. At that point client-side filtering of Google posts becomes hopelessly inefficient. My ISP started dropping the most heavily abused groups because the bandwidth was too high. They preferred that over dropping everything from Google.
These spams were never visible in Google Groups even though they came from Google. It was clearly intended to harm other Usenet operators.
Denial of service attacks?
So, the modern internet provides an incredibly convenient and easy way to perform denial of service attacks on discussions. You would think companies in the social media space would have come up with better responses to this kind of thing by now.
And back in the day, most Usenet groups were moderated. That would have stopped this kind of thing rather quickly with a lot less fuss. Algorithms are a long ways from being reasonable alternatives.
Because of sheer incompetence
Google's mishandling of the USENET groups goes back over a decade. Looking up iconic articles became more and more difficult, until there was no point to logging on to it at all.
It would not surprise me to find that some of the "missing" groups have just been lost, and not backed up.