Tag: Usenet

JUST FOR FUN: Introducing Gawker: The Social Media Revolution That Revives Usenet and Reinvents News

Social media is broken. News is broken. Online discourse is broken. What if we could fix all of them at once? What if we built a platform where the best aspects of Usenet, Wikipedia, and modern social media converged into something entirely new?

Welcome to Gawker, a platform where you don’t just consume content—you actively shape it.

The Core Idea: Groups, Posts, and Gawking

At its heart, Gawker is structured around Groups and Posts—a modern reimagining of the old Usenet TIN experience. But unlike Usenet, Gawker is centralized, curated, and designed for the modern web.

  • Groups: The backbone of the platform. Every discussion, every debate, every breaking news event unfolds in a Group. Groups can be personal (friends, interests) or public (news, cultural topics). Some are user-created, while others are curated by the Gawker editorial team to maintain quality and prevent spam.
  • Posts: Unlike Twitter’s short blurbs or Reddit’s comment chains, Gawker Posts are meant to be full-length, longform when necessary, and editable in-line. You’re not just commenting—you’re contributing to a growing, evolving conversation.
  • Gawking: The core mechanic of engagement. Before you can post in a Group, you must first gawk—that is, read, observe, and engage with discussions passively. This system weeds out trolls, spammers, and low-effort engagement, ensuring that only thoughtful, invested users shape the conversation.

Inline Editing: The Killer Feature

Imagine reading an article from The New York Times, The Guardian, or The Atlantic—but instead of just commenting below it, you can edit it inline, debate specific passages, and propose alternative takes right inside the article itself.

That’s the power of Gawker’s Inline Editing feature. Instead of a static comment section, each article becomes a live document, where approved users can highlight, annotate, and suggest improvements in a WYSIWYG editor. Media outlets benefit from increased engagement, real-time corrections, and transparent discourse—all while sharing ad revenue and subscriptions through our partnership model.

This feature takes media criticism, fact-checking, and collaborative journalism to an entirely new level. No more shouting into the void about bad reporting—now you can fix it.

Breaking News, Reimagined

Twitter revolutionized live news, but it’s become a chaotic, unreliable mess. Gawker takes it to the next level: real-time collaborative reporting inside structured Groups.

Here’s how breaking news works on Gawker:

  1. Anyone can create a Group dedicated to an unfolding event.
  2. Some Groups, run by journalists or trusted curators, get special visibility.
  3. Instead of fragmented tweets, journalists and experts co-write a live story, visible to thousands of gawkers who watch the reporting unfold in real-time.
  4. Trusted users can suggest edits, annotate facts, and even provide eyewitness updates.

It’s like a live Google Doc of breaking news, where transparency and accuracy take center stage. No more waiting for updates—the news is happening before your eyes.

AI-Powered Discovery & Moderation

Finding great conversations is hard, and moderation is even harder. Gawker solves both problems with AI-assisted Group discovery and engagement:

  • AI-Suggested Groups: Based on your interests, Gawker recommends Groups you should follow, ensuring you never miss a great conversation.
  • Smart Moderation: AI helps flag low-quality content, but human users make the final call. This ensures fair, transparent moderation, free from both spam and overreach.
  • Reputation-Based Privileges: Instead of arbitrary moderation bans, Gawker uses a reputation system: earn respect, get more control. Abuse it, lose it.

Reviving the Best of Usenet Culture

Gawker isn’t just another social media site—it’s a love letter to the golden age of the internet. We’re bringing back what made Usenet great, with modern tools to make it even better:

  • Deep Discussions: No more shallow engagement. Gawker’s post structure encourages long-form, thoughtful discussion.
  • Rich Metadata & Cross-Thread Referencing: Want to reference a debate from three years ago? Instant cross-thread linking keeps discussions alive.
  • User Reputation & Global Edit Privileges: The ultimate status symbol? The ability to edit anything—reserved only for Gawker’s most trusted users.

The Future of Social Media Starts Here

We’ve lost something in the transition from early internet forums to today’s algorithm-driven platforms. Gawker is about bringing it back—better than ever.

  • A space for serious discussion, collaborative media, and real-time news.
  • A platform where you don’t just react to content—you shape it.
  • A system that rewards thoughtful engagement, not outrage farming.

Are you ready to gawk? Let’s build the future of online discourse—together.

Reimagining Social Media: Could a ‘Collaborative, Long-Form’ Platform Be the Antidote to Information Overload?

We live in an age of information overload. The constant barrage of short-form content, fleeting updates, and algorithmic echo chambers can leave us feeling overwhelmed and disconnected. What if there was a different approach to social media, one that prioritized depth, collaboration, and thoughtful engagement?

This post explores a thought experiment: a new social media platform – tentatively named “Gawker” (a nod to the concept of observing and participating, and, yes, borrowing from the blog world) – that reimagines the core principles of online interaction. It draws inspiration from the structured, threaded discussions of Usenet’s TIN reader, but updates it for the modern, collaborative web.

The Core Idea: Open Collaboration, Controlled Access

Gawker is built on a few key principles:

  • Long-Form Content: Unlike the character limits of many platforms, Gawker embraces long-form posts, encouraging in-depth analysis, detailed reporting, and nuanced discussion. Think articles, essays, and even collaborative book chapters.
  • HTML-Based Rich Media: The platform fully supports embedded images, videos, interactive elements, and rich formatting, moving beyond the limitations of plain text.
  • Group-Centric Organization: Everything revolves around Groups. Users organize their connections and interests into Groups, creating curated streams of relevant content. Onboarding requires this grouping, forcing intentionality.
  • Real-Time Collaborative Editing: This is the game-changer. Posts are treated like “living documents,” collaboratively edited in real-time, similar to Google Docs. Imagine journalists, experts, and citizen reporters working together on a breaking news story, in public.
  • “Gawking” vs. Contributing: Anyone can observe (gawk) at content within a Group. However, contributing to a Group you don’t own requires proving your “worthiness” – through reputation, credentials, an application process, or a trial period. This fosters quality control and prevents spam.
  • Decentralized Moderation: Group owners are responsible for setting the rules and moderating content within their Groups. This distributes the moderation burden and allows for diverse community standards.
  • Fluid Groups: The service would make it very easy to create and to dissolve Groups.

The Potential Benefits:

  • Combating Information Overload: The Group-centric structure and long-form content encourage focus and depth, cutting through the noise of traditional social media.
  • Fostering Thoughtful Discussion: The platform is designed to promote reasoned debate, in-depth analysis, and constructive criticism.
  • Empowering Citizen Journalism: Gawker provides a powerful platform for independent reporters and citizen journalists to collaborate and share their work.
  • Real-Time Fact-Checking: The open, collaborative editing process allows for immediate correction of errors and debunking of misinformation.
  • Building Collective Knowledge: Groups can become repositories of expertise, collaboratively built and refined over time.
  • Edit, edit, edit: Unlike most social media services, everything is editable, from Groups to Posts.

The Challenges:

This model isn’t without its challenges. We need to consider:

  • Onboarding Friction: The mandatory grouping and “worthiness” requirements could be a barrier to entry for some users.
  • Moderation Complexity: While decentralized, moderation still requires significant effort from Group owners.
  • Scalability: Supporting real-time collaborative editing on large-scale posts is a technical hurdle.
  • Potential for Misuse: Like any platform, Gawker could be used for malicious purposes (trolling, harassment, spreading misinformation). Robust reporting and blocking mechanisms are crucial.
  • Copyright issues: Posting copyrighted materials, without permission.

The Disruptive Potential:

Gawker represents a radical departure from the dominant social media paradigm. It’s a bet on depth over breadth, quality over quantity, and collaboration over individual broadcasting. It’s a platform designed for creators, thinkers, and informed citizens, not just passive consumers.

Imagine:

  • Breaking news unfolding in real-time, collaboratively reported by journalists and eyewitnesses.
  • Experts in a field co-authoring a comprehensive analysis of a complex issue, with readers able to follow the process and contribute feedback.
  • Communities building shared knowledge bases, collaboratively curated and constantly updated.

This is a vision of social media that prioritizes informed discourse, collaborative creation, and transparent information sharing. It’s a platform that embraces the messy, complex reality of the digital age, and attempts to harness its power for good.

Bluesky Suffers From WELLitis

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

I really like Twitter successor Bluesky, but for one thing — it seems like its populated with a bunch of very normal, very stable, very well educated people who all know each other and look down on kooks like me.

In short, it’s a modern version of The WELL from the 90s.

While all the cool kids used The WELL back in the day, I was running with scissors with riff-raff of Usenet. I always wanted to join The WELL and, yet, as an adult….I’m glad I didn’t.

And Bluesky is exactly like the WELL. It’s inward looking and no one ever does anything weird no no reasons. And, as best I can tell, there’s no “black Bluesky” which sucks. Most of the best memes online come from Black Twitter.

Whatever.

The Fate of Google’s Usenet Archive & Generative AI

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

As far as I know, Google still has a decades worth of Usenet archives. Even though the most useful elements of Usenet are very old, I do think you could maybe use all those witty words from the Golden Age of Usenet from the last 1970s to mid 1990s to at least give Gemini a sense of humor.

Or not.

What do I know. I just find it something that either Google has already done or they might do in the future.

The Lost Dream Of Social Media

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

The social media era is over. There’s just no buzz around it anymore. After a lot of crypto hype, we’re now fully in the AI Revolution. But occasionally, I find myself mulling what could have been, especially given how fucked up Twitter is now because of Space Karen.

There are a few key elements that could have been included in a new social media service that I think would have made it a success. One is, having some sort of paid editorial staff. If you had people who were paid by your social media service specifically to churn out high quality reporting, I think that would be a key advantage over other, similar services.

Also, I continue to believe that could have be useful is the idea of Groups. Now, of course, some will say that was tried with Google+’s “Circles” but that’s not at all my vision. In my version of things, everyone would have the ability to create as many “Groups” as they liked and even be able to manage who might be able to Post in each Group.

You would have a full page Post to work with and threaded discussions of those Posts.

But, alas, I just don’t see any of this happening. The moment is over. We’ve all moved on.

Burn, Reddit, Burn

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

I got no beef with Reddit. Live long and prosper, you Usenet knock off. But I do think it’s telling that if both Twitter and Reddit implode that my personal vision for a service that uses updated Usenet UX / UI concepts becomes something more viable.

If I was smart enough — which I’m not — I would somehow figure out a way to use AI to design my dream platform that is based on Groups and allows for pull page posts and robust threading.

And…yet…that moment has passed. It’s just not viable anymore. We’re now in the age of XR, crypto and AI. Lulz. No one gives a shit about something as quaint and prosaic as a social media platform…based on a 30 year old concept no one cares about anymore.

Anyway. I do wish there was something a bit more like Usenet out there to use. I think by the time Reddit came around I was just too old to be willing to wade into its many subcultures. And I was so weened on Usenet back in the day that neither Twitter nor Reddit really appealed to me.

I’m old and I hate it.

Godspeed, Reddit. I hope you figure out all your API bullshit.

Of Usenet News & LLM Datasets

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

The last I checked, Google has a nearly-complete archive of Usenet from its founding until at least around 2000 when everything went to shit there because of porn spam. It would be dumb for Google not to include Usenet in any Large Language Model dataset.

You would have to tweak it some, of course, but there are about 20 years of high quality words to use to train your LLM to be found with any Usenet archive. A lot of is outdated and full of vitral, but there is also a lot of human interaction and humanity to be found there, as well.

This is so much the case that if you were to include Usenet archive information in your LLM training dataset, you would probably endup with a very human-like LLM. I don’t know, maybe Google is already using their Usenet archive. Usenet was very popular back in the day.

Given how many Usenet servers there were at one point, I’m sure if you were working on an open source LLM that you could probably find a few million words to train your open source LLM by scooping up all the archived Usenet posts you could find.

Or not, what do I know. But it is an intriguing use for all those words that are now just forgotten Internet history. For everyone except for me, of course. 🙂

Examining The Crucial UX Elements Of My Proposed Twitter Replacement

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

I’ve finally concluded that I’m totally and completely wasting my time to think about this idea anymore, and, yet I have gotten at least one ping in my Webstats related to this, so, lulz, let’s waste some MORE time.

A sample of my vision for the UX of a Twitter replacement.

Also, it definitely seems as though there is a very, very narrow window of opportunity for someone to actually implement this idea. I’m a dreamer and a writer so, as such, it’s better if I just stick to working on my novel(s) rather than spending years learning how to code something that will ultimately be replaced by a combination of the metaverse and chatbots.

Ok, the key selling point of this concept is is brings back some really cool UX concepts that we somehow lost when Usenet finally succumbed to porn and spam and porn spam. The cool thing about Usenet was you had a full page Posts that were robustly threaded in the context of Groups. What’s more, you had in-line editing.

Usenet

Now, obviously, some of this sums up modern-day Reddit and that would be the thing most people would initially compare the service to because no one remembers Usenet except for weirdos like me. And, in real terms Reddit is the closest approximation to Usenet that exists.

But the implementation is really ham-handed, at least in my view.

Imagine if everyone when they went through on-boarding was forced to created both public and private groups devoted to not just grouping their friends, but also creating the equivalent of really robust Facebook Groups combined with Twitter Lists.

And there would be a lot of innate redundancy in the system, to the point that Groups would be seen as disposable. This would, in turn, reduce the likelihood of not only a Group growing too large, but also the sort of in-ward looking thinking that alienates people who just want to discuss a topic without having to lurk for weeks while they read the Group’s FAQ.

That’s a key element of Twitter — there is almost no learning curve. One can just jump in and start tweeting. The downside to this is, of course, this makes it far easier for trolls and bots to flood the service.

Anyway, if you establish a service where you have a full page Post with in-line editing and robust threading, I think it would be instantly popular. After, of course, people stopped trying to figure out why you had just re-created Reddit (which you hadn’t.)

There are so many cool things you could do with the UX of this service. You could push entire pre-formated Webpages into the service that Users could pick apart via in-ling editing. You could have some sort of profit sharing agreement with content providers whereby they push into the service complete Webpages with their ads already in the pages.

Or something. Something like that.

The point is — none of this is going to happen. While there IS a very narrow window of opportunity because of the current Elon Musk-generated instability at Twitter…no one listens to me.

It’s Sad That My Dream Of A Usenet-Inspired ‘Twitter Killer’ Will Never Happen

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

In the end, I think all my dreams of someone cherry picking the best bits of the Usenet UX to design a “Twitter Killer” said more about my dissipated youth than anything else. No one was ever going to listen to me and the only way it was ever going to become reality was if I learned to code and showed people my vision in a practical manner.

As it is, lulz.

So, in a sense, it was all a huge waste of time. And, yet, I also think the same foolish and obsessive element of my personality that led me to rant about my dream of bringing back Usenet in some form has helped me when it comes to working on a novel.

There is that, I guess.

Anyway, I only even mention it again because someone from California did a Google search that led them to some of my writings about the Usenet UX. I have no idea who they were or their motives, but it reminded me of what we lost in social media UX over the last 30 years.

The funny thing about it all is, of course, that we’re zooming towards a whole different era in technology based around the metaverse and AI (AGI?) So, yeah. I need to stop dwelling on Usenet and throw myself into working on my first novel before even novel writing has been co-oped by the ravious chatbot revolution.

A Neat Element Of My Proposed Twitter Replacement — Inline WYSIWYG Editing Of Webpages Posted To The Platform

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

One of the strongest parts of Usenet was you had an entire page to work with when you wanted to post something to the platform. Essentially, you wrote an email that was copied and distributed across the public UUCP network. This element would ultimately cause the decline and fall of Usenet because, lulz, it just could not scale.

Spam and porn became so bad with Usenet that it just faded away into the oblivion that in now exists in.

But the Twitter replacement I daydream about would harken back to those Usenet days of having a full page Post. What’s so interesting about this is if you update the Usenet post into the Web world on a single dedicated Website instead of a distributed network, you have a huge amount of potential.

One thing that I find fanciating is imagine, say, The New York Times pushing its formatted content into the system and individual users were given the ability to inline edit that content in a threaded discussion. Instead of just seeing the headline of a New York Times article and a blurb, you could see — and edit — the entire article in a threaded discussion.

And, what’s more, you could give the average user the ability to create a mulit-media, formated full-page post themselves that they could post to the system in a Group. I think that’s really cool. And given that you’re dealing with a fullpage post, there is at least the possibility that you could have some sort of Zoom-like video conferencing in that Post as well that people could comment under in real time.

I fear, of course, that I’m getting ahead of myself. I would suggest anyone who might take me up on this concept to probably keep things simple at first before getting to elaborate. You would have to ease people into a whole different way of looking at content creation.