Ask HN: Is it time to resurrect a Usenet clone?
As far as I&#x27;m concerned, the &quot;new web&quot; (Reddit, Twitter, etc. etc.) #1 ability that was not present in &quot;the old web&quot; (USENET, IRC, etc. etc.) is universal identifiers.<p>If a problematic user on Reddits r&#x2F;news gets banned (spam or whatever), there are admin-level bans that can ban that user at a global level. Allowing unrelated moderators on one subreddit indirectly-help moderate on other subreddits.<p>Shared global identity across the network is key. We can&#x27;t have sockpuppets spamming one subreddit (or USENET group), and then have to be individually dealt with group-by-group. These sorts of moderation efforts must be shared.<p>Mastodon&#x27;s model is to have servers responsible for their users. I&#x27;m not convinced that this model scales well, especially into the future as servers grow less trusting of each other.<p>---------------<p>IMO, what is needed is a DNS-like solution for identities, and proving your identity. Not a real identity mind you, but a pseudo-anonymous identity that has enough trust that people know you&#x27;re not a spammer.<p>Yes, modern sockpuppets can pay a 3rd-world country to create innocuous accounts en masse and get around this, but we need to be at this level (or better). Without this level, we&#x27;re back to just automated account creation bots spamming our servers with spam.<p>----------------<p>This DNS-like identity management server needs moderation decisions to be shared. Not necessarily trusted mind you, but shared enough so that &quot;Moderators over in X-location believe this identity to be spam&quot;. Or &quot;Moderators over in Y-location believe this identity to be a troll&quot;.<p>EDIT: Other messages, like &quot;Starting on June 2023, it appears that X-identity has been compromised and is now a spammer. Ban messages after this. Starting in July 2023, it appears X-identity has regained control of their identifier and we can stop banning their messages.&quot; Lots of useful moderation messages that need to be shared.<p>Maybe its up to individual communities whether or not &quot;troll&quot; or &quot;spam&quot; classifications of identities (or if the moderators at Y-server should be trusted at all: maybe a hostile group of moderators start putting up fake complaints about masses of users that they don&#x27;t like). Etc. etc.<p>-----------------<p>But the overall goal is to create a mechanism where moderators are sharing effort and working together. Reddit accidentally provided that, and that&#x27;s why it was better than USENET. That&#x27;s probably the only incremental improvement that mattered in the long run.