On 2021-10-01 12:52, Carlos E. R. wrote:
There was one that posted thousand of random generated trash per hour.
Yes, and in the email world there were the advertising droids (read scammers) who had automated mailing, hundreds every minuet, address scraping services and resellers ... scumbags, scumbags. Calling them 'troll's would be granting them status.
This time the admin acted when we emailed him, but then he appeared on another group, changing the patterns so that killfilling him became impossible.
Yes, yes and yes, and we had that with email until we developed software that recognised these 'outbursts' and other automated tools. SpamAssassin is one example of delivering that in highly reconfigurable form to the end use as well as the 'last mile' ISP. But then again, Postscript delivered quality, high capacity, professional software that also allowed for protective database integration. This was a FOSS kludge, it was robust, high end professional grade software, security vetted. This is backbone-grade software (perhaps more so than some closed-source we have on backbone routers). But what would a cleaned up "troll-free" USENET deliver? On the one hand we have many subject specific mailing lists. perhaps they are not all under one hierarchy, but they can be found (google and duck) and, as I say, can be managed. Perhaps being more localized, they can be better moderated against spam and trolls than USENET groups. On another hand we have social media like Twitter and Facebook. Yes, they have their own problems with s/n and trolls, and in many ways their very existence is their own problem. But given twitter and Facebook, what's going to the mass appeal of USENET even if you clean it up, have automated troll-kill, spam-kill... ? -- “Reality is so complex, we must move away from dogma, whether it’s conspiracy theories or free-market,” -- James Glattfelder. http://jth.ch/jbg