Comp.lang.c is now full of spam(groups.google.com)
groups.google.com
Comp.lang.c is now full of spam
https://groups.google.com/g/comp.lang.c
80 comments
Every year Google Groups still exists as a product I'm a little more astonished. It's been years and years since the company cared enough about it to put any effort into it. The data degrades every year, it gets spammed, the Usenet portion of it makes no sense vs. the mailing list portion. And yet it persists.
I've read somewhere that Google extensively uses mailing lists internally. They’re probably using the same codebase for their internal mailing lists, and the storage costs effectively nothing to them.
Googler here. You are correct. Internally google groups are the easiest way to create adhoc project groups and support / announce lists. We have everything from music related lists, to stuff like vim/emacs user groups
> Internally google groups are the easiest way to create adhoc project groups..like vim/emacs user groups
I have trouble imagining what a vim/emacs user group would be: either some sort of nonstop abusive flamewar or some kind of kumbaya group you can only join if you can prove you're on a dangerously high dose of lithium.
I have trouble imagining what a vim/emacs user group would be: either some sort of nonstop abusive flamewar or some kind of kumbaya group you can only join if you can prove you're on a dangerously high dose of lithium.
Seems to me that "vim/emacs user groups" are wildly different from "vim/emacs user group".
Seems pretty clear to me: "vim/emacs user groups" describes a superset that includes the vicious fighting groups and the kumbaya groups, plus of course those that make emacs distros that are (shudder) more like vim, and perhaps even discussion of the other way around?
Also groups that trade baking recipes in org-mode format plus vim macros so they can share the fun.
Also groups that trade baking recipes in org-mode format plus vim macros so they can share the fun.
Not a Googler but I've personally been in a few groups for testing new features. I believe communication to testers has been revamped but pre-2020 I was in a few like gdd-profile-preview
How about doing customer service with it?
Google: nah.
Honestly I shouldn't even suggest that, it will probably get google groups closed in a whim.
Google: nah.
Honestly I shouldn't even suggest that, it will probably get google groups closed in a whim.
You want something like a ticket/bug tracking system for customer support, not an email group
Google Groups is what I (non-Googler) used for support so I don't understand your comment.
A piece of software I use has google groups as the main interaction point among users & between users and the dev. It works quite well.
Google groups works fine for internal groups. It's used to group users for gsuite and Google cloud administration. Its an essential IAM building block.
Public groups is just one aspect google groups, probably not the most important use case.
Public groups is just one aspect google groups, probably not the most important use case.
> And yet it persists.
That's a great point, and I would add that when Google launched Google Groups, there was this widespread concern that Google would abuse it to kill Usenet and force users to switch to its own walled garden.
Since then, Google already tried and failed to launch a couple of social networks, but Usenet is still around.
That's a great point, and I would add that when Google launched Google Groups, there was this widespread concern that Google would abuse it to kill Usenet and force users to switch to its own walled garden.
Since then, Google already tried and failed to launch a couple of social networks, but Usenet is still around.
I really, really miss newsgroups.
HN has some of the flavor of discussing technical stuff with experts and amateurs chiming in. But everything here is geared towards news, so the longer, deeper discussions are missing.
Perhaps I'm just getting old though.
HN has some of the flavor of discussing technical stuff with experts and amateurs chiming in. But everything here is geared towards news, so the longer, deeper discussions are missing.
Perhaps I'm just getting old though.
It’s not that much different. I was on Usenet from the late 80s till the web ate it. It was more like stack exchange and Reddit. But with far far fewer people involved. abpe was the best place for porn. Slash fiction was coming of age. Memes didn’t quite exist yet because posting images was not a thing. It the egos and attitudes were the same.
A big difference was that everyone got everything on a group, and it was much more async than current alternatives.
You could spend a day working on a reply, and people would get it next time they downloaded messages.
Everything now seems to focus on "the now", incentivizing fast replies and new content.
Though, as the other responder mentions, it certainly would struggle with "web scale" amount of participants.
You could spend a day working on a reply, and people would get it next time they downloaded messages.
Everything now seems to focus on "the now", incentivizing fast replies and new content.
Though, as the other responder mentions, it certainly would struggle with "web scale" amount of participants.
I used to feed newsgroups and email to BBS systems using UUCP. You could easily expect a 3 day turnaround when posting something, and seeing the initial responses.
I distinctly remember thinking that this was really efficient. At the very least, it made lists a lot more entertaining to read than they would be today.
I distinctly remember thinking that this was really efficient. At the very least, it made lists a lot more entertaining to read than they would be today.
I forgot all about having to download replies. Yep. Daily syncs.
I think newsgroups would struggle to survive and be useful if they would get a massive wide adoption like social networks do. It would just be impossible to filter out useful stuff and avoid spam. They worked ages ago because the internet was a smaller place, and they still work today because the number of people who use them has not increased by much (sorry, no source to back that up)
A lot of the spam is trying to sell really illegal drugs like LSD, I went to their website (won't link but obviously you can find it easily) and their checkout process for buying a bunch of LSD takes PayPal and Google Pay. They also have a $150 minimum, lol...
...is this "legit", besides the whole illegal drugs thing? Selling drugs with PayPal, on a .com? I remember people doing it with Bitcoin and Tor but this is very in the open. They do also take Bitcoin.
or is this entirely a scam? But if so why would they take PayPal which has buyer protection, although I don't know how PayPal responds to someone complaining "they scammed me and didn't send my illegal drugs".
...is this "legit", besides the whole illegal drugs thing? Selling drugs with PayPal, on a .com? I remember people doing it with Bitcoin and Tor but this is very in the open. They do also take Bitcoin.
or is this entirely a scam? But if so why would they take PayPal which has buyer protection, although I don't know how PayPal responds to someone complaining "they scammed me and didn't send my illegal drugs".
It's not a scam.
No way Paypal or GooglePay would allow such a thing longer than a few hours, just enough for their own crawling engine, intented to automate verification of compliance to their policies, to ring the alarm bell on the screen of a human operator.
No way also a scammer would be dumb enough to use such services which require extensive verification process, with ID, proof of incorporation and so on...
It's just FBI, DEA or whatever, 'sting' operations. Like the kind of website where you can buy Red Sulfurous from somewhere in eastern europe countries(for example bellarus), but when you make a Whois of the website, it leads straight to an obscure hosting company located in... California.
The reason they asking minimum $150 (or even more on some website) order is because they want to use it as an argument in court to prove your intentions were to resell it, no matter if it's true or not, in order to force you to take a plea deal and send you in jail for 3-10 years and ruin your life forever.
Why do they do such thing when there is so much real real shit, in every sense of the word, going through mexican border ? Because it allows them to improve their stats on the back of idiots or naive young people who don't know were else to go.
There is a shitload of reports of orther similar false flag operations from US LE regarding 'terrorists', 'sexual predators', and on and on.
Just take a look at https://www.sugardaddy.com/ for example... This site promotes with no other possible interpretation prostitution, while presenting it as something else than prostitution, and while prostitution, to my knowledge, is forbidden everywhere in America. This site has been up for years (I know about it because Bill Maher made a joke about it years ago). The worse is you export your methods to other parts of the world (look at the bottom of the page) (UK, Australia, Canada, where prostitution is forbidden). But funnily enough (do I dare say?) New Zeeland, one of the rare country (if not the only one) were prostition is legal and regulated, is not represented at the bottom of the site.
A few days ago, there was a post here about an article regarding 'testilying' from police officers in court.
It's no wonder so much american people don't trust their government and accumulate tons of gun to defend themself from it... just in case.
There is something rotten in the Kingdom of the United State of America.
No way Paypal or GooglePay would allow such a thing longer than a few hours, just enough for their own crawling engine, intented to automate verification of compliance to their policies, to ring the alarm bell on the screen of a human operator.
No way also a scammer would be dumb enough to use such services which require extensive verification process, with ID, proof of incorporation and so on...
It's just FBI, DEA or whatever, 'sting' operations. Like the kind of website where you can buy Red Sulfurous from somewhere in eastern europe countries(for example bellarus), but when you make a Whois of the website, it leads straight to an obscure hosting company located in... California.
The reason they asking minimum $150 (or even more on some website) order is because they want to use it as an argument in court to prove your intentions were to resell it, no matter if it's true or not, in order to force you to take a plea deal and send you in jail for 3-10 years and ruin your life forever.
Why do they do such thing when there is so much real real shit, in every sense of the word, going through mexican border ? Because it allows them to improve their stats on the back of idiots or naive young people who don't know were else to go.
There is a shitload of reports of orther similar false flag operations from US LE regarding 'terrorists', 'sexual predators', and on and on.
Just take a look at https://www.sugardaddy.com/ for example... This site promotes with no other possible interpretation prostitution, while presenting it as something else than prostitution, and while prostitution, to my knowledge, is forbidden everywhere in America. This site has been up for years (I know about it because Bill Maher made a joke about it years ago). The worse is you export your methods to other parts of the world (look at the bottom of the page) (UK, Australia, Canada, where prostitution is forbidden). But funnily enough (do I dare say?) New Zeeland, one of the rare country (if not the only one) were prostition is legal and regulated, is not represented at the bottom of the site.
A few days ago, there was a post here about an article regarding 'testilying' from police officers in court.
It's no wonder so much american people don't trust their government and accumulate tons of gun to defend themself from it... just in case.
There is something rotten in the Kingdom of the United State of America.
Prostitution is legal in the State of Nevada but is outlawed again specifically for Las Vegas on a local level.
Hasn’t this been the case for years? Or did something change with Usenet/Google groups recently?
Yeah, I mean, there's a reason there was eg. comp.lang.c++.moderated already like twenty years ago.
Moderated ones are just a bit better
Google stewardship in action.
Can we even go back to Usenet without Google Groups?
Can we even go back to Usenet without Google Groups?
No. I mean technically yes but this wouldn't solve the actual problem: mass human communication at scale.
Usenet was a decent shot at this problem but it lost to other solutions. Yes, all the current solutions are pretty bad but they aren't worse than Usenet. In particular Usenet had zero spam protection, Google stewardship or not.
Usenet was a decent shot at this problem but it lost to other solutions. Yes, all the current solutions are pretty bad but they aren't worse than Usenet. In particular Usenet had zero spam protection, Google stewardship or not.
I’m old enough to remember the original Canter and Siegel spam, and yes, it was on Usenet. What amazes me is that in 2023 people still launch social networks where spam prevention is not at the center.
You're old like me then. I actually have their printed book "How to Make a Fortune on the Information Superhighway" on how to "advertise" in the Internet. I put that in quotes, because their methods were absolutely literally spam.
Having said that, they must have been right, because spam has never dwindled away like Usenet News did. That may very well have been their fault, too.
Having said that, they must have been right, because spam has never dwindled away like Usenet News did. That may very well have been their fault, too.
The "Usenet" you remember has been gone for years. Usenet to most people now means a place to download unlicensed videos with a remarkably byzantine and inefficient encoding and obfuscation system.
Google Groups is not USENET, it is irrelevant as far as USENET goes. Google Groups only access USENET.
Do a search for Free USENET and many will come up with instructions how to access without Google Groups.
Do a search for Free USENET and many will come up with instructions how to access without Google Groups.
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"Can we even go back to Usenet without Google Groups?"
No. Any group that doesn't have some kind of pre-post vetting idiom is going to have spam and abuse problems.
This wasn't always the case and I can't pinpoint exactly when the change happened or what it was.
No. Any group that doesn't have some kind of pre-post vetting idiom is going to have spam and abuse problems.
This wasn't always the case and I can't pinpoint exactly when the change happened or what it was.
I'd suggest Canter & Siegel in 1994.
Oh how I wish this to become true!
Usenet is still pretty alive for warez, and people pay providers for access.
Technically it's simple, but I don't think anyone is willing to pay for the required infrastructure. Nor is it going to be used a lot.
I'd like to hear someone explain how simple and how expensive. I think there would be quite a lot of interest, at the right price point.
The costs would depend entirely on the userbase; usenet was in heavy use during the 1990-2000 era so the software must be incredibly lightweight by today's standards. I don't know what ongoing development has taken place wrt usenet server software.
The clients will all be hopelessly outdated, I imagine WinVN will still run but you probably wouldn't enjoy the experience much.
The big issue would be preventing the server/servers from filling up with AI entities. If you're attracting enough of a userbase to be worth influencing they will creep in unless you somehow find a way to guarantee that all users are real people, and that presents its own problems.
The clients will all be hopelessly outdated, I imagine WinVN will still run but you probably wouldn't enjoy the experience much.
The big issue would be preventing the server/servers from filling up with AI entities. If you're attracting enough of a userbase to be worth influencing they will creep in unless you somehow find a way to guarantee that all users are real people, and that presents its own problems.
Sadly, I think AI will force a complete de-anonymization of the internet.
No accounts without government ID, no connectivity without it either, open access points illegal, and so on.
Governments and police would love this, and with AI, spam (as you elude to) is going to rise to a new level.
And there are already issues, with most of the net's citizens, unable to detect fraudulent posts.
Countries have already had civil wars, thanks to Cambridge Analytics, and disinformation will only make this worse.
Long story short, accountability is impossible with anonymity, and so to sue, to charge with crimes, I sadly think the internet will soon change.
No accounts without government ID, no connectivity without it either, open access points illegal, and so on.
Governments and police would love this, and with AI, spam (as you elude to) is going to rise to a new level.
And there are already issues, with most of the net's citizens, unable to detect fraudulent posts.
Countries have already had civil wars, thanks to Cambridge Analytics, and disinformation will only make this worse.
Long story short, accountability is impossible with anonymity, and so to sue, to charge with crimes, I sadly think the internet will soon change.
"Sadly, I think AI will force a complete de-anonymization of the internet.
No accounts without government ID, no connectivity without it either, open access points illegal, and so on."
Or we see the rise of social networks that require a personal invite. In the extreme variant, with a personal meetup requirement. Probably both, with government ID accounts being the standard for the mainstream, while all the interesting stuff will be invite only.
No accounts without government ID, no connectivity without it either, open access points illegal, and so on."
Or we see the rise of social networks that require a personal invite. In the extreme variant, with a personal meetup requirement. Probably both, with government ID accounts being the standard for the mainstream, while all the interesting stuff will be invite only.
Until you know, mass data breaches of said government ID from corporate systems and those AI bots now just use said ID
Your online ID, doesn't need to be your government ID. It does need to be validated though.
That said, this is the same problem you have with loads of other accounts. Be it banks, trading houses, or just compromised meta, X, or whatever accounts.
Still, my point wasn't whether or not it would work, but merely that it will happen. Governments will become more and more frustrated with a deluge of propaganda, which makes what we see today seem inconsequential. And I believe this will be their response.
And it is already true in many countries.
I did say it makes me sad. Not happy.
That said, this is the same problem you have with loads of other accounts. Be it banks, trading houses, or just compromised meta, X, or whatever accounts.
Still, my point wasn't whether or not it would work, but merely that it will happen. Governments will become more and more frustrated with a deluge of propaganda, which makes what we see today seem inconsequential. And I believe this will be their response.
And it is already true in many countries.
I did say it makes me sad. Not happy.
Not if done right. Everyone's ID card/drivers license (for the USA) gets an RFID smartcard with a cryptoprocessor and secure storage. Upon first activation (during production) it is seeded with the personal data of the person (name, personal identifier e.g. SSN), generates its own rsa4096/ec keypair, provides the public key to the interface, and gets a certificate signed by a government root CA back.
Upon an attempt to log in at a service (using a phone with a companion app), a nonce signed accompanied by a certificate signed by the government root CA gets signed by the private key on card, and that as well as the signed personal data gets provided to the requesting service.
Upon an attempt to log in at a service (using a phone with a companion app), a nonce signed accompanied by a certificate signed by the government root CA gets signed by the private key on card, and that as well as the signed personal data gets provided to the requesting service.
AI by no means necessitates de-anonymization, though I have no doubt that that will be the narrative that politicians and corporations will run with as an unquestionable truth.
All you need is something that implements a mix of a reputation system and a web of trust and you're good to go. Technically pseudonymous, not anonymous, but it would give you basically all of the benefits of tying online activity to real identities without any of the downsides. It would also be completely decentralized, which would prevent large players from manipulating the political landscape on a mass level.
All you need is something that implements a mix of a reputation system and a web of trust and you're good to go. Technically pseudonymous, not anonymous, but it would give you basically all of the benefits of tying online activity to real identities without any of the downsides. It would also be completely decentralized, which would prevent large players from manipulating the political landscape on a mass level.
It doesn't have to be complete and it will probably thrive. Misinformation will take a nose dive compared to today since you can't have multiple anonymous accounts constantly being created and driving nonsense.
If you just want "usenet without google", one line in the kill file (on the client or the server) will take care of it.
Please yes. And while we are it, bring back Deja News too!
This may be due to moderator inaction.
I moderate an Apache project mailing list and the amount of spam it receives on on some days is silly. However thanks to the good work done by the ASF infra team it takes very little effort from ML moderators to keep the spam from reaching subscribers.
I moderate an Apache project mailing list and the amount of spam it receives on on some days is silly. However thanks to the good work done by the ASF infra team it takes very little effort from ML moderators to keep the spam from reaching subscribers.
Usenet works differently.
Moderated groups are their own category and quite rare. Every post to them has to be pre-approved.
The large majority of groups (including comp.lang.c) are unmoderated. "Moderator inaction" isn't a thing here because moderation isn't even technically possible.
Moderated groups are their own category and quite rare. Every post to them has to be pre-approved.
The large majority of groups (including comp.lang.c) are unmoderated. "Moderator inaction" isn't a thing here because moderation isn't even technically possible.
A few groups will run a cancel-bot on most blatant spam though, which is a slightly practical solution although not quite in the spirit of Usenet. And acceptance of cancel messages downstream will vary a lot.
I note that comp.lang.java and comp.arch (which I used to follow avidly back in dialup/uucp days) that I tried at random seem largely to be fine at a glance.
Edit: the good old days: some of these nodes were mine! https://groups.google.com/g/comp.mail.maps/c/NxwZMYqBUjw/m/T...
Edit: the good old days: some of these nodes were mine! https://groups.google.com/g/comp.mail.maps/c/NxwZMYqBUjw/m/T...
The group selection the spammers target seems really strange, alt.comp.freeware is another example.
Not sure I understand what they're trying to achieve.
(I tried to raise the issue internally, fwiw).
Not sure I understand what they're trying to achieve.
(I tried to raise the issue internally, fwiw).
Spammers make more sense when you realize that professional spammers sell their services to idiots who don’t know or care what actually gets sent out.
If using tin, just add this to file "~/.tin/filter". That turns off all posts from google-groups.
No blank lines, I added blank lines to avoid HN line wrap.
group=*
case=0
score=kill
msgid_last=*<*@googlegroups.com>*
No blank lines, I added blank lines to avoid HN line wrap.
group=*
case=0
score=kill
msgid_last=*<*@googlegroups.com>*
Blank lines separate paragraphs, they don't create blank lines. But also, indent with 2 spaces for code formatting: https://news.ycombinator.com/formatdoc
Now full of spam? Hasn't Usenet been thoroughly clogged for 20 years?
Did something go wrong here? This spam doesn't look hard to filter.
I think it's more that they let it through. Google doesn't care. This is just a cost center for them.
I honestly didn't know anyone still actively used Usenet. I thought Google Groups was quite valuable as a tool for reading historical data from decades past, now that most ISPs don't include Usenet access. I wouldn't have expected spam blocking.
Google cares in as much as it helps facilitate free labor for open source projects they heavily use themselves. I would venture to guess if its critical software to google that google group is going to be nice and tidy and free of spam.
Google doesn't even properly handle emails sent by Google Groups subscribers to a Google Group! I have seen many cases where Gmail spam-tags a post to a group, when the list is closed for posting to any but subscribers...
Separate services which don't propagate information.
Probably because it's a good way to avoid spam filters in emails I guess, since the group posts would come straight from Google?
There's something symbolic and fitting about one of the groups that helped build the Internet being eaten by the Internet.
The sad thing is, clearly Google already has the tools to solve this problem, they deal with spam on a massive scale in Gmail and using the same approaches here should be fairly straightforward.
For that to happen, someone inside Google has to care.
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