Products · Product
Usenet
Raised as a usability problem by 24 people on Hacker News over 19 years (2008–2026), in 18 threads.
No issue was raised by at least 3 people in 3 threads this year.
No issue was raised by at least 3 people in 3 threads in the last 5 years.
Every issue, all time, most people first
Spam becomes relentless and hard to filter outUnreviewed
20082026- Client-side blocking and spam housekeeping is unusable; spam drowns out good posts2025-10-19
- Spam becomes relentless and hard to filter out over time2021-11-20
- Header-based filters are easily bypassed by spammers changing the From address2017-12-21
Can't figure out how to get to Usenet or find past contentUnreviewed
20082026- Can't figure out how to get to Usenet or find its past content2023-06-05
- Can't figure out how to browse old Usenet groups or find a search engine2020-06-30
- Can't find many Usenet posts that should be in the archive2008-09-29
Unreviewed issues were grouped by machine: Claude Haiku labelled each comment as a usability complaint, named what it's about and summed up the problem in a line, and a small model grouped similar problems. Nobody has checked them by hand. Expect mistakes.
The newest 25 complaints
- Must manually tick Content and untick Author and Subject to search posts2026-04-06
- User interface feels awkward to use2026-04-06
- Client-side blocking and spam housekeeping is unusable; spam drowns out good posts2025-10-19
- Newsgroups so full of spam that they are virtually unusable2025-10-19
- Replies go missing or arrive hours late, and messages are hard to find or sort2023-08-31
- Search was extremely limited, so finding old messages was very hard2023-08-31
- The interface is terrible to use2023-08-31
- Usenet's user experience was terrible and clients were hit or miss2023-08-31
- Hard to get started; users can't figure out how to get on Usenet2023-07-25
- Usenet's keyboard-driven interface is hard to translate to mobile devices2023-06-09
- Posts take hours to days to appear, scrambling conversation threads2023-06-05
- Hard to discover and figure out how to use newsgroups2023-06-05
- Can't figure out how to get to Usenet or find its past content2023-06-05
- Spam becomes relentless and hard to filter out over time2021-11-20
- No way to cancel on the site; required a phone call during business hours2021-06-09
- Can't find the user's own 1980s posts using search2020-10-14
- Can't figure out how to browse old Usenet groups or find a search engine2020-06-30
- Hypothetical newcomers find the text-heavy interface confusing and ugly, not obviously social2018-10-18
- The page is very hard to read on a mobile device2018-08-06
- Header-based filters are easily bypassed by spammers changing the From address2017-12-21
- Most end users can't grasp Usenet because it isn't a web page or app2015-11-28
- Impossible to search and hard to browse back months on slow connections2014-07-29
- Clunky and difficult to use compared with modern forums like Reddit2013-12-05
- Hard to find good solid NZBs; passworded downloads are annoying2011-05-20
- Can't find many Usenet posts that should be in the archive2008-09-29