What Usenet’s 1993 collapse can teach us about the AI spam flooding open source today, and what GitHub plans to do about it
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In September 1993, AOL gave millions of subscribers access to Usenet.
Usenet was the internet’s original discussion forum. Threaded conversations, organised by topic, maintained by communities who had spent years building norms about how to behave.
(By the way, I still use Usenet, but not in the way you’d expect 😉)
Every September before that, a fresh wave of university students would flood in, confused and loud. The regulars grumbled, but within a few weeks, the newcomers learned the rules. By October, things settled.
Then AOL opened the gates. The September that started in 1993 never ended.
The influx was so constant, so overwhelming, that the community couldn’t absorb it. Longtime participants built “kill files” to filter out noise.