https://groups.google.com/g/sci.lang.japan >https://groups.google.com/g/comp.os.vms >https://groups.google.com/g/comp.text.tex >https://groups.google.com/g/comp.cad.cadence
And Social mediaed every day!
and none of which eliminates the sacred cow altogether; some admins act
as google shills, enablers, defenders, apologists; they make ridiculous claims like "googlegroups has legitimate users", or that its top admins
are oblivious to usenet's very existence... what, are they mind readers?
D <J@M> writes:
and none of which eliminates the sacred cow altogether; some admins act
as google shills, enablers, defenders, apologists; they make ridiculous
claims like "googlegroups has legitimate users", or that its top admins
are oblivious to usenet's very existence... what, are they mind readers?
Sure, googlegroups has legitimate users, but so do (or did) many other >providers with spam injection problems they weren't willing or able to >resolve. Few admins have a problem shutting off their feed from those
other providers. Why should Google deserve a free pass? Simple - they >shouldn't. Just because they're the big kid on the block doesn't mean
they deserve special treatment.
Sure, googlegroups has legitimate users, but so do (or did) many other >providers with spam injection problems they weren't willing or able to >resolve. Few admins have a problem shutting off their feed from those
other providers. Why should Google deserve a free pass? Simple - they >shouldn't. Just because they're the big kid on the block doesn't mean
they deserve special treatment.
they make ridiculous claims like "googlegroups has legitimate users"
, or that its top admins
are oblivious to usenet's very existence... what, are they mind readers?
Sure, googlegroups has legitimate users, but so do (or did) many other providers with spam injection problems they weren't willing or able to resolve.
Few admins have a problem shutting off their feed from those
other providers. Why should Google deserve a free pass? Simple - they shouldn't.
Just because they're the big kid on the block doesn't mean
they deserve special treatment.
I don't think they actually have any news admin there, I think
it mostly just runs unattended. Maybe there is a janitor who looks in on
it now and then, but he's not going to be able to do much.
figures don't lie but . . .
On 11/23/23 11:55, Scott Dorsey wrote:
I don't think they actually have any news admin there, I think
it mostly just runs unattended. Maybe there is a janitor who looks in on
it now and then, but he's not going to be able to do much.
I have direct first hand experience with Google that shows that exactly
that or worse.
On 11/23/23 10:12, D wrote:
figures don't lie but . . .
I'd be curious to see said figures if you have them to share.
Grant. . . .
of the many thousands of unmoderated newsgroups ...
... is there any, preferably easy way for news admins to post totals
for all articles in all unmoderated newsgroups containing "googlegroups.com" in message-id headers, and separately for reference headers of replies which also contain "googlegroups.com", e.g., since 1 January 2023 to current date?
I am not surprised, as I have spoken to many people at Google over the years and none of them even knew Google Groups existed. Most of them knew about Orkut too, and knew someone working for Orkut.
The main argument for UDP against a site that has legitimate users is that it will make the admins of that site stand up and fix the problems to everyone's benefit, even those of the users of that site. Unfortunately this argument cannot be made about Google.
The most unfortunate point, on the gripping hand, is that there really aren't any other tools available to us other than the UDP.
On 11/23/23 12:55, Scott Dorsey wrote:
I am not surprised, as I have spoken to many people at Google over the years >> and none of them even knew Google Groups existed. Most of them knew about >> Orkut too, and knew someone working for Orkut.I find that somewhat surprising. I worked at Google for a while and we
used Google Groups weekly, if not daily for internal things. But that
is Google Groups proper, not the Google Groups interface to Usenet.
I've heard the Orkut name before, but I don't recall what it is off hand.
The main argument for UDP against a site that has legitimate users is that itI don't think enough people at Google know about Google Groups Usenet >interface, that it's sending so much spam, much less care about the fact.
will make the admins of that site stand up and fix the problems to everyone's
benefit, even those of the users of that site. Unfortunately this argument >> cannot be made about Google.
The culture that I saw outside of my team was too much "what do I need
to do to get my next promotion". And once the promotion was achieved,
all care for the former task was gone.
While at Google I tried to find people that administered Google Group's >Usenet interface and failed surprisingly spectacularly. Mostly because
it's not a dedicated team but rather an also ran part of the larger
Google Groups by people that don't care about Usenet.
Based on what I experienced and witnessed, I think that Google Groups
Usetnet is largely frozen in time from 10+ years ago and will only get
worse before it's discontinued. Even if that discontinuance is simply
that Google Groups goes through a re-vamp and Usenet doesn't make the
feature list any more.
The most unfortunate point, on the gripping hand, is that there really aren'tUDP won't persuade people that don't care.
any other tools available to us other than the UDP.
Google is far more concerned about the amount of spam email entering,
and to a lesser degree leaving Google.
Even if Google had a magic solution that was 1,000 times better than
anyone else, the fact that they send 1,000,000 times the email than
almost everyone else means that they send 1,000 times the spam than
almost everyone else. The math simply is not in the recipient's favor. >Grant. . . .
On 11/23/23 12:55, Scott Dorsey wrote:
I am not surprised, as I have spoken to many people at Google over the years >>and none of them even knew Google Groups existed. Most of them knew about >>Orkut too, and knew someone working for Orkut.
I find that somewhat surprising. I worked at Google for a while and we
used Google Groups weekly, if not daily for internal things. But that
is Google Groups proper, not the Google Groups interface to Usenet.
I've heard the Orkut name before, but I don't recall what it is off hand.
. . .
this "google doesn't care" assertion seems to be a recurring theme among practically every server admin who has been discussing googlegroups spam
D <J@M> writes:
and none of which eliminates the sacred cow altogether; some admins act
as google shills, enablers, defenders, apologists; they make ridiculous
claims like "googlegroups has legitimate users", or that its top admins
are oblivious to usenet's very existence... what, are they mind readers?
Sure, googlegroups has legitimate users, but so do (or did) many other >providers with spam injection problems they weren't willing or able to >resolve. Few admins have a problem shutting off their feed from those
other providers. Why should Google deserve a free pass? Simple - they >shouldn't. Just because they're the big kid on the block doesn't mean
they deserve special treatment.
On Thu, 23 Nov 2023 14:27:22 +0000, Tom Furie <tom@furie.org.uk> wrote:
D <J@M> writes:
and none of which eliminates the sacred cow altogether; some admins act
as google shills, enablers, defenders, apologists; they make ridiculous
claims like "googlegroups has legitimate users", or that its top admins
are oblivious to usenet's very existence... what, are they mind readers?
Sure, googlegroups has legitimate users, but so do (or did) many other >>providers with spam injection problems they weren't willing or able to >>resolve. Few admins have a problem shutting off their feed from those
other providers. Why should Google deserve a free pass? Simple - they >>shouldn't. Just because they're the big kid on the block doesn't mean
they deserve special treatment.
figures don't lie but . . .
On 11/23/23 08:27, Tom Furie wrote:
Sure, googlegroups has legitimate users, but so do (or did) many other
providers with spam injection problems they weren't willing or able to
resolve.
Agreed.
Few admins have a problem shutting off their feed from those
other providers. Why should Google deserve a free pass? Simple - they
shouldn't.
Agreed.
Just because they're the big kid on the block doesn't mean
they deserve special treatment.
I want to agree.
/If/ the vast majority of your user base is inside of Google blocking it >severs you from your users. That's a bad thing.
/If/ the vast majority of your user base is outside of Google blocking
it is not as painful. That's a good thing.
Grant. . . .
Given what I witnessed, my opinion is that the powers that be at Google
don't care what happens on Usenet until their involvement therewith
becomes a (big enough) liability for the company. I assume that Google
will cease to participate in Usenet shortly after it becomes a liability
for them.
On 11/23/23 17:19, Grant Taylor wrote:
Given what I witnessed, my opinion is that the powers that be at GoogleThe following article crossed my path and the last four paragraphs are a
don't care what happens on Usenet until their involvement therewith
becomes a (big enough) liability for the company. I assume that Google
will cease to participate in Usenet shortly after it becomes a liability
for them.
very good explanation of what I was seeing.
Link - Reflecting on 18 years at Google
- https://ln.hixie.ch/?start=1700627373
2023-11-22 04:29 UTC[end quote]
Reflecting on 18 years at Google
I joined Google in October 2005, and handed in my resignation 18 years later. >Last week was my last week at Google.
I feel very lucky to have experienced the early post-IPO Google; unlike most >companies, and contrary to the popular narrative, Googlers, from the junior >engineer all the way to the C-suite, were genuinely good people who cared very >much about doing the right thing. The oft-mocked "don't be evil" truly was the >guiding principle of the company at the time (largely a reaction to >contemporaries like Microsoft whose operating procedures put profits far above >the best interests of customers and humanity as a whole).
Many times I saw Google criticised for actions that were sincerely intended to >be good for society. Google Books, for example. Much of the criticism Google >received around Chrome and Search, especially around supposed conflicts of >interest with Ads, was way off base (it's surprising how often coincidences and
mistakes can appear malicious). I often saw privacy advocates argue against >Google proposals in ways that were net harmful to users. Some of these fights >have had lasting effects on the world at large; one of the most annoying is the
prevalence of pointless cookie warnings we have to wade through today. I found >it quite frustrating how teams would be legitimately actively pursuing ideas >that would be good for the world, without prioritising short-term Google >interests, only to be met with cynicism in the court of public opinion. >[Photograph] Charlie's patio at Google, 2011. Image has been manipulated to >remove individuals.
Early Google was also an excellent place to work. Executives gave frank answers
on a weekly basis, or were candid about their inability to do so (e.g. for >legal reasons or because some topic was too sensitive to discuss broadly). Eric
Schmidt regularly walked the whole company through the discussions of the board.
The successes and failures of various products were presented more or less >objectively, with successes celebrated and failures examined critically with an
eye to learning lessons rather than assigning blame. The company had a vision, >and deviations from that vision were explained. Having experienced Dilbert-level
management during my internship at Netscape five years earlier, the uniform >competence of people at Google was very refreshing.
For my first nine years at Google I worked on HTML and related standards. My >mandate was to do the best thing for the web, as whatever was good for the web >would be good for Google (I was explicitly told to ignore Google's interests). >This was a continuation of the work I started while at Opera Software. Google >was an excellent host for this effort. My team was nominally the open source >team at Google, but I was entirely autonomous (for which I owe thanks to Chris >DiBona). Most of my work was done on a laptop from random buildings on Google's
campus; entire years went by where I didn't use my assigned desk.
In time, exceptions to Google's cultural strengths developed. For example, as >much as I enjoyed Vic Gundotra's enthusiasm (and his initial vision for Google+,
which again was quite well defined and, if not necessarily uniformly appreciated,
at least unambiguous), I felt less confident in his ability to give clear answers
when things were not going as well as hoped. He also started introducing silos to
Google (e.g. locking down certain buildings to just the Google+ team), a distinct
departure from the complete internal transparency of early Google. Another >example is the Android team (originally an acquisition), who never really fully
acclimated to Google's culture. Android's work/life balance was unhealthy, the >team was not as transparent as older parts of Google, and the team focused on >chasing the competition more than solving real problems for users.
My last nine years were spent on Flutter. Some of my fondest memories of my time
at Google are of the early days of this effort. Flutter was one of the last >projects to come out of the old Google, part of a stable of ambitious experiments
started by Larry Page shortly before the creation of Alphabet. We essentially >operated like a startup, discovering what we were building more than designing >it. The Flutter team was very much built out of the culture of young Google; for
example we prioritised internal transparency, work/life balance, and data-driven
decision making (greatly helped by Tao Dong and his UXR team). We were radically
open from the beginning, which made it easy for us to build a healthy open source
project around the effort as well. Flutter was also very lucky to have excellent
leadership throughout the years, such as Adam Barth as founding tech lead, Tim >Sneath as PM, and Todd Volkert as engineering manager.
[Photograph] We also didn't follow engineering best practices for the first few
years. For example we wrote no tests and had precious little documentation. This
whiteboard is what passed for a design doc for the core Widget, RenderObject, and
dart:ui layers. This allowed us to move fast at first, but we paid for it later.
Flutter grew in a bubble, largely insulated from the changes Google was >experiencing at the same time. Google's culture eroded. Decisions went from being
made for the benefit of users, to the benefit of Google, to the benefit of whoever
was making the decision. Transparency evaporated. Where previously I would eagerly
attend every company-wide meeting to learn what was happening, I found myself now
able to predict the answers executives would give word for word. Today, I don't
know anyone at Google who could explain what Google's vision is. Morale is at an
all-time low. If you talk to therapists in the bay area, they will tell you all
their Google clients are unhappy with Google.
Then Google had layoffs. The layoffs were an unforced error driven by a short- >sighted drive to ensure the stock price would keep growing quarter-to-quarter, >instead of following Google's erstwhile strategy of prioritising long-term success
even if that led to short-term losses (the very essence of "don't be evil"). The
effects of layoffs are insidious. Whereas before people might focus on the user,
or at least their company, trusting that doing the right thing will eventually be
rewarded even if it's not strictly part of their assigned duties, after a layoff
people can no longer trust that their company has their back, and they >dramatically dial back any risk-taking. Responsibilities are guarded jealously.
Knowledge is hoarded, because making oneself irreplaceable is the only lever one
has to protect oneself from future layoffs. I see all of this at Google now. The
lack of trust in management is reflected by management no longer showing trust in
the employees either, in the form of inane corporate policies. In 2004, Google's
founders famously told Wall Street "Google is not a conventional company. We do
not intend to become one." but that Google is no more.
Much of these problems with Google today stem from a lack of visionary leadership
from Sundar Pichai, and his clear lack of interest in maintaining the cultural >norms of early Google. A symptom of this is the spreading contingent of inept >middle management. Take Jeanine Banks, for example, who manages the department >that somewhat arbitrarily contains (among other things) Flutter, Dart, Go, and >Firebase. Her department nominally has a strategy, but I couldn't leak it if I >wanted to; I literally could never figure out what any part of it meant, even >after years of hearing her describe it. Her understanding of what her teams are
doing is minimal at best; she frequently makes requests that are completely >incoherent and inapplicable. She treats engineers as commodities in a way that >is dehumanising, reassigning people against their will in ways that have no >relationship to their skill set. She is completely unable to receive constructive
feedback (as in, she literally doesn't even acknowledge it). I hear other teams
(who have leaders more politically savvy than I) have learned how to "handle" her
to keep her off their backs, feeding her just the right information at the right
time. Having seen Google at its best, I find this new reality depressing. >There are still great people at Google. I've had the privilege to work with >amazing people on the Flutter team such as JaYoung Lee, Kate Lovett, Kevin >Chisholm, Zoey Fan, Dan Field, and dozens more (sorry folks, I know I should just
name all of you but there's too many!). In recent years I started offering career
advice to anyone at Google and through that met many great folks from around the
company. It's definitely not too late to heal Google. It would require some >shake-up at the top of the company, moving the centre of power from the CFO's >office back to someone with a clear long-term vision for how to use Google's >extensive resources to deliver value to users. I still believe there's lots of >mileage to be had from Google's mission statement ("to organize the world's >information and make it universally accessible and useful"). Someone who wanted
to lead Google into the next twenty years, maximising the good to humanity and >disregarding the short-term fluctuations in stock price, could channel the >skills and passion of Google into truly great achievements.
I do think the clock is ticking, though. The deterioration of Google's culture >will eventually become irreversible, because the kinds of people whom you need >to act as moral compass are the same kinds of people who don't join an >organisation without a moral compass.
Pingbacks: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8
On 11/23/23 12:54, D wrote:
of the many thousands of unmoderated newsgroups ...
... is there any, preferably easy way for news admins to post totals
for all articles in all unmoderated newsgroups containing "googlegroups.com" >> in message-id headers, and separately for reference headers of replies which >> also contain "googlegroups.com", e.g., since 1 January 2023 to current date?
Technically yes.
Practically not really.
For starters, the sheer number of messages makes this laborious.
Aside: IMHO moderation is somewhat of a joke and can easily be defeated
if you know how to do so.
Extracting the list of unmoderated newsgroups would be simple enough.
The rest of the tests are going to be *HIGHLY* dependent on what type of
news spool you are using; file per message (tradspool in INN parlance),
a wrapping fixed size (as in bytes on disk) spool file, a database of
some sort. This gets complicated.
With tradspool, you can look at the file's creation time and have a good >idea. But only a good idea because articles may come in with delay thus >appear to have a newer creation time than when they were actually
posted. So you sort of need to process each potentially qualifying
message and check the Date: header. -- This is definitely possible,
but takes time. That time is multiplied by the sheer number of articles >involved.
I suspect that you will have to process each post to get the Message-ID:
and References: header. I doubt that any overview database will contain >them. -- Again, definitely possible, but takes time per message.
Even if you can do 1 ~ 100 messages a second, the sheer number of
messages is not in your favor.
My personal / private archive server has more than 27 million articles
going back to late '18. That's a LOT of messages to spend time processing. >That being said, I am in the process of going through my server and
removing messages that originated from Google Groups as they were such a >source of spam and waste of disk space.
Once that's done I'll get a count of the number of messages in the news >spool.
N.B. this process has been going on for more than a week.
So, can a news administrator get a count of messages from this year that
have @googlegroups... in the Message-ID: and / or References: headers?
Yes. Is it easy? Not really. Is it annoying and tedious to do? Very
much so.
roughly ten and one half million google posts/replies so far this
year, a crude and some might say far too conservative guesstimate,
ten million mostly spam articles from one source, within one year
On 11/24/23 08:17, D wrote:
...
roughly ten and one half million google posts/replies so far this
year, a crude and some might say far too conservative guesstimate,
ten million mostly spam articles from one source, within one year
Yep.
That's why I gave up and filtered Google Groups on my server.
I wanted to spend my time enjoying Usenet and communicating with people >thereon. I was tired of spending time shoveling spam.
Grant. . . .
On 11/23/23 16:46, D wrote:
this "google doesn't care" assertion seems to be a recurring theme among
practically every server admin who has been discussing googlegroups spam
There is a very similar and recurring theme in the email community.
Based on what I've seen, Google is:
1) the biggest source of email period
2) the biggest source of spam email period
3) the biggest source of Usenet posts period
4) the biggest source of Usenet spam posts period
#1 & #3 sort of beget #2 & #4 based on simple math.
If Google sends 1,000,000 messages a day email and / or Usenet posts,
and catches 99.9% of the spam, that's still
1,000,000 x 0.001 = 1,000 spam messages a day.
Play with the numbers:
- send more messages
- worse spam filtering ratio
You end up with more spam messages leaving Google a day.
The sad thing is that if they hit 99.9% accuracy in their spam filter
that is far better than many other organizations.
Is it fair to say that a company that blocks a higher percentage of spam
than other companies (assuming they do for a moment) doesn't care? I
don't think so.
Is it fair to say that a company that sends thousands of spam messages a
day doesn't care? Maybe, maybe not. It depends on the numbers, numbers
we might not have visibility into.
Is it fair to say that a company that is known for not responding to
spam complaints while sending thousands of spam messages a day doesn't
care? Probably.
Given what I witnessed, my opinion is that the powers that be at Google
don't care what happens on Usenet until their involvement therewith
becomes a (big enough) liability for the company. I assume that Google
will cease to participate in Usenet shortly after it becomes a liability
for them.
--
Grant. . . .
In article <ujqig8$mq2$1@tncsrv09.home.tnetconsulting.net>,
Grant Taylor <gtaylor@tnetconsulting.net> wrote:
On 11/24/23 08:17, D wrote:
...
roughly ten and one half million google posts/replies so far this
year, a crude and some might say far too conservative guesstimate,
ten million mostly spam articles from one source, within one year
Yep.
That's why I gave up and filtered Google Groups on my server.
I wanted to spend my time enjoying Usenet and communicating with people
thereon. I was tired of spending time shoveling spam.
Grant. . . .
Exactly why I had enough of Google GRoups!
About time they made that a read-only service!
On 11/23/23 16:46, D wrote:
this "google doesn't care" assertion seems to be a recurring theme among
practically every server admin who has been discussing googlegroups spam
There is a very similar and recurring theme in the email community.
Based on what I've seen, Google is:
1) the biggest source of email period
2) the biggest source of spam email period
3) the biggest source of Usenet posts period
4) the biggest source of Usenet spam posts period
#1 & #3 sort of beget #2 & #4 based on simple math.
If Google sends 1,000,000 messages a day email and / or Usenet posts,
and catches 99.9% of the spam, that's still
1,000,000 x 0.001 = 1,000 spam messages a day.
Play with the numbers:
- send more messages
- worse spam filtering ratio
You end up with more spam messages leaving Google a day.
The sad thing is that if they hit 99.9% accuracy in their spam filter
that is far better than many other organizations.
Is it fair to say that a company that blocks a higher percentage of spam
than other companies (assuming they do for a moment) doesn't care? I
don't think so.
Is it fair to say that a company that sends thousands of spam messages a
day doesn't care? Maybe, maybe not. It depends on the numbers, numbers
we might not have visibility into.
Is it fair to say that a company that is known for not responding to
spam complaints while sending thousands of spam messages a day doesn't
care? Probably.
Given what I witnessed, my opinion is that the powers that be at Google
don't care what happens on Usenet until their involvement therewith
becomes a (big enough) liability for the company. I assume that Google
will cease to participate in Usenet shortly after it becomes a liability
for them.
20+ Gmail Statistics to Know[end quoted excerpt]
by Jayson DeMers | 2 comments
In this article, we'll explore some recent Gmail statistics -- and how to learn
more about your own use of Gmail.
We'll also cover some bonus email statistics at the end!
Table of Contents [hide]
15 Basic Gmail Statistics
1. There are more than 1.5 billion Gmail users.
2. There are more than 10 million spam and malicious emails every minute,
all blocked by Gmail's automated machine learning (ML).
3. Only 0.1% of messages that make it to the inbox are spam.
4. Only 0.05% of automatically spam-flagged messages are not actually spam.
5. About 27% of all email opens are on Gmail.
6. Gmail offers support for 105 languages.
7. The average Gmail account is worth $3,588.85.
8. The average Gmail user has 1.7 accounts.
9. The average Gmail account has more than 5,700 emails.
10. About 75% of Gmail users access their email on a mobile device.
11. Among Americans aged 18-29, 61% use Gmail.
12. More than 20 billion emails have been migrated to Gmail.
13. More than 60% of mid-sized U.S. companies use Gmail.
14. More than two-thirds of incoming messages are promotional in nature.
15. The read rate for promotional emails is 19.2%.
Gmail History and Facts
16. The first Gmail account went live April 1, 2004.
17. Gmail celebrated its first birthday with 2 GB of free storage.
18. Google consolidated its user storage in 2013, with 15 GB of free storage.
19. Gmail was considered the best webmail service in 2006.
20. The longest outage in Gmail history was 2.5 hours.
Email Statistics
1. In 2020, there will be 306.4 billion emails sent.
2. The average worker gets 121 emails per day.
3. The click-through-rate (CTR) of emails averages 3.1%.
4. 6% of emails are opened on mobile devices.
Email Sales Statistics
1. Only 9% of sales emails are opened.
2. 69% of spam flags are based purely on a subject line.
3. 24% of email opens happen within an hour.
4. The average email user deletes nearly half of the emails they receive.
5. Salespeople spend more than a third of their time emailing.
6. Emails with questions are 50% more likely to get a response.
Visualizing Your Own Gmail Statistics
Related posts:
...[end quoted excerpt]
https://financesonline.com/number-of-active-gmail-users/
Number of Active Gmail Users 2022/2023: Statistics, Demographics, & Usage
How many active Gmail users are there?
There are over 1.8 billion active Gmail users in 2020. That's one Gmail user >for every five people around the globe. This makes Gmail one of the most >popular email platforms in the world.
...
With 1.8 billion active users, Gmail is undeniably one of the most popular >email service providers in the US and the world. An individual needs to be
at least 13 years old to create an account for most Google services, >including Gmail.
don't know about googlegroups.com, but gmail.com seems "to big to fail":
On 11/24/23 10:45, The Doctor wrote:
In article <ujqig8$mq2$1@tncsrv09.home.tnetconsulting.net>,
Grant Taylor <gtaylor@tnetconsulting.net> wrote:
On 11/24/23 08:17, D wrote:
...
roughly ten and one half million google posts/replies so far this
year, a crude and some might say far too conservative guesstimate,
ten million mostly spam articles from one source, within one year
Yep.
That's why I gave up and filtered Google Groups on my server.
I wanted to spend my time enjoying Usenet and communicating with people
thereon. I was tired of spending time shoveling spam.
Grant. . . .
Exactly why I had enough of Google GRoups!
About time they made that a read-only service!
Agreed.
--
user <candycane> is generated from /dev/urandom
On Thu, 23 Nov 2023 17:19:50 -0600, Grant Taylor
<gtaylor@tnetconsulting.net> wrote:
On 11/23/23 16:46, D wrote:
this "google doesn't care" assertion seems to be a recurring theme among >>> practically every server admin who has been discussing googlegroups spam
There is a very similar and recurring theme in the email community.
Based on what I've seen, Google is:
1) the biggest source of email period
2) the biggest source of spam email period
3) the biggest source of Usenet posts period
4) the biggest source of Usenet spam posts period
#1 & #3 sort of beget #2 & #4 based on simple math.
If Google sends 1,000,000 messages a day email and / or Usenet posts,
and catches 99.9% of the spam, that's still
1,000,000 x 0.001 = 1,000 spam messages a day.
Play with the numbers:
- send more messages
- worse spam filtering ratio
You end up with more spam messages leaving Google a day.
The sad thing is that if they hit 99.9% accuracy in their spam filter
that is far better than many other organizations.
Is it fair to say that a company that blocks a higher percentage of spam >>than other companies (assuming they do for a moment) doesn't care? I
don't think so.
Is it fair to say that a company that sends thousands of spam messages a >>day doesn't care? Maybe, maybe not. It depends on the numbers, numbers
we might not have visibility into.
Is it fair to say that a company that is known for not responding to
spam complaints while sending thousands of spam messages a day doesn't >>care? Probably.
Given what I witnessed, my opinion is that the powers that be at Google >>don't care what happens on Usenet until their involvement therewith
becomes a (big enough) liability for the company. I assume that Google >>will cease to participate in Usenet shortly after it becomes a liability >>for them.
don't know about googlegroups.com, but gmail.com seems "to big to fail":
https://emailanalytics.com/gmail-statistics/
20+ Gmail Statistics to Know[end quoted excerpt]
by Jayson DeMers | 2 comments
In this article, we'll explore some recent Gmail statistics -- and how to learn
more about your own use of Gmail.
We'll also cover some bonus email statistics at the end!
Table of Contents [hide]
15 Basic Gmail Statistics
1. There are more than 1.5 billion Gmail users.
2. There are more than 10 million spam and malicious emails every minute, >> all blocked by Gmail's automated machine learning (ML).
3. Only 0.1% of messages that make it to the inbox are spam.
4. Only 0.05% of automatically spam-flagged messages are not actually spam.
5. About 27% of all email opens are on Gmail.
6. Gmail offers support for 105 languages.
7. The average Gmail account is worth $3,588.85.
8. The average Gmail user has 1.7 accounts.
9. The average Gmail account has more than 5,700 emails.
10. About 75% of Gmail users access their email on a mobile device.
11. Among Americans aged 18-29, 61% use Gmail.
12. More than 20 billion emails have been migrated to Gmail.
13. More than 60% of mid-sized U.S. companies use Gmail.
14. More than two-thirds of incoming messages are promotional in nature.
15. The read rate for promotional emails is 19.2%.
Gmail History and Facts
16. The first Gmail account went live April 1, 2004.
17. Gmail celebrated its first birthday with 2 GB of free storage.
18. Google consolidated its user storage in 2013, with 15 GB of free storage.
19. Gmail was considered the best webmail service in 2006.
20. The longest outage in Gmail history was 2.5 hours.
Email Statistics
1. In 2020, there will be 306.4 billion emails sent.
2. The average worker gets 121 emails per day.
3. The click-through-rate (CTR) of emails averages 3.1%.
4. 6% of emails are opened on mobile devices.
Email Sales Statistics
1. Only 9% of sales emails are opened.
2. 69% of spam flags are based purely on a subject line.
3. 24% of email opens happen within an hour.
4. The average email user deletes nearly half of the emails they receive. >> 5. Salespeople spend more than a third of their time emailing.
6. Emails with questions are 50% more likely to get a response. >>Visualizing Your Own Gmail Statistics
Related posts:
https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/gmail-users-by-country >>Gmail Users by Country 2023
...[end quoted excerpt]
https://financesonline.com/number-of-active-gmail-users/
Number of Active Gmail Users 2022/2023: Statistics, Demographics, & Usage >>How many active Gmail users are there?
There are over 1.8 billion active Gmail users in 2020. That's one Gmail user >>for every five people around the globe. This makes Gmail one of the most >>popular email platforms in the world.
...
With 1.8 billion active users, Gmail is undeniably one of the most popular >>email service providers in the US and the world. An individual needs to be >>at least 13 years old to create an account for most Google services, >>including Gmail.
In article <5d7556421a45b004b687ccaa7617dbe4@dizum.com>, D <J@M> wrote:
don't know about googlegroups.com, but gmail.com seems "to big to fail":
Gmail and Google Groups are almost complete opposites. Gmail is used by >millions of people and is very high profile. If something happens to
Gmail, it appears in the newspaper and Google management notices very quickly.
Google Groups is a bunch of servers running in a corner without any human >intervention. Nobody in Google management has any idea that it exists, or >that Usenet exists. When something goes wrong with Google Groups, nobody
at Google has any idea, let alone their management.
--scott
--
"C'est un Nagra. C'est suisse, et tres, tres precis."
Google Groups is a bunch of servers running in a corner without any human intervention.
Nobody in Google management has any idea that it exists, or
that Usenet exists. When something goes wrong with Google Groups, nobody
at Google has any idea, let alone their management.
On 11/24/23 18:52, Scott Dorsey wrote:
Google Groups is a bunch of servers running in a corner without any humanI can assure you that Google Groups /proper/ is very well known and very
intervention.
well used inside of Google. As in daily, if not hourly by some teams.
Google Groups /Usenet/ gateway is more what your comment should be
directed at.
GGUgw is really a gateway between GGP and Usenet.
Yes, GGUgw runs largely unattended by humans. But it is attended by >automation.
Nobody in Google management has any idea that it exists, or*GGUgw
that Usenet exists. When something goes wrong with Google Groups, nobody
at Google has any idea, let alone their management.
It's actually worse than that.
I know that some employees were told not to make any changes / fix
anything in the GGUgw service.
GGUgw is effectively frozen in time and will run until the rest of GGP
moves on to something that's incompatible with GGUgw.
so the right hand might not actually know what the left hand is doing,
and that sounds eerily similar to compartmentalization, "need to know"
Grant Taylor <gtaylor@tnetconsulting.net> wrote:
Given what I witnessed, my opinion is that the powers that be at Google >>don't care what happens on Usenet until their involvement therewith
becomes a (big enough) liability for the company. I assume that Google >>will cease to participate in Usenet shortly after it becomes a liability >>for them.
Visibly pulling the plug on the Google Groups Usenet Interface (for
example by just making the gated groups read-only on GG) is the single
best thing that Google could do for Usenet. It would send a clear
message to the handful of legitimate users AND get rid of the spam.
Greetings
Marc
--
-------------------------------------- !! No courtesy copies, please !! ----- >Marc Haber | " Questions are the | Mailadresse im Header >Mannheim, Germany | Beginning of Wisdom " |
Nordisch by Nature | Lt. Worf, TNG "Rightful Heir" | Fon: *49 621 72739834
Given what I witnessed, my opinion is that the powers that be at Google
don't care what happens on Usenet until their involvement therewith
becomes a (big enough) liability for the company. I assume that Google
will cease to participate in Usenet shortly after it becomes a liability
for them.
In article <ujs4l4$fn44$1@news1.tnib.de>,
Marc Haber <mh+usenetspam1118@zugschl.us> wrote:
Grant Taylor <gtaylor@tnetconsulting.net> wrote:
Given what I witnessed, my opinion is that the powers that be at Google >>>don't care what happens on Usenet until their involvement therewith >>>becomes a (big enough) liability for the company. I assume that Google >>>will cease to participate in Usenet shortly after it becomes a liability >>>for them.
Visibly pulling the plug on the Google Groups Usenet Interface (for
example by just making the gated groups read-only on GG) is the single
best thing that Google could do for Usenet. It would send a clear
message to the handful of legitimate users AND get rid of the spam.
If they know how to force the issue!
Visibly pulling the plug on the Google Groups Usenet Interface (for
example by just making the gated groups read-only on GG) is the single
best thing that Google could do for Usenet. It would send a clear
message to the handful of legitimate users AND get rid of the spam.
Marc Haber <mh+usenetspam1118@zugschl.us> wrote:
Visibly pulling the plug on the Google Groups Usenet Interface (for
example by just making the gated groups read-only on GG) is the single
best thing that Google could do for Usenet. It would send a clear
message to the handful of legitimate users AND get rid of the spam.
This is true. Except that they will do it without announcing it in advance and without letting anyone know what happened afterward. It will just suddenly not connect to Usenet and users will wonder why there are so few posts.
Just like happened when they removed the advanced search and when they
broke the search indices.
--scott
So it's basically a legacy feature to them?
On 11/24/23 18:52, Scott Dorsey wrote:
Google Groups is a bunch of servers running in a corner without any human
intervention.
I can assure you that Google Groups /proper/ is very well known and very
well used inside of Google. As in daily, if not hourly by some teams.
Google Groups /Usenet/ gateway is more what your comment should be
directed at.
GGUgw is really a gateway between GGP and Usenet.
Yes, GGUgw runs largely unattended by humans. But it is attended by automation.
Nobody in Google management has any idea that it exists, or
that Usenet exists. When something goes wrong with Google Groups, nobody >> at Google has any idea, let alone their management.
*GGUgw
It's actually worse than that.
I know that some employees were told not to make any changes / fix
anything in the GGUgw service.
GGUgw is effectively frozen in time and will run until the rest of GGP
moves on to something that's incompatible with GGUgw.
Marc Haber <mh+usenetspam1118@zugschl.us> wrote:
Visibly pulling the plug on the Google Groups Usenet Interface (for
example by just making the gated groups read-only on GG) is the single
best thing that Google could do for Usenet. It would send a clear
message to the handful of legitimate users AND get rid of the spam.
This is true. Except that they will do it without announcing it in advance >and without letting anyone know what happened afterward. It will just >suddenly not connect to Usenet and users will wonder why there are so few >posts.
Just like happened when they removed the advanced search and when they
broke the search indices.
--scott
Le 25/11/2023 à 16:21, candycanearter07 a écrit :
So it's basically a legacy feature to them?
When they bought Dejanews they thought they bought usenet.
Marc Haber <mh+usenetspam1118@zugschl.us> wrote:
Visibly pulling the plug on the Google Groups Usenet Interface (forThis is true. Except that they will do it without announcing it in advance and without letting anyone know what happened afterward. It will just suddenly not connect to Usenet and users will wonder why there are so few posts.
example by just making the gated groups read-only on GG) is the single
best thing that Google could do for Usenet. It would send a clear
message to the handful of legitimate users AND get rid of the spam.
. . .
As I learned from several users who complained about the spam flood,
Google is actively suggesting to create new Google Groups for the same
topics and abandon the spam-infested Groups. As these new groups are
unlikely to be created on Usenet, they will be GoggleGroups only and
the GoogleGroups users will not even wonder about the reduced traffic.
Good riddance.
On 11/24/23 20:50, D wrote:
so the right hand might not actually know what the left hand is doing,
and that sounds eerily similar to compartmentalization, "need to know"
Yep.
There's an extremely good chance that some of the 7k / 12k that got let
go earlier this year were the ones actually taking care of GGUgw.
Information sharing inside was less and less of a thing as time went on.
More and more tell the bosses more of what they want to hear and less of
what they want to not hear even if it's what they need to hear.
Or removing the HTML/scriptless version of gmail. It's probably planned
like that, since avoiding news about the thing will make less people
know about it, and thus there will be less outcry. Hell, I had NO idea
until I loaded up gmail one day and noticed the HTML link on the loading screen was replaced with a useless "Help and Support" link.
Ray Banana <rayban@raybanana.net> wrote:
. . .
As I learned from several users who complained about the spam flood,
Google is actively suggesting to create new Google Groups for the same >>topics and abandon the spam-infested Groups. As these new groups are >>unlikely to be created on Usenet, they will be GoggleGroups only and
the GoogleGroups users will not even wonder about the reduced traffic.
Good riddance.
Gee, golly, I sure hope that the names of these Google Groups will be >entirely distinguishable from Usenet group names. I also hope no one >helpfully creates a gateway.
Will Google remove Usenet groups from Google Groups, giving themselves
the ultimate Usenet death penalty? Let's hope.
Thus spake kludge@panix.com (Scott Dorsey)
Marc Haber <mh+usenetspam1118@zugschl.us> wrote:
Visibly pulling the plug on the Google Groups Usenet Interface (for >>>example by just making the gated groups read-only on GG) is the single >>>best thing that Google could do for Usenet. It would send a clearThis is true. Except that they will do it without announcing it in advance >> and without letting anyone know what happened afterward. It will just
message to the handful of legitimate users AND get rid of the spam.
suddenly not connect to Usenet and users will wonder why there are so few
posts.
As I learned from several users who complained about the spam flood,
Google is actively suggesting to create new Google Groups for the same
topics and abandon the spam-infested Groups. As these new groups are
unlikely to be created on Usenet, they will be GoggleGroups only and
the GoogleGroups users will not even wonder about the reduced traffic.
Good riddance.
--
Пу́тін — хуйло́
http://www.eternal-september.org
To actually get the issue into the newspapers, or at least the tech
news websites, I imagine organising Usenet users living near Google
HQ to stage a protest there. Hold up placards with ASCII art and
Figlet text printed on them. "KILL(file) Google", "save the
internet's first social network", and so on. It wouldn't need to be
a big crowd, just tell all the media groups in advance and I think nostalgia's so powerful these days that many would be interested in
covering the story at least from quirky angle.
To actually get the issue into the newspapers, or at least the tech
news websites, I imagine organising Usenet users living near Google
HQ to stage a protest there. Hold up placards with ASCII art and
Figlet text printed on them. "KILL(file) Google", "save the
internet's first social network", and so on. It wouldn't need to be
a big crowd, just tell all the media groups in advance and I think nostalgia's so powerful these days that many would be interested in
covering the story at least from quirky angle.
In article <5d7556421a45b004b687ccaa7617dbe4@dizum.com>, D <J@M> wrote:
don't know about googlegroups.com, but gmail.com seems "to big to fail":
Gmail and Google Groups are almost complete opposites. Gmail is used by millions of people and is very high profile. If something happens to
Gmail, it appears in the newspaper and Google management notices very quickly.
Scott Dorsey <kludge@panix.com> wrote:
In article <5d7556421a45b004b687ccaa7617dbe4@dizum.com>, D <J@M> wrote: >>>don't know about googlegroups.com, but gmail.com seems "to big to fail":Hmm, no. I think of all the blogs out there written by people who
Gmail and Google Groups are almost complete opposites. Gmail is used by
millions of people and is very high profile. If something happens to
Gmail, it appears in the newspaper and Google management notices very quickly.
host their own mail server, complaining about Gmail unjustifiably
marking all their mail to Gmail addresses as spam.
Do Google care? No, they've only announced their requirement for
DKIM now that they're starting to also apply it to big servers
from commercial email hosts. Who knows what other pointless rules
they've put into their terrible spam filter system. Did the fact
that Gmail users were having thousands of emails from perfectly
innocent private email servers effectively filtered out make it
into the newspaper? No.
Usenet is a tiny niche of Google Groups, from which Google would
rather everyone switched to their own native Google-only Groups
that aren't gatewayed to Usenet. Private email servers are a tiny
niche of email, from which Google would rather everyone switched to
their own email hosting services. Very similar indeed. Much like
how it makes me all the more determined never to take either
action myself.
To actually get the issue into the newspapers, or at least the tech
news websites, I imagine organising Usenet users living near Google
HQ to stage a protest there. Hold up placards with ASCII art and
Figlet text printed on them. "KILL(file) Google", "save the
internet's first social network", and so on. It wouldn't need to be
a big crowd, just tell all the media groups in advance and I think >nostalgia's so powerful these days that many would be interested in
covering the story at least from quirky angle.
Still it might just end up being one nerdy guy walking around in a
home-made T-shirt, because it turns out there aren't enough
dedicated Usenet users out there to gather any in one place, and
that indeed is the problem.
Scott Dorsey <kludge@panix.com> wrote:
In article <5d7556421a45b004b687ccaa7617dbe4@dizum.com>, D <J@M> wrote:
don't know about googlegroups.com, but gmail.com seems "to big to fail":
Gmail and Google Groups are almost complete opposites. Gmail is used by millions of people and is very high profile. If something happens to Gmail, it appears in the newspaper and Google management notices very quickly.
Hmm, no. I think of all the blogs out there written by people who
host their own mail server, complaining about Gmail unjustifiably
marking all their mail to Gmail addresses as spam.
Do Google care? No, they've only announced their requirement for
DKIM now that they're starting to also apply it to big servers
from commercial email hosts. Who knows what other pointless rules
they've put into their terrible spam filter system. Did the fact
that Gmail users were having thousands of emails from perfectly
innocent private email servers effectively filtered out make it
into the newspaper? No.
To actually get the issue into the newspapers, or at least the tech
news websites, I imagine organising Usenet users living near Google
HQ to stage a protest there. Hold up placards with ASCII art and
Figlet text printed on them. "KILL(file) Google", "save the
internet's first social network", and so on. It wouldn't need to be
a big crowd, just tell all the media groups in advance and I think nostalgia's so powerful these days that many would be interested in
covering the story at least from quirky angle.
On 26 Nov 2023 07:22:41 +1000
not@telling.you.invalid (Computer Nerd Kev) wrote:
Scott Dorsey <kludge@panix.com> wrote:[...]
In article <5d7556421a45b004b687ccaa7617dbe4@dizum.com>, D <J@M> wrote: >> >>don't know about googlegroups.com, but gmail.com seems "to big to fail": >> > Gmail and Google Groups are almost complete opposites. Gmail is used by >> > millions of people and is very high profile. If something happens toHmm, no. I think of all the blogs out there written by people who
Gmail, it appears in the newspaper and Google management notices very quickly.
host their own mail server, complaining about Gmail unjustifiably
marking all their mail to Gmail addresses as spam.
Do Google care? No, they've only announced their requirement for
DKIM now that they're starting to also apply it to big servers
from commercial email hosts. Who knows what other pointless rules
they've put into their terrible spam filter system. Did the fact
that Gmail users were having thousands of emails from perfectly
innocent private email servers effectively filtered out make it
into the newspaper? No.
To actually get the issue into the newspapers, or at least the tech
news websites, I imagine organising Usenet users living near Google
HQ to stage a protest there. Hold up placards with ASCII art and
Figlet text printed on them. "KILL(file) Google", "save the
internet's first social network", and so on. It wouldn't need to be
a big crowd, just tell all the media groups in advance and I think
nostalgia's so powerful these days that many would be interested in
covering the story at least from quirky angle.
But this would send the wrong message (especially your 2nd slogan) as in , >usenet depends on Google. It does not. It would be a more useful and >rewarding thing to do to help users of googlegroups move to other ways of >using usenet. Even creating alternative web interfaces to usenet would be >worthwhile for those who for some reason can't use the usual usenet access. >Actually even advertising usenet without any reference to Google would be >more appropriate. Like having placards saying "Discover the internet's
first social network" , "Be in control of your user experience" and things >like that. Don't make Google sound more relevant than it is.
Note that the situation is not analogous to email because on usenet the >majority of users do not use googlegroups whereas with email only a
small minority (or so I'm guessing) of users run their own server.
Newsgroups: news.software.nntp[end quoted excerpt]
Subject: INN 2.x FAQ
Date: Tue, 21 Nov 2023 08:01:03 -0000 (UTC)
Organization: The Eyrie
Message-ID: <FAQ-faq-1700553662$6492@hope.eyrie.org>
Last-modified: 2023-04-17
Posted-by: postfaq 1.17 (Perl 5.28.1)
Archive-name: usenet/software/inn2-faq
URL: https://www.eyrie.org/~eagle/faqs/inn.html
Posting-frequency: monthly
This FAQ is intended to answer frequently asked questions concerning the >current versions of INN (INN 2.x and later) seen on news.software.nntp.
It should be referred to in preference to the old INN FAQ, which only >documents versions up to 1.7. It mostly covers INN 2.3 and later; earlier >versions of INN may behave differently or use different configuration
files.
If you're reading this on Usenet, this FAQ is formatted as a minimal
digest, so if your news or mail reader has digest handling capabilities
you can use them to navigate between sections. In rn variants, you can
use Ctrl-G to skip to the next section; in Gnus, press Ctrl-D to break
each section into a separate article.
...
On 26 Nov 2023 07:22:41 +1000
not@telling.you.invalid (Computer Nerd Kev) wrote:
Scott Dorsey <kludge@panix.com> wrote:
Gmail and Google Groups are almost complete opposites. Gmail is used by >> > millions of people and is very high profile. If something happens to
Gmail, it appears in the newspaper and Google management notices very quickly.
Hmm, no. I think of all the blogs out there written by people who
host their own mail server, complaining about Gmail unjustifiably
marking all their mail to Gmail addresses as spam.
Do Google care? No, they've only announced their requirement for
DKIM now that they're starting to also apply it to big servers
from commercial email hosts. Who knows what other pointless rules
they've put into their terrible spam filter system. Did the fact
that Gmail users were having thousands of emails from perfectly
innocent private email servers effectively filtered out make it
into the newspaper? No.
[...]
To actually get the issue into the newspapers, or at least the tech
news websites, I imagine organising Usenet users living near Google
HQ to stage a protest there. Hold up placards with ASCII art and
Figlet text printed on them. "KILL(file) Google", "save the
internet's first social network", and so on. It wouldn't need to be
a big crowd, just tell all the media groups in advance and I think
nostalgia's so powerful these days that many would be interested in
covering the story at least from quirky angle.
But this would send the wrong message (especially your 2nd slogan) as in , usenet depends on Google.
It does not. It would be a more useful and
rewarding thing to do to help users of googlegroups move to other ways of using usenet. Even creating alternative web interfaces to usenet would be worthwhile for those who for some reason can't use the usual usenet access. Actually even advertising usenet without any reference to Google would be more appropriate. Like having placards saying "Discover the internet's
first social network" , "Be in control of your user experience" and things like that.
Note that the situation is not analogous to email because on usenet the majority of users do not use googlegroups whereas with email only a
small minority (or so I'm guessing) of users run their own server.
Spiros Bousbouras <spibou@gmail.com> wrote:
On 26 Nov 2023 07:22:41 +1000With the sole aim of making Google pay attention, that's exactly
not@telling.you.invalid (Computer Nerd Kev) wrote:
Scott Dorsey <kludge@panix.com> wrote:[...]
Gmail and Google Groups are almost complete opposites. Gmail is used by >>> > millions of people and is very high profile. If something happens toHmm, no. I think of all the blogs out there written by people who
Gmail, it appears in the newspaper and Google management notices very quickly.
host their own mail server, complaining about Gmail unjustifiably
marking all their mail to Gmail addresses as spam.
Do Google care? No, they've only announced their requirement for
DKIM now that they're starting to also apply it to big servers
from commercial email hosts. Who knows what other pointless rules
they've put into their terrible spam filter system. Did the fact
that Gmail users were having thousands of emails from perfectly
innocent private email servers effectively filtered out make it
into the newspaper? No.
To actually get the issue into the newspapers, or at least the techBut this would send the wrong message (especially your 2nd slogan) as in , >> usenet depends on Google.
news websites, I imagine organising Usenet users living near Google
HQ to stage a protest there. Hold up placards with ASCII art and
Figlet text printed on them. "KILL(file) Google", "save the
internet's first social network", and so on. It wouldn't need to be
a big crowd, just tell all the media groups in advance and I think
nostalgia's so powerful these days that many would be interested in
covering the story at least from quirky angle.
the message I'd aim for.
It does not. It would be a more useful andYou're not going to get much media attention from that because
rewarding thing to do to help users of googlegroups move to other ways of
using usenet. Even creating alternative web interfaces to usenet would be
worthwhile for those who for some reason can't use the usual usenet access. >> Actually even advertising usenet without any reference to Google would be
more appropriate. Like having placards saying "Discover the internet's
first social network" , "Be in control of your user experience" and things >> like that.
there's no controversy. Plus I think attracting new users is a
much more difficult aim than simply making Google pay attention
to their Usenet gateway, for the sake of existing users.
As for encouraging Google Groups users to switch to a real news
server, why don't more people who say they're blocking GG posts now
advertise as such, like I do in my sig? A GG user might ignore one
person, or even a small group, asking them to switch to a real news
server. But if they know that half the contributors aren't even
seeing their posts anymore, it gives them a personal incentive to
switch.
Note that the situation is not analogous to email because on usenet theI was assuming that the majority of Google Groups content doesn't
majority of users do not use googlegroups whereas with email only a
small minority (or so I'm guessing) of users run their own server.
come from Usenet due to all the non-Usenet groups they run, so new
posts originating from Usenet are also a small minority. But that
could well be wrong.
On Sat, 25 Nov 2023 09:25:31 -0600
candycanearter07 <no@thanks.net> wrote:
Or removing the HTML/scriptless version of gmail. It's probably planned
like that, since avoiding news about the thing will make less people
know about it, and thus there will be less outcry. Hell, I had NO idea
until I loaded up gmail one day and noticed the HTML link on the loading
screen was replaced with a useless "Help and Support" link.
Are you referring to
Newsgroups: alt.comp.software.firefox,alt.comp.os.windows-10,alt.comp.freeware
Subject: What does Google turning off HTML in 3 months mean for Windows Firefox GMail users?
Date: Tue, 26 Sep 2023 16:17:02 -0600
Organization: To protect and to server
Message-ID: <uevl8u$2918c$1@paganini.bofh.team>
? If yes then it was announced.
So it's basically a legacy feature to them?
media attention / google attention / newspapers / controversy / ..?
the scripted mainstream media narrative is theirs and theirs alone;
e.g. usenet newsgroups have never once been mentioned on television
or in newspapers (afaik... citations welcome); usenet is autonomous
That being said, I am in the process of going through my server and
removing messages that originated from Google Groups as they were such a source of spam and waste of disk space.
Once that's done I'll get a count of the number of messages in the news spool.
On 11/23/23 12:54, D wrote:
of the many thousands of unmoderated newsgroups ...
... is there any, preferably easy way for news admins to post totals
for all articles in all unmoderated newsgroups containing "googlegroups.com"
in message-id headers, and separately for reference headers of replies which
also contain "googlegroups.com", e.g., since 1 January 2023 to current date?
Technically yes.
Practically not really.
For starters, the sheer number of messages makes this laborious.
Aside: IMHO moderation is somewhat of a joke and can easily be defeated
if you know how to do so.
Extracting the list of unmoderated newsgroups would be simple enough.
The rest of the tests are going to be *HIGHLY* dependent on what type of
news spool you are using; file per message (tradspool in INN parlance),
a wrapping fixed size (as in bytes on disk) spool file, a database of
some sort. This gets complicated.
With tradspool, you can look at the file's creation time and have a good idea. But only a good idea because articles may come in with delay thus appear to have a newer creation time than when they were actually
posted. So you sort of need to process each potentially qualifying
message and check the Date: header. -- This is definitely possible,
but takes time. That time is multiplied by the sheer number of articles involved.
I suspect that you will have to process each post to get the Message-ID:
and References: header. I doubt that any overview database will contain them. -- Again, definitely possible, but takes time per message.
Even if you can do 1 ~ 100 messages a second, the sheer number of
messages is not in your favor.
My personal / private archive server has more than 27 million articles
going back to late '18. That's a LOT of messages to spend time processing.
That being said, I am in the process of going through my server and
removing messages that originated from Google Groups as they were such a source of spam and waste of disk space.
Why only 100 messages a second tops ? You only need to parse the header and remove posts where the Message-ID ends in @googlegroups.com .I mean , that is what you need to do just to identify googlegroups messages without caring about the date although I don't imagine that adding date processing slows down things that much. It seems to me that a modern computer should be able to process at least thousands of messages per second. What's slowing things down ? Is it parsing the messages or fetching them from somewhere like the hard disk ? In what programming language is the processing software written ?
media attention / google attention / newspapers / controversy / ..?
the scripted mainstream media narrative is theirs and theirs alone;
e.g. usenet newsgroups have never once been mentioned on television
or in newspapers (afaik... citations welcome); usenet is autonomous
I agree, in part. Usenet has been largely ignored by network and
cable television news.
On the other hand, historically usenet death penalties have garnered >attention from mainstream press, including the likes of The Wall
Street Journal, Wired, CNet, The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times
and others. Of course, they were reporting about active UDPs, the
vast majority of which ended before a single udpcancel was ever
issued.
IIRC, only one Usenet Death Penalty moved to enforcement by udpcancel:
UUNet, ca. 1997. I believe it lasted somewhere around forty eight
(48) hours. Even so, the basis for this UDP centered around their
dial-up rent-a-POP. The scenario involved 1) UUNet selling access to
a variety of Internet Service Providers and 2) ISPs running their own
NNTP servers "authenticating" based exclusively to IP addresses used
by UUNet dial-up. So, if a bad actor signs up for an account at
provider A, which uses UUNet's dial-ups, they could post via the NNTP
servers operated by ISP B, C, D, E, F and G, none of whom had any
ability to track down the bad user account.
Please keep in mind, these ISP servers were full feed servers, rather
than the text only servers around which the bulk of these discussions >revolve.
Then there were problems surrounding unsecured, open servers. As an
example, DNEWS originally came with a web-based control panel, which
was incapable of overwriting any existing configuration. So, the >administrators of these DNEWS boxes, with their faulty configuration
panels, could not turn on authentication. (It seems that some Windows
users, which were running DNEWS with its GUI interface, were not
particularly comfortable
Almost all of the other historical UDP discussions involved the
introduction of high speed Internet and providers operating their own,
very fast, NNTP servers, which had zero facility to authenticate
individual users, ie. no user:pass. At the same time, users on these >primarily cable services began installing proxies on their home
networks. Many of these users failed to secure these proxies, running
them open to the world, with all that implies regarding bad actors.
Of course, these open proxies, running on high speed Internet
connections, on networks running fast-at-all-cost NNTP servers, with
no security beyond an IP check, were hijacked /en masse/, with spam
volume totaling in excess of 100k, daily.
If you really want the mainstream press and broadcast to pay
attention to you, you might want to consider reaching out directly to
them. The likelihood of them stumbling across these UDP calls against >Google, in what amounts to a largely forgotten backwater, to the
population at a whole.
On 11/23/23 15:51, Grant Taylor wrote:
That being said, I am in the process of going through my server and
removing messages that originated from Google Groups as they were such
a source of spam and waste of disk space.
Once that's done I'll get a count of the number of messages in the news
spool.
Since some people seemed interested, I ended up removing about 6,000,000 messages from my news spool.
~27,000,000 down to ~21,000,000
It took many days to run. It finished some time while I was at work
today.
Wow, that's a lot of messages!
I've been working the past couple of days to add such stats to my nocem search page. Currently it only shows number from "yesterday". It is interesting to see these numbers (to me anyway).
On 11/28/23 10:16, Retro Guy wrote:
Wow, that's a lot of messages!
Yep.
I've been working the past couple of days to add such stats to my nocem
search page. Currently it only shows number from "yesterday". It is
interesting to see these numbers (to me anyway).
Yes. Though I might choose "depressing" as the word.
How much time and effort are some miscreants inducing multiple other
people spend?
At some point, the time simply is no longer worth the effort for a
finely targeted approach. Eventually a more blunt approach will be used. >People's time is worth more than anyone thinks it is.
... then there are the myriads of replies that quote all or part of the
op's typically spammy and verbose texts that give a new meaning to ugly
On 11/23/23 08:06, D wrote:
they make ridiculous claims like "googlegroups has legitimate
users"
I have first hand experience of having valid Usenet
interactions with Google Groups users.
I also have first hand experience seeing tens / hundreds of
thousands of spam messages from Google Groups.
Yes, Google Groups does have legitimate users.
But I'm now of the opinion that the ratio of such low signal to
such high noise makes Google Groups not worth tolerating.
, or that its top admins are oblivious to usenet's very
existence... what, are they mind readers?
I have first hand exposure to Google's corporate culture and
what they value to know that Usenet is not going to receive the
care and treatment that we want it to receive from them.
| Sysop: | Keyop |
|---|---|
| Location: | Huddersfield, West Yorkshire, UK |
| Users: | 546 |
| Nodes: | 16 (2 / 14) |
| Uptime: | 15:00:33 |
| Calls: | 10,389 |
| Files: | 14,061 |
| Messages: | 6,416,903 |