997
Everyone I've talked to about joining Mastodon/Lemmy/The Fediverse
(poptalk.scrubbles.tech)
yeah but if you join, and your friends join, and they're friends, you know what nevermind
[Edit] holy shit people I get it, people like it small, take it easy it's just a meme, don't need to keep commenting and DMing
Was usenet pretty much a bunch of federated forums back then? When I first heard of it, around 2009, all I could find were places charging upfront for registration.
The Fediverse is a resurrection of an old concept,and yes, Usenet was a bunch of servers talking to each other, very much like the rest of the Internet. It has been supplanted by the World Wide Web in the 90s, and now that the Web is choc full of SEO spam, bots and intrusive ads, Usenet style communities are popping up once more.
As for the modern Usenet, it is mostly being used for ahem "file sharing", hence why some companies offer paid access.