apparently comp.arch, comp.lang.c++, and com.lang.fortran are now read only at google groups

[Lynn McGuire]

Apparently comp.arch, comp.lang.c++, and comp.lang.fortran are now read
only at google groups to stop the spam floods.

Lynn

[George Neuner]

You mean the spam floods that Google openly condones and possibly also
facilitates in order to promote its own group services?

[The Doctor]

In article <a1e3kihl2o606a97g...@4ax.com>,

Apt way of putting it!
--
Member - Liberal International This is doc...@nk.ca Ici doc...@nk.ca
Yahweh, King & country!Never Satan President Republic!Beware AntiChrist rising!
Look at Psalms 14 and 53 on Atheism ; unsubscribe from Google Groups to be seen
Today is not tomorrow, and this world provides no guarantees. -unknown https://mindspring.com

[John Levine]

According to George Neuner <gneu...@comcast.net>:

>>Lynn
>
>You mean the spam floods that Google openly condones and possibly also
>facilitates in order to promote its own group services?

I think you vastly overestimate how much anyone at Google cares about Groups.
The whole thing has been on autopilot for years, it can't possibly be making
them enough money to deal with the hassle.

FWIW I get plenty of spam directly from Groups when people yet again load
up a spam list and blast out mail in languages I cannot read.



--
Regards,
John Levine, jo...@taugh.com, Primary Perpetrator of "The Internet for Dummies",
Please consider the environment before reading this e-mail. https://jl.ly

[Joe Pfeiffer]

Lynn McGuire <lynnmc...@gmail.com> writes:

> Apparently comp.arch, comp.lang.c++, and comp.lang.fortran are now
> read only at google groups to stop the spam floods.

No, I'm reading through Eternal September. Blocking posts with Thai
characters eliminates nearly all of the flood for me (but geez, it's
awful that it's necessary).

[John Levine]

According to Joe Pfeiffer <pfei...@cs.nmsu.edu>:

>Lynn McGuire <lynnmc...@gmail.com> writes:
>
>> Apparently comp.arch, comp.lang.c++, and comp.lang.fortran are now
>> read only at google groups to stop the spam floods.
>
>No, I'm reading through Eternal September.

That's "read only" as in they don't let people post new articles.

People continue to read those groups all over the place. You
couldn't stop if if you wanted to.

[George Neuner]

On Wed, 1 Nov 2023 10:55:06 -0000 (UTC), John Levine <jo...@taugh.com>
wrote:

>According to George Neuner <gneu...@comcast.net>:
>>>Lynn
>>
>>You mean the spam floods that Google openly condones and possibly also
>>facilitates in order to promote its own group services?
>
>I think you vastly overestimate how much anyone at Google cares about Groups.
>The whole thing has been on autopilot for years, it can't possibly be making
>them enough money to deal with the hassle.

Maybe. But remember that Google trades in eyeballs ... the money, in
some sense, is secondary.


"group" is overloaded.

Google Groups (GG) is a unified interface that provides access to
Usenet, public mailing lists, and to Google's own group services.

But there is a substantial difference: Google offers spam filtering to
its own groups, while denying it to others.

>FWIW I get plenty of spam directly from Groups when people yet again load
>up a spam list and blast out mail in languages I cannot read.

Sure it can happen.

GG's spam filtering has to be opted into by the group administrator.
However, there is no way provided for an outside group to do that, so
even those non-Google Usenet groups and mailing lists that /have/
living administrators have no way to opt into Google's spam filtering.

Also, my experience with GG has been that its spam filtering only
checks posts made via email (the "list" interface). It seems that
posts made directly via the web UI are checked only for abusive
language (and then only in English), and once accepted they can be
removed only by the group adminstrator or via user complaints.


The major point here is that Google provides (some semblence of) spam
filtering - but only for its own groups.

YMMV.

[John Levine]

It appears that George Neuner <gneu...@comcast.net> said:
>The major point here is that Google provides (some semblence of) spam
>filtering - but only for its own groups.

This is completely consistent with it being on autopilot. Someone
built the spam filter for their own groups, nobody got around to
making it work with usenet. I can easily imagine them saying there's
so much garbage in usenet from other places, what difference would
it make?

As the old saw reminds us, don't assume malice until you've ruled out
incompetence.

[Joe Pfeiffer]

John Levine <jo...@taugh.com> writes:

> According to Joe Pfeiffer <pfei...@cs.nmsu.edu>:
>>Lynn McGuire <lynnmc...@gmail.com> writes:
>>
>>> Apparently comp.arch, comp.lang.c++, and comp.lang.fortran are now
>>> read only at google groups to stop the spam floods.
>>
>>No, I'm reading through Eternal September.
>
> That's "read only" as in they don't let people post new articles.
>
> People continue to read those groups all over the place. You
> couldn't stop if if you wanted to.

Ummm.... so they allow followups but not new topics?

[James Kuyper]

How exactly is that supposed to work? What are the group services that
it's promoting, and how does make it's own news feed unreadable serve to
promote them?

[James Kuyper]

No, GG no longer allow posting new messages, or follow-ups to those
newsgroups. The only new messages you see on GG were posted elsewhere.

[Michael S]

Read-only. No posting. Neither newtopics nor followups. None. Nada.

[Joe Pfeiffer]

But I posted this followup to comp.arch through eternal-september.

[Retro Guy]

On Wed, 01 Nov 2023 14:19:19 -0600

You can post from anywhere you want that carries the group, you just
can't post from google groups

--
Retro Guy

[Chris M. Thomasson]

We can still use google groups for some searching purposes. Remember
when they, Google, tried to outright ban comp.lang.c a while back? Not
even able to read it...

[Stephen Fuld]

There has been some confusion in this thread recently. Anyone with an
account can read and post messages using Eternal September. The "read
only" is apparently just Google Groups. That is, anyone can read any
article through Google Groups, but no one can post new articles nor
replies to the group using Google Groups.



--
- Stephen Fuld
(e-mail address disguised to prevent spam)

[Jack]

On 01/11/2023 21:31, Stephen Fuld wrote:
>
> There has been some confusion in this thread recently.  Anyone with an
> account can read and post messages using Eternal September.  The "read
> only" is apparently just Google Groups. That is, anyone can read any
> article through Google Groups, but no one can post new articles nor
> replies to the group using Google Groups.
>
>
>

There is another server called "paganini.bofh.team". You don't need an
account but spam is not allowed. People abusing the server will have
their IP address blocked.

[Joe Pfeiffer]

Ah, OK. When I originally posted that I was reading from e-s, it was
pointed out to me that I couldn't post. Which seemed very odd, under the
circumstances.

[James Kuyper]

On 11/1/23 19:22, Joe Pfeiffer wrote:
> Retro Guy <retr...@novabbs.org> writes:
...

>> You can post from anywhere you want that carries the group, you just
>> can't post from google groups
>
> Ah, OK. When I originally posted that I was reading from e-s, it was
> pointed out to me that I couldn't post. Which seemed very odd, under the
> circumstances.

You misunderstood. No one said you couldn't post to eternal-september.

On 11/1/23 09:03, John Levine wrote:
> According to Joe Pfeiffer <pfei...@cs.nmsu.edu>:
>> Lynn McGuire <lynnmc...@gmail.com> writes:
>>
>>> Apparently comp.arch, comp.lang.c++, and comp.lang.fortran are now
>>> read only at google groups to stop the spam floods.

Notice: "at Google Groups", he didn't say anything about
eternal-september's policies.

>>
>> No, I'm reading through Eternal September.
>
> That's "read only" as in they don't let people post new articles.

"they" refers to Google, it doesn't apply to eternal-september.

[red floyd]

On 11/1/2023 5:40 AM, Joe Pfeiffer wrote:

> No, I'm reading through Eternal September. Blocking posts with Thai
> characters eliminates nearly all of the flood for me (but geez, it's
> awful that it's necessary).
>

Anybody know can you do that blocking with Thunderbird?

[James Kuyper]

Not in that way, but you can block any post whose subject contains a
particular Thai character. By the time I'd selected six such characters,
no Thai subjects were getting through my filter. Someone else identified
the single most frequent Thai letter, and found that a single filter on
that letter was sufficient (much as searching for 'e' would do a good
job of blocking all message using the Latin alphabet).

[David Brown]

There is now no need (at least in these groups). All the spam came
through Google's service, and they have blocked posting.

[Branimir Maksimovic]

["Followup-To:" header set to comp.arch.]

I notice by number of headers. it dropped significantly...

--

7-77-777, Evil Sinner!
https://www.linkedin.com/in/branimir-maksimovic-6762bbaa/

[wolfgang kern]

On 02/11/2023 06:05, red floyd wrote:

YES, I could make all exotic spam disappear that way [for now].
__
wolfgang (ES+Thunderbird)

[BGB]

IP blocking is a bit questionable though in this era of ISP grade NAT
and similar (say, the IP address they see on their cable modem is
10.x.x.x; with some other IP address visible to the outside world), and
with a dynamic external IP address.

So, if one person is posting spam with a given ISP, then blocking fails
to block the spammer (as their external IP keeps changing), but will
ultimately end up blocking random other people who happen to have their
traffic routed through an IP address which was previously used for
spamming (well, at least until their ISP causes their connections to
jump over to some other IP address that hasn't been blocked yet).

...


It seems like a strategy that mostly (only) really makes sense in a
context where one assumes that each node has a statically-assigned
global IP address.

[Quadibloc]

On Tue, 31 Oct 2023 17:32:11 -0500, Lynn McGuire wrote:

> Apparently comp.arch, comp.lang.c++, and comp.lang.fortran are now read
> only at google groups to stop the spam floods.

Initially, when I read this, I thought that this was not the case, at least
for comp.arch, as I had just posted there on Google Groups.

However, somewhat later, I did try again - having switched to Eternal
September to _read_ it without the spam flood - and I found that this
was true... and, in addition, now Google Groups is requiring a CAPTCHA
to post to any other group.

John Savard