On Wednesday, November 1, 2023 at 8:12:29 AM UTC-4, Anton Ertl wrote:
> Lorem Ipsum <gnuarm.del...@gmail.com> writes:
> >On Tuesday, October 31, 2023 at 5:11:42=E2=80=AFAM UTC-4, Anton Ertl wrote:
> >> Given that you use Google Groups, certainly Google knows, and they get=20
> >> revenue by serving you advertisements in addition to the group's=20
> >> contents. They may also get revenue from selling data about you.=20
> >
> >What advertisements?
>
> You have never been served advertisements by Google, ever?

Read my lips. I've never seen an ad in GG. Not that I recall. Did they used to serve ads a decade or more ago? I know they've gone through several iterations of "improvements", but I don't ever recall seeing an ad. Where would they put them?

> Note that
> a lot of the advertisements on non-Google web services are served by
> Google.

Sorry, what does that have to do with GG?

> >What "data"???
>
> Data that they determine from what you read and what you write. There
> is a reason why Google Groups now requires signing in to an account
> even if you only want to read.

You are suggesting that if I post that all Jews should be killed, they will serve ads to me for swastika armbands or something? I guess you are saying they track the data and report there were 1273 such posts in October, to advertisers who want to track demographics? Since the info is not linked to identifying information, according to the terms of service, I don't really care, but I find it a reach to think they are analyzing GG post the way NSA might.

> >I take it you've never used Google Gr=
> >oups?=20
>
> I have used it decades ago (when it came out of the ashes of dejanews)
> for looking up old postings. It became increasingly broken (as in: I
> did not find a significant part of the postings I wanted to find,
> despite having its Message-Id) and painful over time, and, of course,
> once there was al.howardknight.net and www.novabbs.com, there has been
> no reason to go there. And now that Google Groups does not let me do
> anything without signing in, I obviously don't use it.

Why is signing in a big deal. How are they supposed to let you make posts, unless they have your info for the post? I have a separate login for GG. I've never seen it cross contaminated with any of my other Google logins.

--

Rick C.

++ Get 1,000 miles of free Supercharging
++ Tesla referral code - https://ts.la/richard11209

On Thu, 2 Nov 2023 03:09:13 -0700 (PDT)
Lorem Ipsum <gnuarm.deletethisbit@gmail.com> wrote:
> On Wednesday, November 1, 2023 at 8:12:29 AM UTC-4, Anton Ertl wrote:
> > You have never been served advertisements by Google, ever?
>
> Read my lips. I've never seen an ad in GG. Not that I recall. Did they
> used to serve ads a decade or more ago? I know they've gone through
> several iterations of "improvements", but I don't ever recall seeing an ad.
> Where would they put them?

Yes , they had ads in the 2000s .I don't know when they stopped. From what I
remember , on the left of the screen you had the newsgroups content and on
the right the ads.

I've heard of other websites which copy usenet content where they intersperse
vertically the ads with the posts. From the descriptions , it would be
something like

post
advertisement
post
advertisement
.
.
.

On Wed, 01 Nov 2023 17:26:25 GMT
anton@mips.complang.tuwien.ac.at (Anton Ertl) wrote:
> Spiros Bousbouras <spibou@gmail.com> writes:
> >Nope. I can use w3m to access https://groups.google.com/g/comp.lang.forth
> >and https://groups.google.com/g/comp.lang.forth/c/TwHq81HHz8Y (this thread)
> >just fine ; no signing in is needed ; also no cookies and no javascript since
> >w3m doesn't support it.
>
> That's a nice improvement compared to the state of Google Groups that
> I remember. In <2012Jul16.165632@mips.complang.tuwien.ac.at> (from,
> obviously, 2012) I reported that Google Groups requires JavaScript to
> view a Google Groups link to some discussion. Maybe the competition
> from novabbs and al.howardknight.net has inspired them to reconsider
> their course.

I don't think that googlegroups ever did actually require javascript .
I remember there was a period when it said that it required it but if
I had w3m pretend to be firefox , googlegroups was working fine.
Google fell in my appreciation back then doing stupid tricks like that.

gobli...@gmail.com wrote:
> comp.lang.forth is not dying only - I insist on ONLY -if users do not their work part on declaring SPAM messages to make them disappear

AFAICS c.l.f. is about to become a dead horse.

Even before the current flood of spam on Google's servers,
uncivilised tussle between some "very smart" guys has become
dominant anyway.

Exchange of technical ideas has become rare. The usefulness
and fun of c.l.f. is tending towards zero.

Those same guys now tussling on FB is definitely an improvement.

minforth wrote:

> AFAICS c.l.f. is about to become a dead horse.

I see no spam on novabbs.com, but the number of postings
is very low (I guess most were coming in from GG).

It's too early to say that the number of
really interesting postings is dropping.

-marcel

On 8/11/2023 5:48 pm, mhx wrote:
> minforth wrote:
>
>> AFAICS c.l.f. is about to become a dead horse.
>
> I see no spam on novabbs.com, but the number of postings
> is very low (I guess most were coming in from GG).
> It's too early to say that the number of really interesting postings is dropping.

What do folks expect from an ageing demographic - cartwheels?

On Wednesday, November 8, 2023 at 1:36:21 AM UTC-5, minforth wrote:
> gobli...@gmail.com wrote:
> > comp.lang.forth is not dying only - I insist on ONLY -if users do not their work part on declaring SPAM messages to make them disappear
> AFAICS c.l.f. is about to become a dead horse.

I am using a work-around that is not too much of a hassle. In Google Groups (in a web browser) I scan the page for "real"
posts and then tag them by clicking on "star" (far right column). Then I just select the
"Starred conversations" option in the left sidebar. ONLY starred topics are shown.

-Doug

mhx wrote:

[..]

> Seems to do exactly what I want. Registered.

I note that CLF in Google groups is spam-free again.
Maybe they turned filtering off to drive users out,
preparing for completely stopping groups in February.

-marcel

On Sat, 6 Jan 2024 09:28:04 +0000
mhx@iae.nl (mhx) wrote:

> mhx wrote:
>
> [..]
>
> > Seems to do exactly what I want. Registered.
>
> I note that CLF in Google groups is spam-free again.
> Maybe they turned filtering off to drive users out,
> preparing for completely stopping groups in February.
>
> -marcel

Google has done the square root of 0; it's the other ISPs filtering out
spammers using gmail accounts, AIUI.
--
Bah, and indeed Humbug.

On 6/01/2024 8:28 pm, mhx wrote:
> mhx wrote:
>
> [..]
>
>> Seems to do exactly what I want. Registered.
>
> I note that CLF in Google groups is spam-free again. Maybe they turned filtering off to drive users out, preparing for completely stopping groups in February.

Turning-off filtering was necessary to support their claim:

"Much of the content being disseminated via Usenet today is binary (non-text)
file sharing, which Google Groups does not support, as well as spam."

as unsubstantiated as it was.

On Sun, 7 Jan 2024 13:22:38 +1100
dxf <dxforth@gmail.com> wrote:

> On 6/01/2024 8:28 pm, mhx wrote:
> > mhx wrote:
> >
> > [..]
> >
> >> Seems to do exactly what I want. Registered.
> >
> > I note that CLF in Google groups is spam-free again. Maybe they turned filtering off to drive users out, preparing for completely stopping groups in February.
>
> Turning-off filtering was necessary to support their claim:
>
> "Much of the content being disseminated via Usenet today is binary (non-text)
> file sharing, which Google Groups does not support, as well as spam."
>
> as unsubstantiated as it was.
>
It's like me going outside every day and beating people up in the street, then saying, "We're moving since this is a violent neighborhood."

On Sunday 7 January 2024 at 11:37:03 pm UTC+10, Retro Guy wrote:
> On Sun, 7 Jan 2024 13:22:38 +1100
> dxf <dxf...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > On 6/01/2024 8:28 pm, mhx wrote:
> > > mhx wrote:
> > >
> > > [..]
> > >
> > >> Seems to do exactly what I want. Registered.
> > >
> > > I note that CLF in Google groups is spam-free again. Maybe they turned filtering off to drive users out, preparing for completely stopping groups in February.
> >
> > Turning-off filtering was necessary to support their claim:
> >
> > "Much of the content being disseminated via Usenet today is binary (non-text)
> > file sharing, which Google Groups does not support, as well as spam."
> >
> > as unsubstantiated as it was.
> >
> It's like me going outside every day and beating people up in the street, then saying, "We're moving since this is a violent neighborhood."

Yep, I just sent them a nice letter, suggesting they hire a new team and buy out the narkive guy with his excellent software. Seriously. I had to do a number of extra moves to trick groups to give me a reply to your post, and on the account I use, on phone, and the text window keeps disappearing by repositioning as I type. It's ridiculous. Imagine if they could covert a descent newsgroup reader C software to a JavaScript wrb app?