Comment by cmacleod4

"The internet today still does not have a good discussion medium like Usenet, and I am not sure if it ever will." Several web interfaces to Usenet exist, see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web-based_Usenet#Web-based_sit... . I operate one of these at https://newsgrouper.org/ .

Many Usenet groups have been abandoned, or are haunted only by a few cranks, but a few still have worthwhile discussion. A couple of years ago there was a tidal wave of spam, but that mostly stopped after Google Groups disconnected. So the infrastructure is still there, still free of adverts and manipulative algorithms, just waiting for more people to use it.