Maybe in the very early days. But there were various archives of many newsgroups pre-Web (much less pre-DejaNews and Google).
Re:Is Facebook even safe anymore?
by goatinaboat on Monday June 01, 2020 @01:38PM
(#23381269)
Yes lots of groups had their FAQs for example on an FTP site, but ordinary posts weren’t typically archived
In the early days of Usenet posts were ephemeral and would only last a week. That expectation was baked into the culture and everyone was surprised to find a sneaky organisation had been archiving it all to monetise later.