I've been wondering if it would be possible to make a modern version of Usenet. Rather than everything copied to every news server, it could be peer to peer and you just sub to what you want. Someone picks a name and they 'own' that. Maybe even make it tie back into the web, so that there are browser plug-ins so that you can have boards regarding an individual website (not to mention those not affiliated with any site).

But that's all just idle thinking with no code to back it up.

> it could be peer to peer and you just sub to what you want. Someone picks a name and they 'own' that.

So like Usenet, then.

Few news servers carries every Usenet group. No news server carries every newsgroup, because many of them are private, on private NNTP servers. It's decentralised: Anyone can run a NNTP server, and each NNTP server can take feeds of whatever subset they want, and add whatever additional groups they want for local use, or for distribution.

It has ownership through moderation, though there are certainly weaknesses there in the level of reliance on trust.

And the peering could do with some level of automation.

There is an open source distribution of reddit. Maybe that could be adapted to your new specifications?

>Someone picks a name and they 'own' that.

IIRC, there was an interesting study of decentralising git, that suggested an application of bitcoin's system for deciding who "owned" a name.

Usenet died for a reason. (that reason: spam)

This sort-of exists with mailing lists.