From Newsgroup: news.admin.peering

Colin Macleod wrote:

Trolleybus <ken@birchanger.com> posted:

On Sun, 23 Aug 2026 07:12:11 -0800, Maria Sophia
<mariasophia@comprehension.com> wrote:

Jeff Layman wrote:

In addition, there are web pages if READING is truly the only goal.
<https://newsgrouper.org/comp.mobile.android> <== still works as of 6/2026

It's unfortunately not available in the UK unless a VPN is used:
"Blocked due to UK Online Safety Act"

Hi Jeff,

Oh, wow. Really? That sucks.

What the heck is "online safety" when it comes to Usenet? WTF?
They're idiots.

I just looked and it works for me (in the USA, in California).
<https://newsgrouper.org/comp.mobile.android>

I'm going to guess that since porn is on Usenet (as porn is everywhere), >>>that "the UK authorities" decided to lock up all of Usenet, in their >>>infinite wisdom in applying their sick so-called morals to others?

Do you think that nobody in the UK is on Usenet?

What happened is that some non-UK organisations thought it was easier
to block access to those in the UK rather than try to meet the
requirements of the Act.

Newsgrouper.org is my site, I'm just an individual not an organisation
with a legal team, and I *am* in the UK so it would be risky for me to ignore UK law. The Online Safety Act applies to all services accessible
in the UK which provide "User to user" communication facilities.
The requirements of the Online Safety Act are far-reaching but not
very clearly defined, and the penalties for non-compliance can be
severe.

When the act was introduced I spent considerable time studying it.
The official guidance produced by Ofcom runs to a few thousand pages!
You are required to undertake and document complicated reviews of
your service across many specified potential risk areas. You are
then required to respond any reports of such problems and remove
anything problematic. BUT you also have a duty to preserve your users' rights to free speech. There are no clear definitions of where the
line between these potentially conflicting obligations should be drawn.

To take just one example, the legality of "assisted dying" has been a
live political issue here in the last few years. But aid or
encouragement to commit suicide is one of the types of speech strictly forbidden by the OSA. It is easy to imagine discussion of the general question being attacked by opponents of assisted dying and reported
as a violation of the act.

So I reached the conclusion that the only practical course for me was
to block access to my site from my own country :-(

Colin Macleod wrote:

So I reached the conclusion that the only practical course for me was
to block access to my site from my own country :-(

Hi Colin Macleod,

I am the culprit who brought your wonderful site up, initially in the c.m.a
ng, to provide an answer to the question of *read-only* on mobile devices.

From: Maria Sophia <mariasophia@comprehension.com>
Newsgroups: comp.mobile.android,news.software.readers
Subject: Re: Mobile USENET readers
Date: Sat, 22 Aug 2026 09:26:24 -0800
Message-ID: <116cm3v$gik$1@nnrp.usenet.blueworldhosting.com>

Jeff Layman wrote:
> On 22/08/2026 13:41, Jim the Geordie wrote:
>>
>> Are there any good new readers for androids?
>
> Piaohong is just about acceptable for /reading/. Posting is another
> matter. It doesn't appear to be available at the Playstore any more.

If by "newsreaders" we mean the ability to read & post with an app,
there's a group for that which showed in the past more than just that
one Android newsreader, namely news.software.readers

This discussion comes up every year & there are multiple newsreaders,
where it boils down to which is the least worst of those newsreaders.

In addition, there are web pages if READING is truly the only goal.
<https://www.planetusenet.com/groups/comp.mobile.android>
<https://tinyurl.com/pug-comp-mobile-android>
<https://i2pn2.pugleaf.net/groups/comp.mobile.android>
<https://newsgrouper.org/comp.mobile.android> still works as of 6/2026
<https://comp.mobile.android.narkive.com/>
<https://groups.google.com/forum/#!forum/comp.mobile.android
<https://groups.google.com/g/comp.mobile.android>
<https://www.novabbs.com/tech/thread.php?group=comp.mobile.android>
But I haven't checked those in a while as most are likely deprecated.

The record shows that on news.admin.peering, I was also who asked Retro
Guy (RIP) to build the novabbs newsreaders to allow the hoi polloi
non-fettered web-based search-based read-only access to Usenet archives.

And I was instrumental (unfortunately) by accidentally getting Google to
drop Google Groups, as I had an insider who helped me in the past
get them to change their URL to the simpler one seen above.

I complained to Google (internally, through my informal contact),
and the informal answer came back that certain management levels
didn't even *know* about the Google Groups web archive, so they
killed the update around February 2022 wiping out the whole group.

My friend was a casualty, which is one more arrow in the back
for "no good deed goes unpunished" when dealing with bureaucracy.

As for your predicament, I didn't know anything about it, so I
apologize as I had blamed the authorities, and, well, it's still
the authorities in the UK being pig-headed, but you are simply
dealing with how one individual handles those bureaucratic morons.

We had something similar happen to us in the USA around July 2008
when then NY governor Baby Cuomo teamed up with AT&T and AOL for a
political "save the children" stunt by wiping out Usenet on those
platforms (luckily, over time, people saw the duplicity in Cuomo).

Slowly but surely, the deceitful bureaucrats are gutting Usenet.
You are the victim, as are we.

We *need* a non-registration non-nntp web-searchable Usenet archive!
May I ask all involved, does one exist that works also in the UK?
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From Newsgroup: news.admin.peering

On 24/08/2026 15:42, Maria Sophia wrote:

We *need* a non-registration non-nntp web-searchable Usenet archive!
May I ask all involved, does one exist that works also in the UK?

<https://csiph.com/search>

It goes back about 11 years or so.
--
Jeff
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From Newsgroup: news.admin.peering

Jeff Layman wrote:

Maria Sophia wrote:

We *need* a non-registration non-nntp web-searchable Usenet archive!
May I ask all involved, does one exist that works also in the UK?

<https://csiph.com/search>

It seems to have been suffering from overload the past few days ...

--- Synchronet 3.22a-Linux NewsLink 1.2

From Newsgroup: news.admin.peering

Andy Burns <usenet@andyburns.uk> posted:

Jeff Layman wrote:

Maria Sophia wrote:

We *need* a non-registration non-nntp web-searchable Usenet archive!
May I ask all involved, does one exist that works also in the UK?

<https://csiph.com/search>

It seems to have been suffering from overload the past few days ...

I wonder if it getting hit by the same AI scrapers I've been seeing
recently on newsgrouper.org ?
--
Colin Macleod ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ https://cmacleod.me.uk

FEED GAZA NOW! SAVE GAZA NOW! HOUSE GAZA NOW! FEED GAZA NOW!
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