@anemone @feld Yes. Unmoderated groups /need/ client-side spam filtering and/or article scoring/ranking.

There could've been a general practice of servers banning accounts that create spam and servers that don't getting defederated by others, but it didn't really happen and now the majority of the network is consolidated in huge unaccountable servers.

It doesn't help that clearnet liability & legal compliance nonsense now dramatically raise the cost of creating & hosting a server, so alternative servers won't really be forthcoming. There is barely any profit in running a Usenet server, so artificially inflating the costs (making profit for small operators impossible) and making it (legally) dangerous for those who would do it out of pocket is a very effective way to kill it on the clearnet.

So it likely won't improve (at least on the clearnet).