No, back in the 90s, ISPs had local clones of the entire Usenet subscribers could access directly.
It was a great way to get porn!
Turn on the connection before you got to bed and wake up with a fresh batch
As someone who had to pay 13 cents per minute in the 90s, this sadly was not an option.
If we left our internet on over night they would cut us off for a few days for “internet abuse”. It would be so hard to connect at peak hours. The modem would make all the silly sounds but end in a busy signal.
Which always bewildered me whenever my dad would tell me to “search usenet” whenever I couldn’t find something. He got into the 'net early-ish, the first time I became aware of it was around 2004, it was already closed (no public registrations) by then.
