It’s an old federated message board system. Message boards are called “newsgroups “. It predates the web so it’s usually accessed via a special client app. To use it you’d need:
- A Usenet client app, called a newsreader. See Wikipedia. Many are probably abandoned by now.
- An account with a Usenet provider. A search engine will point you to several options. There used to be some free ones. If there still are, it would be a good way to try it out. But note that the free ones often don’t carry all of the newsgroups — they omit the binary groups, which are known to carry pirated software and, let’s say, diverse video content.
Not really, but another massive international project, ITER, is trying to do this. Its timeline is measured in decades if not the better part of a century.