back in the day, my son and I hosted a BBS. We used WWIV BBS software, which was open source and moddable. We mostly subscribed to newsgroups that were oriented toward creativity. All it required was a dedicated phone line. I wrote several freeware online games for our BBS that used ANSI graphics. There was a hangman game, a word jumble game and a few more.

Apparently BBSs are still alive and well, because somebody recently contacted me to ask if my games were still available. If, in fact, BBSes are still a thing, I guess you could get newsgroups by setting up a BBS and subscribing to the feeds.