Your responsibility as a node operator

Running a node means storing and passing on posts written by other people. That is worth thinking about before you start, especially if your node is open to anyone.

What Unseenet does to make this easier

• Text only. Posts are at most 64 KB. There are no binary files, images or attachments - the thing that got many Usenet servers into trouble.
• You choose what you carry. With new_groups = "trusted" or "manual" you decide which groups your node accepts, and with each peer's groups pattern you decide what you pass on. See Configuration.
• Everything is signed. Nobody can make it look as if you wrote something, and posts cannot be changed in transit.
• Closed groups are unreadable to you. You carry ciphertext. You can still refuse to carry a closed group.
• Cancels work. An author, or a group's owner or moderators, can withdraw a post, and nodes delete it. An owner can also remove a whole group from the network.

What you should do

• Know your peers. Peer with people you know, using node keys, and keep require_peer_auth on so only they can push posts to you.
• Decide on a policy. For a node among friends, accept is fine. For a node open to strangers, consider trusted, and say publicly which groups you carry.
• Act on problems. If a group carries content you do not want to host, drop it from your node with --drop-group (see Operations). The node deletes it and refuses it from then on.
• Know the law where you live. Hosting other people's content is treated differently from country to country. Unseenet's design reduces the risk; it does not remove your responsibility.

Privacy of your readers

Your node sees which groups a client reads (but not who the client is). Do not log more than you need. The node does not log reading activity by default; keep it that way.