Why Unseenet¶
This is the same text every Unseenet client shows under About Unseenet,
written for people who have never heard of Tor or signing keys. It comes from
one file in the code (src/unseenet/core/about.py), so the website and the
clients always say the same thing - change it there, not here.
What is Unseenet?¶
Unseenet is a place for discussion groups and chats that nobody owns. You follow groups about the things you care about, read the threads, reply and quote - or just chat - much like on the old Usenet and the BBSes of the 1980s and 90s.
The groups live on nodes: small servers that anyone can run, on a Raspberry Pi or an old laptop. The nodes copy the groups to each other, so every group exists in many places at once. The name says it: Usenet, unseen.
Chat, discussion and private posts - in one place¶
Most places online now give you only one way to talk. Chat apps give you a stream of quick lines that scroll away. Forums and the old Usenet give you threads, but no chat. For anything private you need yet another app.
Unseenet has all three, in the same network and the same program. Chat groups for quick talk. Discussion groups where every post has its place in a thread, you can read one post at a time, and you reply by quoting what you answer - so a good discussion is still easy to follow a week later. And private chats and private posts for when it is just between you and someone else.
Each group's owner decides what the group is for, and your client always shows clearly whether you are writing a chat line or a post.
Why it exists¶
Most conversations online now happen on platforms owned by a company. The company decides who may speak and what may be said, can read along, sells your attention, and can close it all down from one day to the next.
Unseenet is meant to be the opposite: a network that belongs to the people who use it and run it, where you can talk freely without handing over your phone number, your email or your name - and where nobody can see who you are unless you tell them.
Nobody can see who talks to whom¶
Everything Unseenet sends travels over Tor, an encrypted network run by thousands of volunteers. Your traffic is wrapped in layers of encryption and passed through three random computers around the world. Each one knows only the one before it and the one after it, so none of them knows both who you are and what you are doing.
The node you use does not learn where you are. Someone watching your connection - your internet provider, the café Wi-Fi, a government - sees only that you use Tor: not what you read, not what you write, and not to whom.
Nodes also wait a random while before they pass a post on, and they do not note which way it came. That makes it hard to trace a post back to where it was written.
Servers nobody can find, a network nobody can switch off¶
Every node is a Tor onion service. It has an address - a long name ending in .onion - but no location. Nobody can look up where it stands, which country it is in or who runs it, and the node does not know where its visitors are either.
There is no central server and no company behind the network. If a node disappears, its groups live on at all the others, and anyone can start a new node in minutes. A country can forbid Unseenet, but there is nobody to order to turn it off and no single place to pull the plug.
Out of reach of the powerful¶
No government, company or other powerful organisation can take control of Unseenet. There is no owner to pressure, no list of names, emails or phone numbers to hand over, and no record of who connected from where - because none of it exists.
Nor can they look up who wrote a post or where it was written from. The only one who can give away who you are is you: by your name, by what you write, or by who you tell.
A voice for those who must not be found¶
This matters most to the people who need it most: whistleblowers who want to expose wrongdoing without losing their job or their freedom, journalists and their sources, people living where criticising those in power is punished, and anyone who has something to say that they cannot say under their own name.
Tools such as Tor Browser and SecureDrop already protect people like them every day. Unseenet wants to give them somewhere to talk together, not only a way to send a tip. But until Unseenet has been independently reviewed, they should rely on the tools that have been - see "Where it stands" below.
A post from you is from you¶
The first time you start Unseenet, your client makes a key for you. Think of it as a personal seal that only you hold, kept locked away in your vault.
Everything you write is stamped with that seal. Anyone can check the stamp, but nobody can make it without your key. So when a post says it is from you, it really is: nobody can write in your name, and nobody can change a single word of it on the way.
That was the weak spot of the old Usenet, where anyone could put any name on a post. On Unseenet your key is who you are. You need no account, no email and no phone number - and if you like, you can claim a name such as @yourname so people recognise you.
Private means private¶
Closed groups, private posts and private chats are locked on your own computer before they leave it (end-to-end encryption). The nodes carry them, but all they see is scrambled data. Only the people they are meant for can open them.
Your network in your pocket¶
The client is one program with Tor built in. Put it on a USB stick and run it on Windows, macOS or Linux - or start the computer from the stick and run everything from memory.
Your keys, your groups and what you have read are kept in one encrypted vault. If you lose the stick, whoever finds it sees nothing without your passphrase.
No spam, no bosses¶
Instead of accounts and a moderation company, every post costs your computer a few seconds of work. You hardly notice it; someone trying to send thousands of spam posts does.
Each group has an owner who sets its rules and can ban people from it, and hierarchies such as dk.* have maintainers who can stop illegal content such as threats. But nobody rules the whole network.
The other side of the coin¶
The protection that shields a whistleblower also shields people with bad intentions. Criminals and other shady people can use Unseenet too, and they are harder to find here than on a platform that knows everyone's phone number.
Unseenet cannot check anyone's age or identity - having no accounts is the whole point. So there is no age check, and in open groups you may meet things you did not ask for. It is not a place for children without an adult who knows what it is.
What there is: group owners can ban people from their groups, hierarchy maintainers can block illegal content such as threats across a whole hierarchy, and you decide which groups you follow. The law still applies to what people say and do; Unseenet only makes it harder to find out who did it.
We believe a free place to talk is worth that price, as Tor and encrypted messaging are. But you should know that there is a price.
Open, like in the old days¶
How Unseenet works is written down in open documents, the UN-RFCs, the way the internet's own standards are. Anyone can build a node or a client that works with everyone else's. The code is free software under the Apache License 2.0.
How is it different?¶
Each of these does some things well. This is where Unseenet chooses differently.
Discord¶
Discord is a company. It owns the servers and everything written on them, can read it, can close a server or ban you everywhere at once, and wants your email and often your phone number. It is built for chat, so longer discussions get lost in the scroll. On Unseenet nobody owns the network, you need no account, discussion groups keep their threads, and private conversations can only be read by the people in them.
Matrix¶
Matrix is decentralised and has good end-to-end encryption. But its servers stand at public addresses that can be found and taken down, your account belongs to one server, and that server sees who you talk to and where you connect from. On Unseenet everything goes over Tor, nodes cannot be located, and you are your key - not an account on someone's server.
Nostr¶
Nostr shares a good idea with Unseenet: posts signed with your own key, so no server decides who you are. But its relays run on the open internet and see your IP address unless you set up Tor yourself, and it is built mostly around public feeds. Unseenet always goes over Tor and is built around groups and threaded discussion.
Reddit and web forums¶
Reddit and forums still have real threaded discussion. But each one is a single website run by a company or a person, who holds your account, sees your IP address and can delete a community overnight. Chat and private messages, where there are any, are a side feature that the same owner can read. On Unseenet the groups are copied across many nodes, and chat, discussion and private posts are equals in one network - with the private ones encrypted end to end.
The old Usenet¶
Usenet is where the idea comes from. But anyone could forge who a post was from, nothing was encrypted, the servers stood at known addresses run by internet providers - most of whom have long since dropped it - and spam nearly drowned it. Unseenet keeps the groups, the threads and the quoting, and adds what has been learned since.
Where it stands - honestly¶
Unseenet is pre-alpha. The protocol may still change, and the code has not yet had an independent security review. Try it, pick it apart and tell us what you find - but do not rely on it yet to protect anyone whose safety depends on it.
And no network can protect you from yourself: what you write can still give you away, and Tor cannot hide you from someone able to watch the whole internet at once.