# Tilde Net News

Tilde Net News (NNTP) can be thought of as USENET without the
spam. Many of the servers on the
[tildeverse](https://tildeverse.org) run net news and share their
content with their peers. You can read these newsgroups and
contribute with replies and posts on topics by using the news
clients installed on Tilde Black.

## slrn

The main net news client installed on Tilde Black is `slrn`. Users
can launch slrn like so:

    $ slrn

The first time you run the program you will need to generate a new
configuration file. Do this by adding the `--create` flag.

    $ slrn --create

Once you are connected you can subscribe to any of the available
groups that interest you. When you launch the program again at
a later date, new postings in those groups will show up.

The program can also download descriptions of the groups by using
the `-d` flag.

    $ slrn -d

## Groups

All groups beginning with `tilde.*` are part of the public Tilde
Net News Network and are shared across servers. Tilde Black has
a general purpose public group called `tilde.black` for this
purpose.

All groups beginning with `black.*` are private groups only
available to users of Tilde Black and only visible on the local
system.

### black.general

The general channel is used for announcements and updates about
Tilde Black. Users that have questions for the admin or need help
with something on the server can make their requests here.

### black.privacy

The privacy channel is intended for discussions around
experiments, ideation, and documentation that promotes privacy
online.

### black.anonymity

The anonymity channel is a playground for protecting identities
online. Theories, troubleshooting, sharing of tools and guides, or
the creation of new documents are all great subjects to include
here.

### black.security

Discussions on security can get highly technical and detailed. We
strive to keep those in this group where the chains can go as deep
as they need to reach agreement. Ultimately the goal of the
security group is to make suggestions for the public on best
practices but suggestions for the improvement of security on Tilde
Black is also welcome.

This is not a black or grey-hat hacking group and any discussions
along those lines will result in account termination. Tilde Black
is a collaborative space designed to welcome discussions and
experimentation, but the server itself is not designed as an
exploit target or port-scanning test box.