Building the darknet one ref at a time

Building the darknet one ref at a time. That’s what we have to do. If you invite three people⁰ to Freenet and help those of your friends with similar interests to connect¹², and when the people you invited then do the same, we get exponential growth.

⁰: To invite a friend into Freenet, you can send an email like this:
    Let us talk over Freenet, so I can speak freely again.

¹: Helping your friends to connect works as follows:

1. ask: First ask your friends whether they want to connect to others. Just go to the friends page ( http://127.0.0.1:8888/friends/ ), tick the checkbox next to each of the friends you want to ask and click the drop-down list at the bottom named -- Select action --. Select Send N2NTM to selected peers³ and click Go. A text field opens with which you can send a message to all the peers you selected. I typically ask something like "Hi, do you want to connect via darknet to fellow pirate party members?" (replace "pirate party members" by whatever unites the group of people you’re asking).
2. noderefs: Go to the friends page in advanced mode ( http://127.0.0.1:8888/friends/?fproxyAdvancedMode=2 ). There you find a link named noderef next to each name. Just download the noderefs of the people who want to connect.
3. introduction file: Then copy them into a text file and add a short description of each person before the persons noderef.
4. upload: Now upload that text file. I use freenetupload from pyFreenet for that, but regular insert via the browser ( http://127.0.0.1:8888/insertfile/ ) works as well. When the upload finishes, you’ll find the link on the uploads page ( http://127.0.0.1:8888/uploads/ - see the column key).
5. message: Go to the friends page again (I’m lazy and use simple mode: http://127.0.0.1:8888/friends/?fproxyAdvancedMode=1 ), tick the checkbox next to each of the friends you want to help connect and click the drop-down list at the bottom named -- Select action --. Select Send N2NTM to selected peers and click Go. A text field opens with which you can send a message to all the peers you selected.
6. write and send: Write something like "The following link includes the noderefs of people you might want to connect to. Just copy the noderef (from 'identity' to 'End') into the text field on http://127.0.0.1:8888/addfriend/ if you want to connect. If both of you do that, your freenet nodes will connect". Copy the link to the uploaded introduction text file into the text field (below your text) and click Send message.

²: Only connect those with similar interests (who might in the real world meet in a club or at work or who are related by blood or association). This is needed for efficient routing in Freenet.

When free speech dies, we need a place to organize. Let’s build that place.

³: A N2NTM is a Node-To-Node-Text-Message: A confidential message sent between people whose Freenet nodes are connected as friends.

Thanks for this text goes to ts.