[nijave]

I think you can run Leafnode if you want to host your own, small groups. Otherwise (my understanding) you need to peer with other providers and be able to consume something like 30-100TB/day if you want all groups on the network (unless you can find providers to peer with that let you limit groups)

Some discussion here https://www.reddit.com/r/usenet/comments/ziqdh2/become_my_ow...

[immibis]

Note that 30-100TB/day is mostly copies of pirated copies of movies, getting re-encrypted each time so you have to pay someone to get the encryption key and to avoid detection.

If you want text groups, it must be a lot lower.

[immibis]

Text content is under 100MB per day, including spam, according to some Usenet admins.

[nijave]

I imagine so but it sounds like you're still at the mercy of a provider to peer with you (which has a cost to the provider, even if low)

I think that's where the "build your own network using nntp" comes in

[immibis]

Well, at this point the mainstream usenet network is dedicated to piracy. That's what it is - 100% piracy. The only reason they use NNTP instead of something like BitTorrent and call them "articles" instead of "files" is to maintain plausible deniability that that isn't what they're doing.

The textual discussion network may as well be its own wholly separate network. I only know of Eternal September, but I'm sure there are other servers.

[immibis]

Correction: there are several other servers and the text part is less dead than I thought.