Lets nail this down. We need a solid breakdown of how SAFE works. Freenet peeps want to know

[Team_2E16]

@ned14

If a farmer regularly deletes unpopular data, their node will be asked to redownload a copy of that data frequently, increasing their bandwidth costs. If the node refuses any request to download a copy of data, or pretends to download and not actually bother, the storage the network believes it to share is reduced. Your allocation on other people’s machines is therefore also reduced, and your costs for keeping your data on other people’s machines rise and therefore your surplus drops.

From:

Will the data be stored forever?

If a farmer regularly deletes unpopular data, their node will be asked to redownload a copy of that data frequently, increasing their bandwidth costs. If the node refuses any request to download a copy of data, or pretends to download and not actually bother, the storage the network believes it to share is reduced. Your allocation on other people’s machines is therefore also reduced, and your costs for keeping your data on other people’s machines rise and therefore your surplus drops. The hand…

It is also worthy to note that a node can be dropped from the network if it acts outside the purview of the network parameters.

EDIT: Bear in mind that the info linked above is from an old thread. It may not be completely current, and I’m not the one to ask specifically about that. What I do know is that these questions have been discussed here at length, and there is a solution (the solution linked above may still be it).