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The whole premise of Nostr is that you consider your access point hostile, yet its provider is still offering one. That contradiction just incentivizes bad and

The whole premise of Nostr is that you consider your access point hostile, yet its provider is still offering one. That contradiction just incentivizes bad and toxic actors to participate and dominate this network. That's why, it seems, the developers actively conflate what one would expect from a private communication platform and a social media platform. But this isn't an alternative to Mastodon or Twitter, it's an alternative to Berty, Cwtch, Speek, Briar, Anonymous Messenger, and maybe Matrix if you use it for encrypted communication only. It has a legitimate use case for people who may be forced to switch relays very often due to government censorship but still want to continue to talk in public. To anyone else the quality and culture of the moderation system is what defines the quality of their platform, but Nostr undermines the former by design. As such, it comes to no surprise that the free speech warriors from the crypto community are the main drivers of this protocol. It's just a pity that Snowden seems to have become one of them as well - and it isn't that he supports it, but how. He's just repeating the devs' own flawed narrative. Decentralization is the right path forward, but you want social media on federated platforms as you need to take care of communities with enforceable rules and provide a service to users, while for private interpersonal or group communication you can opt to federated or peer-to-peer networks.

solarkraft 4y ago
> The whole premise of Nostr is that you consider your access point hostile, yet its provider is still offering one. I'm confused. Doesn't this apply to a lot of projects offering hosting for E2EE services? Why should it be a problem?
- class4behavior 4y ago
  As I said in my post - if you read it - private communication and social media are not the same. The expectations are different. On a social media platform you want some level of persistence, you want someone to be able to nurture a healthy discussion culture. But if all of your users were just fine, there are barely any advantages over a federated platform where you can migrate; much more disadvantages instead.
gray_charger 4y ago
I think centralized moderation is the problem with social media servers. Users should be the ones to control their own moderation. See a post you don't like? Hide the post. Don't like any posts from a particular user? Block the user. It's not difficult to do and if users are really only following friends and famous accounts (celebrities, bots, news, etc.) they won't experience much spam anyway. I think the real issue is discovery. How does one find other accounts that post about similar topics (other than friend-of-a-friend approach) and that aren't spam.
- lapcat 4y ago
  AFAICT at first glance, on nostr you would only see posts from accounts you follow. There isn't any "algorithm" to feed content to you. Someone can correct me if I'm wrong, but this is my impression. Therefore, it's all self-moderation, and you wouldn't have any spam or messages from hostile randos, because you wouldn't be following them in the first place. And as you say, "the real issue is discovery".
  - leesalminen 4y ago
    That's all that exists today. Nothing prevents a client from developing some sort of algorithm, querying the relays appropriately, and rendering notes from users not followed. At the same time, nothing prevents a user from migrating to a different client that has no "algorithm".
- immibis 4y ago
  You would think that at first glance, but it's short-sighted. Experiment: Turn off your email's spam filter for a month.
  - Aeolun 4y ago
    I can’t select whom emails me. I see everything that comes to me. The same thing is not true for say, Twitter, where I only see posts from people I explicitly follow.
anothernostrich 4y ago
So far, there haven't been many "bad and toxic actors". I have met one bad actor among thousands on nostr and I muted him. I heard there was porn in global chat, but my client doesn't even offer global chat. People don't consider their relays "hostile", but they don't trust them with things they don't need to trust them with. That's not the contradiction you imagine. Relay operators are trusted with things like spam filtering, illegal content removal, etc. One method is that a proof-of-work is required to start writing to a relay, and your public key can be banned quickly for bad behavior, resulting in another long proof-of-work to try again. Trusting a relay with account management, for example, is horrible. Trust as little as necessary.
- arp242 4y ago
  > So far, there haven't been many "bad and toxic actors" It's also obscure enough to not even have a Wikipedia article, the "first & best iOS client for Nostr" wasn't published on GitHub until less than a year ago (but wasn't in the app store until this week according to another comment), the Android client they recommend wasn't on GitHub until last month, and the web client they recommend (Iris) didn't add Nostr support until 2 months ago. Edward Snowden seems to be the most prominent user, and he has 5 followers. I don't know if this is broken, because it seems a ridiculously low number, but that's what it displays. There's lots of things that work well at small scale, but not so well at scale.
Ambolia 4y ago
You can implement censorship at the relay level and then choose your censor.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
antisocialist 4y ago
> But this isn't an alternative to Mastodon or Twitter, it's an alternative to Berty, Cwtch, Speek, Briar, Anonymous Messenger, and maybe Matrix And (not maybe) xx Network. Nostr isn't an alternative to these messaging and chat apps because it has weak anonymity and privacy. Take a look at how those other apps/platforms work, and then compare them with Nostr. > As such, it comes to no surprise that the free speech warriors from the crypto community are the main drivers of this protocol. Nostr has weak privacy protections compared to most of of the above mentioned platforms, so I don't think it's something free speech advocates should feel comfortable promoting - anyone who truly needs free speech and uses Nostr won't last long.

solarkraft 4y ago

> The whole premise of Nostr is that you consider your access point hostile, yet its provider is still offering one. I'm confused. Doesn't this apply to a lot of projects offering hosting for E2EE services? Why should it be a problem?

class4behavior 4y ago
As I said in my post - if you read it - private communication and social media are not the same. The expectations are different. On a social media platform you want some level of persistence, you want someone to be able to nurture a healthy discussion culture. But if all of your users were just fine, there are barely any advantages over a federated platform where you can migrate; much more disadvantages instead.

gray_charger 4y ago

I think centralized moderation is the problem with social media servers. Users should be the ones to control their own moderation. See a post you don't like? Hide the post. Don't like any posts from a particular user? Block the user. It's not difficult to do and if users are really only following friends and famous accounts (celebrities, bots, news, etc.) they won't experience much spam anyway. I think the real issue is discovery. How does one find other accounts that post about similar topics (other than friend-of-a-friend approach) and that aren't spam.

lapcat 4y ago
AFAICT at first glance, on nostr you would only see posts from accounts you follow. There isn't any "algorithm" to feed content to you. Someone can correct me if I'm wrong, but this is my impression. Therefore, it's all self-moderation, and you wouldn't have any spam or messages from hostile randos, because you wouldn't be following them in the first place. And as you say, "the real issue is discovery".
- leesalminen 4y ago
  That's all that exists today. Nothing prevents a client from developing some sort of algorithm, querying the relays appropriately, and rendering notes from users not followed. At the same time, nothing prevents a user from migrating to a different client that has no "algorithm".
immibis 4y ago
You would think that at first glance, but it's short-sighted. Experiment: Turn off your email's spam filter for a month.
- Aeolun 4y ago
  I can’t select whom emails me. I see everything that comes to me. The same thing is not true for say, Twitter, where I only see posts from people I explicitly follow.

anothernostrich 4y ago

So far, there haven't been many "bad and toxic actors". I have met one bad actor among thousands on nostr and I muted him. I heard there was porn in global chat, but my client doesn't even offer global chat. People don't consider their relays "hostile", but they don't trust them with things they don't need to trust them with. That's not the contradiction you imagine. Relay operators are trusted with things like spam filtering, illegal content removal, etc. One method is that a proof-of-work is required to start writing to a relay, and your public key can be banned quickly for bad behavior, resulting in another long proof-of-work to try again. Trusting a relay with account management, for example, is horrible. Trust as little as necessary.

arp242 4y ago
> So far, there haven't been many "bad and toxic actors" It's also obscure enough to not even have a Wikipedia article, the "first & best iOS client for Nostr" wasn't published on GitHub until less than a year ago (but wasn't in the app store until this week according to another comment), the Android client they recommend wasn't on GitHub until last month, and the web client they recommend (Iris) didn't add Nostr support until 2 months ago. Edward Snowden seems to be the most prominent user, and he has 5 followers. I don't know if this is broken, because it seems a ridiculously low number, but that's what it displays. There's lots of things that work well at small scale, but not so well at scale.

Ambolia 4y ago

You can implement censorship at the relay level and then choose your censor.

deleted 4y ago
[deleted]

antisocialist 4y ago

> But this isn't an alternative to Mastodon or Twitter, it's an alternative to Berty, Cwtch, Speek, Briar, Anonymous Messenger, and maybe Matrix And (not maybe) xx Network. Nostr isn't an alternative to these messaging and chat apps because it has weak anonymity and privacy. Take a look at how those other apps/platforms work, and then compare them with Nostr. > As such, it comes to no surprise that the free speech warriors from the crypto community are the main drivers of this protocol. Nostr has weak privacy protections compared to most of of the above mentioned platforms, so I don't think it's something free speech advocates should feel comfortable promoting - anyone who truly needs free speech and uses Nostr won't last long.