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Nostr: Notes and Other Stuff Transmitted by Relays

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Re: Nostr: Notes and Other Stuff Transmitted by Relays

#91

Post by acdha »

Ajedi32 wrote: post #76
larrysalibra wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you get kicked off a mastodon server, you lose your followers and posts unless you're able to move your account before you're kicked off - which requires the cooperation of the server that wants to kick you off. > If nobody wants to hear you spewing your stuff then you'll soon be screaming into the void but what you post will still be viewable on the web and to those that subscribe to you. People who are de-platfo…

> It wasn't that "no one" wanted to hear them, but that the people that controlled the platform didn't want others to be able to hear them. This is an important point. Free speech is really as much about the rights of the listener as the rights of the speaker, if not more so. I think this is a good way of framing the censorship debate, because while it may be easy for some to dismiss the rights of a few dozen famous…

> it's way harder to argue that the millions of people who follow those celebrities shouldn't be allowed to hear what they have to say, even if they want to.

Nobody is making that argument. The actual argument is that a private company should not be compelled to provide free hosting for them. They can and have used other hosting services but many of their followers apparently prefer not to use those alternatives.

Re: Nostr: Notes and Other Stuff Transmitted by Relays

#92

Post by monk_cactus »

FreeTrade wrote: post #20

I'm working on software (member.cash) that bridges multiple decentralized social networks together and recently added support for Nostr. Compared to the others, Nostr is optimized for innovation - it is easy to build new features on top and we'll see a lot of growth and evolution because of that. I really like that about it. The problems I see with it right now are 1. Timestamps are easily forgeable 2. Difficult to c…

As far as I understand, a blockchain is only needed to achieve consensus on the network state. Why does social media require this?

Re: Nostr: Notes and Other Stuff Transmitted by Relays

#93

Post by last_responder »

notpushkin wrote: post #84
sph wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Imagine you're running a relay on your machine, and somebody posts some CSAM, or stolen CC data, or hate speech, etc through your relay. Relays can be authenticated. If you don't want your relay to accept data from anyone, don't leave it open. Same with any other Internet protocol. Also, per the spec or convention, relays SHALL NOT talk to each other. Each relay is a separate island, but the protocol permits and re…

> relays SHALL NOT talk to each other I don't get it. What's the point then?

At that point it is an endpoint not a relay.

Re: Nostr: Notes and Other Stuff Transmitted by Relays

#94

Post by acdha »

googlryas wrote: post #90
rchaud wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Start over? Nothing lasts forever. No one said the life of a free speech warrior would be an easy one.

That philosophy could be used to justify any problem with anything. Just use Twitter then. The point is you don't have that issue with nostr

You have proof of continued identity with nostr thanks to the keys but you still have the challenges around linking keys to people which were a major struggle for GPG. The solutions for that tend to involve social media or DNS (checking a personal domain).

This seems like a good area to improve since things like code signing could also benefit. One of the big problems I see is bootstrapping your network initially and also solving the lost phone problem without setting up a system which phishers and spammers would have a field day with.

Re: Nostr: Notes and Other Stuff Transmitted by Relays

#95

Post by FreeTrade »

monk_cactus wrote: post #92
FreeTrade wrote: post #20

I'm working on software (member.cash) that bridges multiple decentralized social networks together and recently added support for Nostr. Compared to the others, Nostr is optimized for innovation - it is easy to build new features on top and we'll see a lot of growth and evolution because of that. I really like that about it. The problems I see with it right now are 1. Timestamps are easily forgeable 2. Difficult to c…

As far as I understand, a blockchain is only needed to achieve consensus on the network state. Why does social media require this?

Somethings a blockchain gives you - timestamp + cost per transaction + completeness. Not required, but Nostr has to find an alternative solution to all these issues.

Re: Nostr: Notes and Other Stuff Transmitted by Relays

#96

Post by FreeTrade »

digdugdirk wrote: post #83
FreeTrade wrote: post #20

I'm working on software (member.cash) that bridges multiple decentralized social networks together and recently added support for Nostr. Compared to the others, Nostr is optimized for innovation - it is easy to build new features on top and we'll see a lot of growth and evolution because of that. I really like that about it. The problems I see with it right now are 1. Timestamps are easily forgeable 2. Difficult to c…

Knowing nothing about this space, can you explain a bit more how/why Nostr is easy to build upon where others aren't?

Other networks can be opinionated about which transactions are valid, whereas Nostr relays will forward any transactions right now.

Re: Nostr: Notes and Other Stuff Transmitted by Relays

#97

Post by monk_cactus »

FreeTrade wrote: post #95
monk_cactus wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As far as I understand, a blockchain is only needed to achieve consensus on the network state. Why does social media require this?

Somethings a blockchain gives you - timestamp + cost per transaction + completeness. Not required, but Nostr has to find an alternative solution to all these issues.

Hmm yea ok.

What do you mean by completeness?

Timestamping seems like the most difficult of those to solve

Re: Nostr: Notes and Other Stuff Transmitted by Relays

#98

Post by jchw »

biosboiii wrote: post #88
leishman wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think this is a very overblown concern that will not be a big issue in practice… at least not for a number of years.

Mastodon already has "censorship" options, and still people use it big time to distribute CP. https://www.secjuice.com/mastodon-child-porn-pedophiles/ If I were to run such a node in Germany, and someone would use it to distribute CP with it, I face from 1 to 10 years in prison. Yeah, no thanks.

This article quietly equates "CSAM" with lolicon and shotacon content, terms colloquially used to refer to drawings and other creative expressions, which is very clearly what they're avoiding mentioning. Of course, most people aware of fediverse politics already know about Pawoo and there is no good reason to speak about it in hushed tones, other than cowardice. Also, using the term "CSAM" to describe lolicon and shotacon is just intentional factual inaccuracy: the point of the term CSAM to specifically exclude content that doesn't directly involve the harm of a child; that's what "abuse material" is meant to refer. That does not change the legal reality or moral ramifications of the content, but it's bad to start out with the terminology so wrong because it paints the entire remainder of the discussion. Yes, it's complicated and uncomfortable, but let's not mince words.

When you run a Mastodon instance though, you don't actually need distribute this content at all. In fact, you probably would at least ban proxying media for communities like Pawoo, and honestly, probably, any NSFW-oriented instance if you want to be safe.

I hate to break anyone's innocence, but this stuff is literally everywhere on Twitter, and a lot of the rest of the Internet, too. Is it legal? Depends on your jurisdiction. Is it moral? ¯\_(ツ)_/¯. Only one thing's for sure: it's on your Internet, along with plenty of other things that you can also find on Mastodon somewhere. Such is the reality of federation and scale of the Internet. The stuff that goes through email relays unencrypted is not so different, other than the fact that it doesn't get broadcasted, and that it's probably worse in many cases.

If some instance was broadcasting outright CSAM on Mastodon, it would no doubt become quickly blacklisted by basically everyone and then probably also shut down off the clearnet.

Re: Nostr: Notes and Other Stuff Transmitted by Relays

#99

Post by Cameri »

sph wrote: post #36
nine_k wrote: post #9

The biggest problem I see here is forwarding someone else's unknown and unencrypted content. Imagine you're running a relay on your machine, and somebody posts some CSAM, or stolen CC data, or hate speech, etc through your relay. Unlike an email client, your relay actually makes that message available to anyone. Unlike an email relay, you are not forwarding the message to someone else like a dumb pipe; there's no fin…

> Imagine you're running a relay on your machine, and somebody posts some CSAM, or stolen CC data, or hate speech, etc through your relay. Relays can be authenticated. If you don't want your relay to accept data from anyone, don't leave it open. Same with any other Internet protocol. Also, per the spec or convention, relays SHALL NOT talk to each other. Each relay is a separate island, but the protocol permits and re…

The spec doesn't say relays SHALL NOT talk to each other. YOU made that up. It says they don't talk to each other but it is not prevented.

You can mirror one relay to another easily:

echo '["REQ", "mirror" ,{}]' | websocat wss://source | jq -del '.[1]' | websocat wss://dest

Re: Nostr: Notes and Other Stuff Transmitted by Relays

#100

Post by Cameri »

eduction wrote: post #57
sph wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Imagine you're running a relay on your machine, and somebody posts some CSAM, or stolen CC data, or hate speech, etc through your relay. Relays can be authenticated. If you don't want your relay to accept data from anyone, don't leave it open. Same with any other Internet protocol. Also, per the spec or convention, relays SHALL NOT talk to each other. Each relay is a separate island, but the protocol permits and re…

The whole reason I was excited about Nostr was the censorship resistance but if the relays choose who gets to authenticate you’re back to square one (well, whichever square Mastodon is). Also, it seems naive to think that a ban on blocklists in the spec will keep real free humans from doing exactly as they’ve done on email, Mastodon etc and share block lists.

The AUTH Nostr Implementation Possibility is not mandatory. You can choose to use it or not, it's not all or nothing. Every single NIP except for NIP-01 is optional.
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