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Nostr is an inclusive communication commons

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Re: Nostr is an inclusive communication commons

#141

Post by inigyou »

grumbel wrote: post #38
dannyw wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think GP's point (which I agree with) is that the functionality is almost essential. When it's not part of the spec, then you end up with differing off-spec implementations, and again, centralization risk. This would be like the HTTP protocol not defining `POST`, and leaving it up to servers and clients to implement it based on however it feels like. I really like the ideals behind Nostr, but I think its implementa…

It would be more analog to HTTP not specing out how CDNs should work, or Usenet not specing out how DejaNews is going to work. It's infrastructure stuff neither the client nor the simple server has to care about. The Nostr spec covers what matters, cryptographic identities and unique message ids, that make dumb relays that duplicating messages from elsewhere possible (an area where HTTP or Activity Pub fail at).

It's actually more analogous to HTTP saying that proxies and reverse proxies are banned.

Re: Nostr is an inclusive communication commons

#142

Post by lxgr »

inigyou wrote: post #135
matheusmoreira wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It hasn’t even produced a compelling currency It has produced Monero which absolutely is that currency. Now if only we could get people to actually use it.

You don't want people to actually use it because like all cryptocurrency it's got quite limited maximum throughput. The problem is worse than usual with Monero - because it's so secure, no data can ever be proven to be unused, so no data can ever be removed from the blockchain.

All of that can be solved or worked around. The much bigger problem is that it's a bit "too anonymous" to ever be tolerated even in most democracies, for better or worse.

I think the only thing that stands a chance is something that partially anonymizes one party to the transaction but not the other, or something that can deanonymize a given transaction only by very publicly and verifiably "breaking glass".

Re: Nostr is an inclusive communication commons

#143

Post by inigyou »

Cameri wrote: post #121
treyd wrote: post #4

The thing with Nostr is that the protocol spec expressly forbids relays from forwarding messages to each other. What this means is that users trying to reach each other need to shotgun messages to many relays, or congregate around specific ones. User profile data will list the relays they listen on, but this suffers from the problem of sticky defaults and makes client authors the kingmakers. There's lots of centraliz…

False. The protocol doesn’t forbid it. Theres actually a negentropy NIP for relay sync. Did you read the actual protocol or are you just making things up on HN?

I also remember reading somewhere that relays aren't allowed to copy other relays.

Re: Nostr is an inclusive communication commons

#144

Post by inigyou »

digitalbase wrote: post #41
treyd wrote: post #4

The thing with Nostr is that the protocol spec expressly forbids relays from forwarding messages to each other. What this means is that users trying to reach each other need to shotgun messages to many relays, or congregate around specific ones. User profile data will list the relays they listen on, but this suffers from the problem of sticky defaults and makes client authors the kingmakers. There's lots of centraliz…

What the hell are you talking about? What forbids? The idea of nostr is that you can do whatever the you like. An open protocol. There is no forbidding of anything

> There is no forbidding of anything

Promise not to prosecute me if I spam the network?

Re: Nostr is an inclusive communication commons

#145

Post by inigyou »

Yizahi wrote: post #94
lez wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because Eurosky can ban you.

Dang can ban you, or me, or anyone. Doesn't make HN a bad forum. On the contrary, HN's moderation quality is widely praised and appreciated. Now imagine if it was free for all anarcho-libertarian forum. Or as another example a mastodon, where decentralization is touted as a huge benefit, but in practice it is a collection of extremely strict centralized islands, where a ban can lead to one's identity account forever…

Mastodon is indeed a collection of small social networks with limited interoperability. Federated toots are second-class toots - you won't see all their replies. Think of how iMessage degrades when someone in the conversation isn't using it.

Re: Nostr is an inclusive communication commons

#147

Post by inigyou »

grumbel wrote: post #88
ttoinou wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I doubt widespread adoption was slowed down with mainstream news about BitTorrent, or what are you talking about more specifically ? Others peer to peer sharing platforms got much more popular despite mainstream news about them like LimeWire and eMule

Lack of BitTorrent support in browsers is big thing that is missing. Brave and Opera have it, but all the mainstream browsers don't. Thus torrent downloads never got out of its specific niche. That said, I don't think piracy is to blame here, but more the murky nature of copyright in general, with BitTorrent you automatically become redistributor of everything you download and that's just a huge liability and privacy…

Why should they keep FTP or Gopher alive, or support Gemini, when they're just worse HTTP? I think they should make it possible to write a new protocol handler though.

Re: Nostr is an inclusive communication commons

#148

Post by inigyou »

lxgr wrote: post #142
inigyou wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You don't want people to actually use it because like all cryptocurrency it's got quite limited maximum throughput. The problem is worse than usual with Monero - because it's so secure, no data can ever be proven to be unused, so no data can ever be removed from the blockchain.

All of that can be solved or worked around. The much bigger problem is that it's a bit "too anonymous" to ever be tolerated even in most democracies, for better or worse. I think the only thing that stands a chance is something that partially anonymizes one party to the transaction but not the other, or something that can deanonymize a given transaction only by very publicly and verifiably "breaking glass".

The government would just break glass on every transaction because what would you do about it?

Re: Nostr is an inclusive communication commons

#149

Post by hardran3 »

kragen wrote: post #134
chr15m wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> network effects favor the largest No. You can write a client that does not use popular relays and it will work fine.

Can you elaborate on this? What can you do with this client, and how does it find the relays to use to get notified of new notes? I don't know very much about Nostr, so I don't know the answers to these questions, or even if they are the right questions to ask.

Users set their own relays. Other users can see this list and use it to send and receive events. It's fixed the need of big common relays. https://nips.nostr.com/65

Re: Nostr is an inclusive communication commons

#150

Post by hardran3 »

inigyou wrote: post #143
Cameri wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

False. The protocol doesn’t forbid it. Theres actually a negentropy NIP for relay sync. Did you read the actual protocol or are you just making things up on HN?

I also remember reading somewhere that relays aren't allowed to copy other relays.

There are relays built with copying from other relays as a main feature. Personal use only https://github.com/barrydeen/haven This one will copy every note of every person you follow, plus their follows. https://github.com/barrydeen/wot-relay
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