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Nostr is a stupid simple P2P protocol that works, built by builders

news.ycombinator.com

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Re: Nostr is a stupid simple P2P protocol that works, built by builders

#101

Post by Kinrany »

bawolff wrote: post #93
defanor wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's roughly my first thought too: the project seemed like pubsub with message authentication and without federation. Was about to bring up "Atom and RSS, mailing lists, NNTP, XMPP, ActivityPub, Matrix" as examples of existing protocols capable of that (to a different extent, and usually with more functionality), thought to add Mastodon to the list of examples too, but the README already mentions that Mastodon is u…

The story around relays seems to me like the most suspect part of this when it comes to scaling. The protocol doesnt want users to run their own servers, but there also aren't really any incentives to run relays, so what happens when it gets big enough that running a relay is expensive or non-trivial? I feel like it would just fall back to users running their own servers like in mastadon.

That's not a problem if the server owners don't have any power over users.

Re: Nostr is a stupid simple P2P protocol that works, built by builders

#102

Post by speedgoose »

fiatjaf wrote: post #38
deaddodo wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What bugs me about it is their naivety to solved technical problems. For instance, they answer the question of “why this hasn’t been done?” with: > I don't know, but I imagine it has to do with the fact that people making social networks are either companies wanting to make money or P2P activists who want to make a thing completely without servers. Except it has been done. In fact, that’s literally what KaZaA was wit…

I don't know about KaZaA but I remember it was very popular for a time, so it might have done some things right? What was its fate? Was it censored to death? And I disagree very much that IRC is "semi-decentralized". IRC is completely centralized, it is just chat rooms on a server. You have to register on each server and each server has full control over its rooms and users.

KaZaA was also a big spyware.

Re: Nostr is a stupid simple P2P protocol that works, built by builders

#103

Post by zimpenfish »

remram wrote: post #28
huimang wrote: post #20

At this point I don't see much point in adopting something that doesn't support ActivityPub. I'd rather just use Mastodon/Pleroma/Akkoma with some heavy blocklists.

I've been looking at alternative implementations since I don't want to run the entire Mastodon app for just myself. The fact that every single ActivityPub implementation runs into so many interoperability issues, such that they have to be fixed to work with each other system one by one, is a sign to me that the protocol is either too complicated or not robust enough (probably both). There is tremendous value in a muc…

> so many interoperability issues [...] the protocol is either too complicated or not robust enough

From what I've read, it sounds like the interoperability issues come from not implementing AP the same way as Mastodon rather than anything specifically protocol-related. Hence, e.g., Pleroma going out of its way to be Mastodon compatible as a design goal and GoToSocial having lots of issues because it hasn't yet gone that route[1]

[1] e.g. they have an issue where some client apps don't work with GTS because GTS doesn't advertise a version number sufficiently high enough - because the apps are looking for "v > 2.10 because that's when Mastodon introduced feature Z".

Re: Nostr is a stupid simple P2P protocol that works, built by builders

#105

Post by tazjin »

null0pointer wrote: post #100
tazjin wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A bit disappointed about that actually. For a moment I thought someone had done a sane version of Scuttlebutt, but alas :) Though at this point I probably wouldn't use that either.

Which part of Scuttlebutt do you find not sane?

Last time I checked it out it depended on JS-specific behaviour which had to be replicated in other languages. It seemed like something was written first, and then they decided to extract it into a spec.

Maybe this has been cleaned up in the interim, but at the time a bunch of apps for it already existed so it was probably to late to go back.

Re: Nostr is a stupid simple P2P protocol that works, built by builders

#106

Post by viraptor »

stormbrew wrote: post #48
fiatjaf wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know about KaZaA but I remember it was very popular for a time, so it might have done some things right? What was its fate? Was it censored to death? And I disagree very much that IRC is "semi-decentralized". IRC is completely centralized, it is just chat rooms on a server. You have to register on each server and each server has full control over its rooms and users.

I'm sure all the script kiddies who loved to take over channels in netsplits are gonna be disappointed that they never actually did that now. More seriously, this is the second time I've seen someone on here characterize IRC in this (very wrong) way in the last day. Where is this coming from? IRC networks are made up of servers that relay (hence Internet Relay Chat) with each other. You connect to one server and you…

Part of it is that for users IRC definitely presents as centralised. You don't usually connect to a specific server, but rather a network that did some load balancing in the background. Like you typically connect to irc.efnet.org and not one of the sixty servers specifically.

Re: Nostr is a stupid simple P2P protocol that works, built by builders

#107

Post by danielheath »

tazjin wrote: post #105
null0pointer wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which part of Scuttlebutt do you find not sane?

Last time I checked it out it depended on JS-specific behaviour which had to be replicated in other languages. It seemed like something was written first, and then they decided to extract it into a spec. Maybe this has been cleaned up in the interim, but at the time a bunch of apps for it already existed so it was probably to late to go back.

That, and the insistence on 1-1 device:identity mapping (so you can't use the same account with multiple devices). And verifying an append-only log, so "show me Jane's recent posts" can't happen until it's downloaded & verified signatures for Jane's entire post history going back years.

Re: Nostr is a stupid simple P2P protocol that works, built by builders

#108

Post by barnabee »

egypturnash wrote: post #10

So how does nostr propose to solve the problem where there is, in fact, quite a lot of content that you want to filter out, whether because it makes for a better experience for the people using this protocol to talk to each other, or because there are some pretty solid laws about things that various governments require people to filter out? https://abovethelaw.com/2022/11/hey-elon-let-me-help-you-spe... is a pretty d…

I'd like such a protocol to be designed so servers, relays, etc. are unable to censor content at the protocol level (if someone creates it, it is available) and the filtering is done on the client side.

Commonly filtered things (account block lists, post flag lists, filter rules, etc.) could be shared via the same system — indeed there could even be competing versions and everyone could follow their preferred filter source.

Users would also likely run statistical and machine learning based spam and content filters locally (perhaps on a personal relay/server of some sort, or an account on a shared one) configured to their preferences.

I would expect the infrastructure running such a network to be in the same position as Signal, who do not know the content of messages and can't censor them, leaving individual clients to figure out blocking etc. (albeit the client side options as well as ways to share configurations etc. would need to be much more advanced for a social network or similar than for a messaing app).

Re: Nostr is a stupid simple P2P protocol that works, built by builders

#109

Post by [deleted] »

egypturnash wrote: post #10

So how does nostr propose to solve the problem where there is, in fact, quite a lot of content that you want to filter out, whether because it makes for a better experience for the people using this protocol to talk to each other, or because there are some pretty solid laws about things that various governments require people to filter out? https://abovethelaw.com/2022/11/hey-elon-let-me-help-you-spe... is a pretty d…

[deleted]

Re: Nostr is a stupid simple P2P protocol that works, built by builders

#110

Post by salawat »

imiric wrote: post #87
egypturnash wrote: post #10

So how does nostr propose to solve the problem where there is, in fact, quite a lot of content that you want to filter out, whether because it makes for a better experience for the people using this protocol to talk to each other, or because there are some pretty solid laws about things that various governments require people to filter out? https://abovethelaw.com/2022/11/hey-elon-let-me-help-you-spe... is a pretty d…

That's a great article, and balancing free speech with censorship is a difficult problem. But it becomes a constant headache only on centralized platforms, where no amount of resources can realistically monitor and filter all content. This scales in complexity as the platform grows, which is the goal of any centralized service. And if the business model depends on advertising, it becomes even messier and crucial to i…

You didn't answer the question.

The question was, to wit, >How do you keep CP off it?

Your answer was: >I don't, just don't look at the CP.

The problem really in question here is:

You've just created a new distribution method for this type of thing and punted the consequences for someone else to deal with.

(Which is totally cool imo, but newsflash, expect to be the subject of a hit piece some time in the forseeable future. It shouldn't take long; either for actual criminals to set up on it, or for LE to do it to "snare unsophisticated actors").

Welcome to the Internet, where we can't have/make nice things anymore.

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