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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

#101

Post by Cameri »

nine_k wrote: post #26
larrysalibra wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All this stuff might true, but from both a user and a developer perspective it actually works today and has a vibrant community of motivated, talented and interesting people building on it AND using it. There are ways to address all of these problems if and when they occur. I think one of Nostr's biggest contributions is its culture of pragmatism and speed. Do something simple, quickly that works instead of sitting a…

I see now. The censorship against which Nostr offers some resistance is things like being banned from Twitter, or being expelled by disgruntled moderators from a subreddit, or maybe even fired by your domain name registrar.. It's not the kind of censorship resistance which opposition in country with an oppressive regime might need, and in general not a solution against censorship by state-level actors. Well, fair. Al…

Software protocols aren't going to prevent the government from using physical force to will you into obedience.

Not sure what you expect?

Re: Nostr: Notes and Other Stuff Transmitted by Relays

#102

Post by cactusplant7374 »

snapcaster wrote: post #68
cactusplant7374 wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Federated is okay as long as it’s not used to organize violent acts. Sunshine isn’t always the best medicine.

Centralized social media has inspired and organized countless violent acts. Malaysia and India with Whatsapp is probably the most shocking. I don't see the connection between Federation/Centralization/etc. and violence. Can you explain your reasoning?

Centralized can be removed so that violent people can’t organize. It’s impossible to do that when those individuals own the servers or have a decentralized network.

Re: Nostr: Notes and Other Stuff Transmitted by Relays

#103

Post by pornel »

irusensei wrote: post #19
say_it_as_it_is wrote: post #13

Moderation is an essential part of community management, even in darknets. Trust in what is said and what is promised as part of a transaction is what attracts and retains members of the community. Just because you can create a censorship resistant network doesn't mean you should.

Nostr is a protocol. Are there moderation functionalities in RSS, SMTP or HTTP? Do matrix and XMPP protocols have some central authority overseeing what server a talks to server b? It’s up to the relays implement their own moderation features and clients filter what they don’t want to see.

I don't think these protocols are quite comparable to a Twitter-like "town square" model, so they don't have the same problems. But where they overlap, they do some "censorship": SMTP will delete spam, XMPP servers will kick out spammers and harassers.

The problem with Twitter is that unlike RSS, it shows content from people you did not subscribe to (e.g. you get replies, you see strangers' replies to your friend's posts). The content is public, so unlike e-mail, receiving abuse is not just your private problem, but a problem for the network's image and reputation.

But in either case, when normal users (not righteous keyboard warriors) find some content to be horrible, they don't want to see it. If they keep being bombarded with unwanted content, they leave. For Mastodon/Twitter/Gab that may be "political" content, but the problem in general is similar to spam.

Re: Nostr: Notes and Other Stuff Transmitted by Relays

#104

Post by Cameri »

rollcat wrote: post #55
nunobrito wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You've just described 100 years of car evolution. Similar to software architecture, you do start by defining the preferred characteristics and then working your way to the other parts.

> You've just described 100 years of car evolution. On purpose. You can't build a car today that ignores these learnings, and safely deploy it on the open roads; just like you can't build what's effectively an open relay like it's 1997 and expect to stay safe against the threats outlined by nine_k.

You can build software on protocols like this.

Your analogy fails at the mere fact that no physical harm can result from Nostr not solving this one thing you think is 100% necessary.

The fact that Nostr is up and running and working is the undeniable fact that you don't NEED to solve every single problem known to humankind before you write some lines of code.

Re: Nostr: Notes and Other Stuff Transmitted by Relays

#105

Post by cactusplant7374 »

nunobrito wrote: post #74
cactusplant7374 wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> People who are de-platformed are almost always people who others WANT to hear. A tiny minority. The majority listens to public health (in the case of Covid) and doesn’t want to read conspiracy theories or research analysis by someone unqualified.

Qualified voices were either censored on social media or ignored by political powers in regards to COVID. In Portugal, the group of medical experts assembled by the government was ignored after they opposed the political decision for injecting children: https://www.publico.pt/2021/07/20/sociedade/noticia/comissao... It is wrong to dismiss the opinion of experts on this topic just because it goes against what mainstre…

They opposed it because they said there wasn’t enough information. That is the excuse for doing nothing — an argument repeated ad nauseam during the pandemic.

Certainly there is an argument that children will be harmed if we do nothing. It’s a difficult decision because children a small number if children die from Covid, but it’s still not zero. The best way forward is to proceed with caution.

Re: Nostr: Notes and Other Stuff Transmitted by Relays

#106

Post by Cameri »

wkat4242 wrote: post #82
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.

Famous last words... I wouldn't want to run the risk of being the first one it does happen to. I think something like ipfs offers better resistance to such attacks for node owners. I wonder how the two compare because I don't know either in detail. But sharing unencrypted content from others could be an issue for many reasons. Copyright too. Especially because this protocol is aimed at content blocked or censored fro…

Nostr isn't aimed at content blocked or censored.

Relays also don't host media, it's meant for text-based comms.

Re: Nostr: Notes and Other Stuff Transmitted by Relays

#107

Post by rufusroflpunch »

yonz wrote: post #80
larrysalibra wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The relationship to bitcoin besides being created by bitcoiners is that it uses Schnorr Signatures for the secp256k1 curve - the same curve as bitcoin. https://bips.xyz/340 A Nostr account is identified by a public key, you follow accounts by following public keys and the ability to post as an account is controlled by the corresponding private key.

Is there any place to find Public keys to follow?

https://www.nostr.directory

This tool lets you broadcast your pub key on twitter using a specified format, and the app will add you to the directory, and you can use it to find others that have also done that.

Also, if you go to https://snort.social/new, you can enter your twitter handle, and it will find everyone from you're twitter follows that you're not already following and let you sign up to follow them all.

Re: Nostr: Notes and Other Stuff Transmitted by Relays

#108

Post by rufusroflpunch »

larrysalibra wrote: post #7
KoftaBob wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The best web clients so far are Snort and Iris, I'd try again with Snort and you should have a smoother experience. https://snort.social https://iris.to

My favorite Nostr client (web or non-web) is Damus for iOS by jb55: https://damus.io It looks great, works well, the code well-written and super easy to hack on.

Damus is great and my client of choice. However, the TestFlight beta might still be filled up. If it is, I would recommend pairing a web client with an extension like nos2x/alby (chrome/firefox) or nostore (Safari).

Re: Nostr: Notes and Other Stuff Transmitted by Relays

#110

Post by ASalazarMX »

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?

Adding to the parent question, why do I need a wallet to join Nostr?

I registered, and while the registration was delightfully painless, it autocreated a wallet for me at legend.lnbits.com.

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