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Nostr.how – A Complete Guide to Nostr

nostr.how

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Re: Nostr.how – A Complete Guide to Nostr

#111

Post by topranks »

gray_charger wrote: post #7
class4behavior wrote: post #4

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…

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…

I don’t want to have to look at abuse material just to tell my machine to block a user. And play whack-a-mole as they reappear etc.

Moderation is vital for public social platforms.

Re: Nostr.how – A Complete Guide to Nostr

#112

Post by mattdesl »

newswasboring wrote: post #105
hem777 wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It seems to me it does require cryptos. Which luckily are based on cryptography so we all get to like the path forward :)

Do you have a particular use case in mind which cryptocurrency enables here? Care to give an example of how they help solve a issue?

Two uses cases that would both be beneficial to nostr:

Decentralized namespace registries - see Farcaster.

Autonomous and decentralized mechanism that rewards & incentivizes users to run nodes/servers - see Ethereum staking, Filecoin.

Re: Nostr.how – A Complete Guide to Nostr

#113

Post by [deleted] »

Ambolia wrote: post #109
class4behavior wrote: post #4

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…

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

[deleted]

Re: Nostr.how – A Complete Guide to Nostr

#114

Post by legutierr »

anonkogudhyfhhf wrote: post #101
hem777 wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Think of cryptos more like “incentives to rational behavior” than “money” and it starts to make sense. You can incentivize, for example, data availability with cryptos and that opens the design space for distributed systems that don’t need to be controlled by one entity (like Twitter, for example).

Nostr already has bitcoin payments for incentives. Please example one concrete example where a blockchain is needed for nostr protocol itself

There are two places where a blockchain would be very useful in this context: guaranteeing completeness (allowing you to confirm whether or not you have downloaded all the posts ever created by a user), and preventing timestamp forgery.

Re: Nostr.how – A Complete Guide to Nostr

#115

Post by drowsspa »

lazzlazzlazz wrote: post #85
libraryatnight wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It may need cryptography. I think the majority of HN likes cryptography. When you say crypto, and apologize for it, I assume you mean the stupid coins and all the nonsense that comes with that group of fools, and that is not required.

How do you guarantee data availability and avoid double spending without Byzantine fault tolerant consensus?

Is this the equivalent of that "MongoDB is webscale video"? Why are those issues important in a social plataform

Re: Nostr.how – A Complete Guide to Nostr

#116

Post by the_third_wave »

zdragnar wrote: post #21
pkulak wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Then host your own instance. Your definition of "centralized" as "optionally requiring any trust at all" is pretty broad, and sweeps up even email.

ActivityPub is a protocol designed for decentralization, but the Mastadon software itself really is not a great option for self hosting. In practical terms, for non-technical users (i.e. the people you need for broad adaptation) self-hosting it is a non-starter. The same is definitely true for email. There are many providers, so "centralized" is a bit of a loose label, but running your own email server comes with non…

Use Pleroma instead of Mastodon, it is quite easy to host and only takes a fraction of the resources Mastodon does - it idles at 165 MB on my test instance (single user logged in, no activity). From what I've seen it should possible for non-technical people to self-host it as long as there is a possibility for remote-access assistance (and there's your business model, sell wall warts with self-hosted services with optional remote assistance).

That said I do prefer a mail-based system like Delta Chat [1] over these ActivityPub-based things since everyone already has a mail address and there is a wide range of software to choose from.

[1] https://delta.chat/en/

Re: Nostr.how – A Complete Guide to Nostr

#117

Post by leesalminen »

legutierr wrote: post #114
anonkogudhyfhhf wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nostr already has bitcoin payments for incentives. Please example one concrete example where a blockchain is needed for nostr protocol itself

There are two places where a blockchain would be very useful in this context: guaranteeing completeness (allowing you to confirm whether or not you have downloaded all the posts ever created by a user), and preventing timestamp forgery.

> guaranteeing completeness

SSB has something like this but it requires a user to download another user’s entire post history before being able to see one post. Makes the experience very slow.

Re: Nostr.how – A Complete Guide to Nostr

#118

Post by leesalminen »

mattdesl wrote: post #112
newswasboring wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you have a particular use case in mind which cryptocurrency enables here? Care to give an example of how they help solve a issue?

Two uses cases that would both be beneficial to nostr: Decentralized namespace registries - see Farcaster. Autonomous and decentralized mechanism that rewards & incentivizes users to run nodes/servers - see Ethereum staking, Filecoin.

No need for any of this elaborate noise. You can just charge money for services rendered like hosting your media or notes.

Re: Nostr.how – A Complete Guide to Nostr

#119

Post by leesalminen »

dchnshA wrote: post #110
FireInsight wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A good Mastodon instance can certanly provide what you say most people'd want. Since it's activitypub, you wont be locked in to mastodon only. And since it's foss, account migration will probably be worked on as it's the #1 critique of Mastodon (aside of onboarding).

Mastodon already has account migration and had it for a long time.

But it requires the cooperation of the owner of the server you created your account on, right?

If so it’s only a happy path and doesn’t handle the very common migration scenarios of falling out of favor with your server owner.

Re: Nostr.how – A Complete Guide to Nostr

#120

Post by leesalminen »

drowsspa wrote: post #96

Honestly, I don't get the fuss about these "libertarian-inspired social network protocols". It's not like the technical side of social media is the tough one: it's always been the political and sociological one. In the end, most people aren't hardcore libertarians and do want content moderation, centralized discovery, spam blocking... I would really find it interesting if it came about a protocol that actually cared…

There's nothing about nostr that prevents any relay and/or client from offering these things (content moderation, centralized discovery, spam filters). They could even share their findings with other relays/clients and build one big cohesive censorship system.

If this happened, users would be free to opt-out of that and switch out their client and/or relay with other options that fit their needs without friction. They would keep their identity, note history, friend list, etc.

Could be as simple as one client releasing a UI change the user hates. They could just download a different app and keep going.

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