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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

#71

Post by googlryas »

gigatexal wrote: post #41
sph wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You have one Mastodon server you can post to (for that account). You can post on as many NOSTR relays as you want. Get banned on one, you are still publishing on the others. You can also, along with your messages, suggest to "subscribers" your preferred relays, so people that really want to follow you as you get banned all over the net always know the best place to reach you. This process of course would be automated…

Run. Your. Own. Mastodon host. Problem solved. Linnode has one click rollouts.

How about when whoever you provisioned your tld or up in your mastodon I'd decides you've been a bad boy and can't have them any more?

Re: Nostr: Notes and Other Stuff Transmitted by Relays

#72

Post by nunobrito »

nine_k wrote: post #35
nunobrito wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Even though the message is signed, you can't reasonably prove that you do not possess the private key used to sign it, or have not possessed. That is an assumption that you made and strikes as FUD. An equally valid assumption is that nobody can reasonably prove that the person has the private key used for signing the files. Assuming the stated nature of relays and their intended purpose, there is more ground to ass…

> without reasonable way to inspect the contents of encrypted data. This would be entirely correct were the data encrypted %) The data are signed, but otherwise plaintext. For reference, kids in the US got arrested for possessing nude pictures of themselves on their phones [1], because mere possession of a nude picture of an underage person is restricted by law. Talk about who are you going to convince that some shad…

OK. If data is unencrypted inside the machine then indeed that is a problem.

Re: Nostr: Notes and Other Stuff Transmitted by Relays

#73

Post by gigatexal »

cactusplant7374 wrote: post #65
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…

> 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.

This. This is so well said. It’s what I was trying to say but got ended up being more trolly than I had hoped.

Re: Nostr: Notes and Other Stuff Transmitted by Relays

#74

Post by nunobrito »

cactusplant7374 wrote: post #65
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…

> 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 mainstream media and political groups decide to impose.

Re: Nostr: Notes and Other Stuff Transmitted by Relays

#75

Post by jb55 »

twobitshifter wrote: post #59
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…

The protocol notes that the relay has a choice to accept content, for example a large video. If you were running a relay you might want scanners for spam and illegal content running out front before relaying any content.

It's only recommended that you store json and text on relays. It's a text protocol, not a protocol for storing large binary data. Note sizes are restricted as well on most relays.

Re: Nostr: Notes and Other Stuff Transmitted by Relays

#76

Post by Ajedi32 »

larrysalibra wrote: post #25
gigatexal wrote: post #22

I don't understand Nostr's comments on trying to be deplatform-proof. On Mastodon, for example, if you get kicked off a node just spin up your own node. 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. So I don't get what Nostr is trying to do.

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 people that they hate, 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.

(To be clear, I'm making a generalized moral argument here, not a legal one, so let's skip the whole "but it's a private platform" debate this time.)

Re: Nostr: Notes and Other Stuff Transmitted by Relays

#77

Post by leishman »

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…

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.

Re: Nostr: Notes and Other Stuff Transmitted by Relays

#79

Post by rcoder »

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…

One other critical bit of "censorship" and "oppression" that Nostr very much wants to route around is any restrictions on use of Lightning et. al. cryptocurrency payments directly in Nostr clients, without any intermediaries or custodians in the way. (This fear of "economic censorship" seems to be a common boogieman in cryptocurrency circles, from what I can tell. Certainly a bigger fear than state-level actors coming after you for your Nostr notes or toots or whatever.)

Whether you think that's a good or necessary thing probably tracks very closely with your beliefs about whether money and its expenditure is protected speech. Obviously that's something about which the highest courts and legislative bodies in the USA already have complex and sometimes-contradictory views, so I certainly won't claim there's a single correct answer...even if my personal beliefs fall very much on the "money is a modern social fiction in no way connected to fundamental human rights" side of the spectrum.

Re: Nostr: Notes and Other Stuff Transmitted by Relays

#80

Post by yonz »

larrysalibra wrote: post #8
sph wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It does not tie into Bitcoin. It's just a very very simple protocol of clients sending and subscribing to pieces of data, and relays that dumbly (i.e. with little processing) send data across connected and subscribed clients. It's like a very minimal version of ActivityPub. It takes an hour to go through the whole spec and addenda. Then Jack Dorsey got interested, gave the project a big grant (in BTC), and a lot of c…

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?
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