Oddbean new post about login | logout tried a different nostr client and looks like all my follows got wiped, is that something that happens?
This is something I have been asking about. I’ve been told that you don’t take your followers with you which, if true is not ideal because it creates huge moats for individual clients
You can and should take both your follows and followers between clients. This is likely a bug
A few people have mentioned that happening. What client?
I’ve had some difficulty on switching clients. I went to astral once and my name and pfp got wiped, but my following/followers stayed the same. Looks like you’re following 8 and followed by over 7k on my end looking at your profile on Damus.
Use a second set of keys to examine other clients. This happened to me multiple times in December and early January. Had to refollow a lot of people multiple times. It feels like some clients overwrite your bio and relay selections but I can’t be sure but it’s a pain in the ass.
Make sure the new client you logged into has all the relays in your relay list from the other client you were logged into. If relays are missing stuff won’t show up. I noticed sometimes the relay list doesn’t transfer over to new clients when you log in.
It happened to me. You are not alone. Some clients don't pull your relay data and you log in with their pre-populated relays wiping out the data.
W
Happened to me a couple days ago
This happened to me with Astral where I started a new "instance". It had just started to sync. I performed a small edit of my profile and saved it. The next time I opened Damus all my Follows were gone, I had to collect them from scratch.
I am trying my second client as a Nostr noob. It seems to have carried over follows but not likes as far as my UI is concerned.
Which ones are you using?
Everything is carried ove: clients are (at least should) be stateless. That said, some clients render things in different ways or not at all, so things might appear different. 😉 and ODELL , yeah, getting your follow list overwritten is definitely a thing 😅
Based on this tweet, looks like follows are part of your « contact-list » which clients create with new accounts. I can only assume one of the client you used broadcasted an empty contact-list for some unknown reason. https://twitter.com/jb55/status/1622004254344101888
https://nostr.build/i/nostr.build_d403f49aabcab1fe9332557b2e7e6e59cff21ee2b7ebd8654dd236feb2f87588.jpeg These are your followers, I see this on Damus 🫂🤙🏼
If you use the same keys and relays I’d expect everything to be „just the same“.
Tried amethyst, then when I opened Damus I was no longer following anyone, doesn’t look like I dropped any relays, now manually re-following people
Happens a lot unfortunately when switching platforms. No idea why it happens. I have less than half of my followers on Amethyst than I do on snort.social and I have no idea why that is
I guess any client can misbehave if it has your private key. I would suspect Amethyst. It might have had some cache which it published thinking it was the only client. Dunno.
Hey Matt, check my ‘Following’ list, should save you some time.
Happens a lot unfortunately when switching platforms. No idea why it happens. I have less than half of my followers on Amethyst than I do on snort.social and I have no idea why that is
Yeah, followers, follows doesn't matter. I've lost both. Both have the same issue of being wiped when switching clients.
Thanks, this was the answer I was looking for, manually followed a bunch of peeps again, gonna hold off on experimenting with new clients for a bit.
Why would you hold off? Just use other nyms when exploring new clients.
Good to know, thx 👍
I think there are 2 different data for a user: Meta data: contains user name, lud16 address etc Contact list: contains relays and follows. So if you update your relay list when you don't have your follows synced, this might cause the problem.
🫂🤙
Hey Matt, check my ‘Following’ list, should save you some time.
I have the same relays, and added some more. For my prior client, when I added relays it kind of seemed like the client wasn’t even using those relays and was still using the first default relay. Got really slow. It is faster now on this second client even with the same relays.
It seems like the dream of perfect interoperability between nostr clients probably won’t happen. Eg web browser incompatibility despite a clear specification. I would expect that every client will be a separate product experience and we won’t see useful data portability for normies. Eg you need to use the same relays and make certain selections and configurations to use it, which will be too difficult for regular folks.
Likes are spotty, if you come back to the same note 12-24 hours later you’ll likely see a bunch not appear any more but if you check on nostr.band you’ll see truer numbers.
Adding a couple paid relays has been helpful as well in terms of overall performance. https://eden.nostr.land https://nostr.milou.lol https://nostr.wine https://puravida.nostr.land https://ruravida.nostr.land https://atlas.nostr.land https://relay.orangepill.dev
Likes are spotty, if you come back to the same note 12-24 hours later you’ll likely see a bunch not appear any more but if you check on nostr.band you’ll see truer numbers.
Your client keeps a list of everyone you follow. You can choose to what relays you publish that list in a kind 3 event, When you go to a new client it pulls that list from the relays so it knows who to follow. This can cause an issue if the client you move to cannot find what relays your kind 3 is published to, finds an old list. Or publishes an event overwriting it as may have happened here. https://github.com/nostr-protocol/nips/blob/master/02.md
Basically, almost nothing is stored on your client. When anyone, including you, wants to get your follow list it is queried from the relays. Clients sometimes cache information so they don’t have to request the same notes or images constantly, but the vast majority of information is still stored on relays.
