IMO, relays should be note-agnostic. Anything that interferes with that is going to curtail the free transmission of notes, whatever the kind. Setting aside the very obvious flaws in the following analogy, relays should just be the connected backbone to allow you to make phone calls. They shouldn't stop you from talking about "illegal" things. It should be up the the client to decide what to reject "listening" to. 

These are all things that need to be hashed out before building an extensive mesh network as an alternative to the internet. 

Obviously there are considerations for t relay operators, but I would suggest that if someone isn't able to make a principled stand and risk jail time or execution for freedom, then, well, they shouldn't be offering a service that has that potential. 

Limiting liberty should only be done at the individual level. Offering a service to others is no longer an individual enterprise and should, IMO, be done as freely as possible. 

I'm still noodling this over as I'm sure it's not as sound an argument as it should be.  

 none. relay opereators who look at other ppls data are peeping toms at best. its not yours dont touch it. dont look at it. It used to be basic sysadmin and DBA training that even if you see the data you just forget it instantly. now its acceptablebehaviour to just snoop in ppl things??? what is the arguement here? I took your uber ride so you can look in my briefcase if you like cuz is your car? 

such scumball behavior that no one calls out is why we lose 

 thats word games. we all know ppl will do what is expedient or what they start out doing etc not choose for real reason like privacy. there is no reason to ignore this while promoting such a facile approach unless you have some desire to have insight or control into the data that traverses your server.

lemme make this easy. I have been telling sysadmins, dba, and all othe minders of the SLAs for decades. The data is not yours. dont look at it. dont munge it, dont process it, dont friggin mess with it.

This is why sysadmins and service providers have been bottom of tech totem from the beginning. Them, sales and desktop support. Because when they get a chance they pull the data grab and sniff. They are like data perverts.

Leave the data alone. is not urs. why do you want to see it perv? 

 and all you have to do is draw out a diagram of the network to see. the creator even says they are a centralization risk but was best could do. design needs improving. no reason the whole thing plain text anyway. federated and encrypted would have been the way out of the gate if privacy was really the aim.

whatever this is, it was not built for privacy.