Oddbean

I’ve seen so many people say they won’t use Nostr because we don’t support delete. This is really frustrating, because Nostr DOES support delete, it’s right there in the NIP’s! We’ve got delete in @nos.social, but most apps don’t expose the functionality to users because they either don’t like the idea of delete or can’t be sure that something is 100% deleted. That misses the point, delete is as much about social signaling as it is about getting rid of the content. Here’s my argument for how we should think about and support delete in nostr. In case your client doesn’t support long form content, here’s the njump link: https://njump.me/naddr1qq2ksje3g9trxujpxymyxjjlg5ckjmmrtguyxq3qpu3vqm4vzqpxsnhuc684dp2qaq6z69sf65yte4p39spcucv5lzmqxpqqqp65wk06e7u nostr:note1hldm4z430w76dn2ywzwjnafytnvyt7gsg6nhk3l8a3x8utzl88asl06u8m

Playing the devils advocate here for a min - but if the user cares so much for “feel-good deletion”, why not use a client that supports that and let other clients do as they please? “You can delete on nos.social!” 😂

I've come around to this position. For a long time I was a delete purist, but I agree it's important to be able to delete. A term like "tombstone" captures the intention better I think, since it's possible to prove a person said something and also that they retracted it. Relays and clients should respect delete, but also communicate to users what the limits actually are.

it is a core principle of signals intelligence that once the message goes over an untrusted channel it is likely captured but that still doesn't stop people from respecting this anyhow it's one of the benefits of a network protocol like LN, it isn't broadcast so the chances of a delete request being respected are higher at being successful on such a channel, the majority of channel rebalances are discarded after they are no longer able to be applied

Rabble and co are doing a job in convincing me as well. I like the term retract. Allow me to challenge. A unique characteristic about nostr relative to twitter is that the note lives on in one or more relays, and local client databases. So if a note has been published across various machines, and we are optimizing for user choice, should the nostr user on the receiving end of the note have the option of honoring (or not) deletion requests?

I think that’s what occurs, @rabble correct me if I’m wrong. @elsat I’ve used the delete feature on @nos.social and it’s worded in such a way that the relay owners are being asked to delete the note. Based on the current wording, it doesn’t sound like nos is promising (nor would It make sense that they could promise) the relays will actually delete it. To that end though, I think it’d be cool if there were a way to let the requestor know which relays didn’t choose to delete as requested. It would help the requestor determine if they want to continue to use that relay or not; keenly if it’s one they pay into.

See my analogy to being "live on TV". Nostr is a decentralized broadcast network, you can't reliably delete things, no barrage of NIPs will change this. nostr:note1uta8dt0xdt8hezpmh5lvm6nw4uh8qj42x9qtxnp3zd6xesefx2cqtt4nd4

Rabbleが「みんなNostrは削除できないから使わないって言ってる！NostrのNIPには削除がちゃんとあるし、削除はできるんのに！でもいくつかのアプリは削除のアイディアを好まない、あるいはどこまで削除できているかわからないという理由から削除機能自体をオミットしている！しかし削除はコンテンツの除去くらい重要な社会的シグナルだ(あとは長文を読んでね！)」的な投稿をしている。後で長文読むか。 nostr:nevent1qqs0r45n9apjnu6m7x2xnkx0wrn8emtu04hhtuvsc3rnw97z7wf2jwqppemhxue69uhkummn9ekx7mp0qgs8d3c64cayj8canmky0jap0c3fekjpzwsthdhx4cthd4my8c5u47srqsqqqqqp79t3g3

Last year i made a quip on nostr that was in poor taste, I thought it was funny but it offended some people who I respect. So I apologized and deleted it, but I had to use blastr to get the delete event out there because my original note had been blasted out by other people. If I hadn’t been able to delete the original note then people would find it long after and they probably wouldn’t see the retraction or apology.

I kinda like the idea of deleting tbh. But the other side of the argument is: in your case there is the argument that you could have just replied to your own post with the apology, making it a thread. People would be able to see the "offense" as well as the apology and judge for themselves if it is warranted or not. Where if you had deleted it, people who didn't see the original would only see your apology and have to take your word instead of judging for themselves. But again, I see how prospect users can be turned off by it.

There is ALWAYS FREEDOM to change REVISE a VIEWPONT of published in subsequent note - (leaving aside typo errors) but just like "word spoken out of mouth cannot retracted back" short works the same way. no one can guarantee that someone didnot grab screenshot what u said/posted before in decentralized mesh. just somewhat wayback web machine archive old webpage.

I’m a pretty strong believer in the right to be forgotten online from a privacy and safety pov. The only argument I’ve heard to counter is that a delete function could put someone’s freedom of speech at risk, negating the point of nostr. I don’t really see how that’s possible though because the danger would mostly (in this case) come from relays censoring, not the individual, which is possible in the current state of things (I think). If relays stop hosting your content to save money in the long term, won’t you be deleted eventually, as well? Having a “request to delete” button is fine in most cases, even if people understand some relays may not comply. You are still lowering your digital footprint if a stalker gets out of control etc.

I use delete on Amethyst and Snort from time to time if I make a typo and it's only been a few seconds. I quickly delete and hope no one interacts with it before relays get the delete request. If not all clients and relays support delete then it's really hard to delete things.

Copying my thoughts here from NIP669 on GitHub…….. I do agree it will need to be addressed. Until it is available, some people will just not understand or want to use Nostr. Perhaps that is _ok_ but I do believe that Nostr will be better with a more diverse user base and supporting deletions or edits isn't sinking to the lowest common denominator. I believe it would be valualeble for everyone. I agree with your thoughts, and think they are better than these other ideas I present as well but I did want to share some more options. **Expiration Option on Notes** It could perhaps be possible to have an option of notes having an expiration time. This wouldn’t necessarily allow for deletion but if someone is generally more interested in removing their discourse history than preserving it they could choose to post a note for only 1 Month etc. All relays would know upfront of when it will be deleted or it just wouldn’t have it. In the future, it could be implemented that you could remove the expiration of a note if you found it was important to keep up. The downside is perhaps a relay wouldn’t get the memo to not delete but at least most relays would. In this scenario, there is nothing stopping someone from setting up a bot to scrape and save all notes with an expiration time so they can effectively nullify the expiration in the public’s view but this issue is also possible on any other social media platform with public profiles. **Un-Post a Note** The issue I see with this is it is ultimately up to the relay and/or operator to respect the request to delete or tombstone. An operator could always modify the relay to not follow protocol. I have this other idea, which may be flawed but perhaps viable. What if nostr didn't actually purge the data and instead returned the event along with the additional tombstone classification? A user could “un-post” a note (not delete). This would then be interpreted by clients and presented to the user as something like _“Un-posted note is struck from record at request of poster. For posterity, click to reveal original note._”

I am sympathetic to deleting notes, but personally I'd much prefer a way to Edit them. That is only available for the first 15 min or so, and where edits are public. 90% of the notes that I wanted to delete were bc of typos or bc I forgot to say something. Somehow my IQ increases right after I press the post button and I spot a bunch of errors that I didn't when proof reading the post...

This should be done by issuing a new note which says it is a new revision of the previous one. Clients can then make the link and show the most recent version (as well as potentially the old one or what changed).

Delete works fine. If a relay doesn't respect it, eventually it would become an unpopular relay. If people think/thought there weren't copies of their deleted tweets somewhere, they were kidding themselves