Oddbean new post about login | logout I am now a strong advocate that all free relays should delete all non-metadata content (not kind 0, 3 and 10002) after 90 days. Most users not only seem fine with it but don't really care about saving their notes at all. They are here for the moment and not to build a database of posts they can look back on. Those who are here to build content are already paying for relays. Then all free relays should offer a paid option that simply keeps all posts for as long as the user pays. Relays can use the NOTIFY spec to warn users they are about to delete some of their stuff. https://github.com/nostr-protocol/nips/pull/901
I’m not a tech person but this seems reasonable. I would pay like 1000 sats a week to preserve my feed. If I had granular control that would be even better.
Need to rework my relays a bit. I'll put it on the back burner for too long.
Any plans?
Yeah, I would like to ditch Nostream and figure out how to do a paid relay on stirfry i also want to levrage my nostrcheck server more. The noster check server has APIs for user registration and NIP-05 and I'd like to unify that a little bit more so people can actually Register as a user of the server and maybe pay for retention if they want to. And make the Nip-05 section of my services a little less clunky. Basically I just want to unify all the shit that I host so it becomes a more seamless service.
What's the most robust and actively developed relay I can run on a proxmox VM with something like Docker Compose?
90 days seems too quick to me. A year could be too long too. Maybe 6 months? I have kind 1 and kind 30023 that I want to exist forever, but I also have paid relays and my own for those.
Yeah, 30023s are valuable
Authors of 30023 already pay for their relays because they know their post can just disappear if they don't.
Ah, but they don't if they're approaching habla the same way they would medium. You would assume your publishing platform keeps your content for you. But I am coming around to NOTIFY.
Agree, we need to work on that assumption. Updated UIs, NOTIFY and DMs can be helpful.
I probably not not fine with it. I have built my gallery so that I can go get my notes anytime I want repost them. I take time selecting pics and texts Even my own photographes, my paintings, my writing and feelings I share here in a moment that I do not which to loose. How can I keep my data? I am here less than a year, I don't mind paying but I am not sure I have enough sats....
This is just suggestions for now. Check out cellar.nostr.wine though if you're concerned about losing your notes 😊
This is a very good recommendation: relays where you can pay for long-term storage If you’re technically literate/advanced, you could also run a private relay and ensure all of your posts are sent there.
Let the relay runner decide how to handle it. Whether 30 days, 90 days or never, the runner should decide how they handle it, paid or otherwise. I like the notify idea.
Nah, just delete whenever you care/need to, doesn't have to all be a business and push pressure on people to pay especially at this point in our growth (or lack thereof)
I believe that lack of long term support for relays is damaging Nostr more than helping. Relays that subsidize the network for free are just damaging growth opportunities. But the most important part is that users don't really expect their posts to be saved much more than 90 days. If that is the case, I do think we should meet users where they are at and simplify operations.
Doing more stupid things like that will hinder growth even more.
growth based on subsidized infrastructure is not growth.
False. How come Mastodon and the fediverse continues to grow and Nostr can't grow? Better design decision and User Experience
Go make a startup and spend all your investor's money in subsidizing the product to see what happens.
For some weird reason, Mastodon and the Fediverse continues to grow. New instances appear all the time without caring about money. Many do it for free! Amazing isn't it? No incentive whatsoever except to shitpost.
So, you like comunism. Fine. Do it for free.
I think thats growing based on name recognition, network effect and desire to get away from the big platforms. But when users realize that the operators of an instance can rug them, they'll be looking around for the next thing again.
OK, again....Mastodon and the Fediverse continue to grow in instances and users and provides a better user experience. What does Nostr have to offer? What good is owning your npub is everything sucks?
I'm here to see the cathedral get built and interact with the builders as they do it. Nsecs and relays seem like the much better approach compared to activitypub
You are right! If Nostr wants to kick ass, do Nsecs and relays but everything else like Mastodon/Pleroma Then, Nostr can be taken seriously . Alex Gleason is doing this now for Nostr with Ditto/Soapbox and it's beautiful.
How many users Mastadon has ?
It's probably difficult to count because of all the instance blocking going on but here are the numbers: 1 Million Daily Active Users https://mastodon-analytics.com/
We also can't keep saying we are too early. Been 3 years? https://s3.poster.place/poster-media/c37c67a8682501e16cbd8bf6e9b9a80da15734e62a8ac0d41b5c351aa86db368.png
i want to agree with you but the history of the internet disagrees
Only if you only count the successful stories. :)
What about saving bookmarked events? Typically the only things people care to go back to are things they've intentionally saved. Otherwise it can be treated as ephemeral data, sort of like a group chat. People aren't usually rereading group chat convos from months ago.
Delete as well. It became very clear to me in the past 2 days that if people care about saving their content, they are alredy paying for long term storage.
I pay for long term storage on satellite.earth is there a way to make eazer to post on amethyst? About the relays I use citrine isn't that good enough? Paying for relays should be something like twitter bluecheck people should see understand the process and it's benefits. Here on nostr the problem of making a long database is that you can't even find the past notes easily like on Twitter for example, but if that could be found easily people should see more value on it.
Satellite might be using LTS based upon a relay. Maybe you could find out which one it is and add it to your Amethyst settings. Citrine is fine for backup. Use nos.today for searching. They've got elasticsearch running and it finds everything findable.
Nice I use https://noogle.lol/ you can do an advanced search putting the npub and a specific date so you can find your own post you made a year ago for example, it would be great to have this on Amethyst and other clients. https://image.nostr.build/441d399c829fa8d281efa1129115939d8dc3e9b7ccf9fcae38ce32b36416e432.jpg
There's no point in doing this. I'll only delete events when I physically can't store new ones anymore.
This is most-interesting for the really big relays, like damus, mom, lol, etc. And every relay operator can decide for themselves.
I can agee with this. No need to collect date forever. Just push it and let it go after awhile. Some of the long form, maybe less so. But most posts aren't needed a month from now.
Absolutely.. if and when I want my notes stored in perpetuity , I will be careful enough to install my own relay .. If not , there is no point collecting the garbage .. in fact , everyone must be mandated to remove garbage .. A free public relay should store data for say 30 days .. a paid relay for 90 days .. and a personal relay for as long as you want .. The 90 days limit even on paid ones ensures that the storage price is lowest possible .. so that people really don't mind shelling out say ten sats per message to keep it around for 90 days .. It will clean the system up .. makes the the micro- commerce a habit and incentivize people to offer more small paid relays .. and also to self host ..
Wow. Nostr is further away from a wide and professional use case than I thought :/
You have no idea. Competition killing it
I don't know, I'm someone who does something to last. Now, I'm willing to pay for it lasting. But Nostr - although I love the ideal - is not exactly a bee hive of a creative trusted network at this point. So, early payment with little value in return is ... it's a risky approach. Naturally as a value content creator you wanna go back to your note of 3 years ago and repost or assess what changed. Unless you shitpost which is good for five minutes and has fiat money kind of appeal.
Should other npubs be able to finance the storage of notes from other npubs?
Sure, in theory operators can just allow anyone to pay the invoive for other people.
True. I was thinking of when someone quoted or broadcasted notes. If that ought (or maybe already does) bring along a backup of the original note.
That puts the note on more relays.
That is not always the case. Many times clients just create a new note with an nostr:nevent1qqs... reference, meaning the quoted reply note can survive whatever its replying to. You see this in action when you see a note with a quote reply and it's content is: "This note is not available on any of your relays"
Evolution nostr:nevent1qqs0zv757suya06a82zmhjj2328mdn5vxw4kymw3g9mc3rv36g7xd4gppemhxue69uhkummn9ekx7mp0qgsyvrp9u6p0mfur9dfdru3d853tx9mdjuhkphxuxgfwmryja7zsvhqrqsqqqqqpu7c8k9
deleting notes is good OPSEC. notes should be 48 hrs max.
An interesting idea, but how would you get the many different clients to respect that?
Don't need to. Just write a script for it.
But how would you even know if other clients were respecting it. I discovered purely by accident that some clients let you see who's zapping who, while most clients don't. In that scenario, how you you write a script for what you can't see. Unless you watched every client out there?
It's the relays that have to respect it, not the clients.
But couldn't some clients be written to ignore the requests? I remember that happened with usenet. There was a client called News Post that was specifically written to ignore cancel requests. It was also written to ignore moderation requests. What would stop someone doing the equivalent?
After this post, and the discussion yesterday, it would be nice to have some sort up to date documentation on running a relay and what is available. I am toying with the idea, but I haven't found to much info...there are a gazillion github projects our there, I wouldn't know what to use or not.
Good luck with that.
notes purge i'll bring fuel to the fire https://m.primal.net/JtxH.gif
How can I build my own relay and store my own notes?
Im using Umbrel and a raspberry, you can use the Nostr-relay app from the umbrel store to backup your activity.
I’m using the same set up. I’ll take a look and see. What are your thoughts on the Umbrella Home? https://umbrel.com/umbrel-home
nostr:nprofile1qqs9df4h2deu3aae83fmet5xmrlm4w5l9gdnsy3q2n7dklem7ezmwfcpz3mhxue69uhhyetvv9ujuerpd46hxtnfduq5xamn8ghj7dnvv45xs7tywde8g6rpvakkjuekw46nvar4vdhxgan6wumkxatzwpckk6rk0puhjdm2da5k7ce5x4kkkumjx3jkzepwdahxjmmwqyt8wumn8ghj7un9d3shjtnwdaehgu3wd9hxvmckqw0xz is great
noStrudel is available as a service with Start9.
Agreed. Users of free relays could repost notes they want to restart the timer for.
Would this work nostr:nprofile1qqsyvrp9u6p0mfur9dfdru3d853tx9mdjuhkphxuxgfwmryja7zsvhqpzamhxue69uhhv6t5daezumn0wd68yvfwvdhk6tcpz9mhxue69uhkummnw3ezuamfdejj7qgwwaehxw309ahx7uewd3hkctcscpyug ?
I think without the ability to do that you’d see a lot of people copy an old post they want to keep up and paste it into a new post, which is annoying UX.
Why would we not leave this up to the relays? I think deleting makes sense but what if my relay wants to subsidize more storage to pick up more users?
But I am leaving to them. I am just advocating for it. They decide whatever they want to do. My job is to make sure the relay network is sustainable. We have seen too many operators going away in the past year. We are going to lose them all if we don't offer better incentives. Subsidizing works for a while but it comes to byte you in the ass when you need resources.
Why have relay operators left? I run 2 open relays and the cost is roughly zero.
easy to run relays when no one uses them. When people start using, your cost become exponential
I don't understand what increases with usage? CPU? Memory? Disk space? At the scale of nostr, it all seems pretty easy to handle. And why have relay operators left? Solely due to hosting costs? Admin time overhead? Are there any real surveys on the reasons relay operators exit nostr? I run relays/servers for various networks and average around 500 Mbps on the connection. I have unlimited 1Gbps xfer for the cost of the rack. What would it take run a really busy nostr relay? What is a really busy nostr relay in terms of hardware and bandwidth utilization?
lol. I remember when the rage was no deleted posts on nostr, and now that’s turned into nostr auto deletes your posts!
2024 only zap moment
I never got the anti-delete people. We'd end up melting the glaciers to save our GM notes, posts we accidently made 5 times in a row, and smiley reactions from 10 years in the past.
Well, now you’ve got the auto delete people.
Not only don't care, I'd be happy to know my old stuff was nuked. I could meme and overshare it all again. Send nukes.
Lots of people told me that.
Maybe if there was some saving feature for exceptions? Would that be doable? Many people share really valid thoughts and information. But most of us shitposters can blow it up I guess.
Honestly me too. I never go back and look at my old posts. Maybe relays could request a fee to continuing to store data beyond X number of days/weeks?
You can connect to your Umbrel node trough Nostr Relay and save all your interactions, posts, etc.https://m.primal.net/JuAU.jpg
Just a little concerned about the inability to distinguish true history. We may end up having no way to know what really happened in the past. nostr:nevent1qqs0zv757suya06a82zmhjj2328mdn5vxw4kymw3g9mc3rv36g7xd4gpz9mhxue69uhkummnw3ezuamfdejj7q3qgcxzte5zlkncx26j68ez60fzkvtkm9e0vrwdcvsjakxf9mu9qewqxpqqqqqqztu7vqd
I'm down with that. I might be in the minority but I like the ephemeral nature of Nostr. Makes interactions feel more special.
I can get behind this. If you want to save your data, pay for it or host your own relay.
Would also be great if more clients provided some recommendations on paid relays to choose.
you're doing that on your relay?
No, my relay is just for me. That's why I pay for it :)
What do folks think about layered approach where say the most recent 30-90 days is readily available but longer than that is archived and available on demand?
I think a compromise would be to delete notes that receive no interaction or have a 30 day delete timer that resets every time the note receives interaction. I'm not a node operator but I'd bet 90% of their data is notes no one ever sees again.
This sounds reasonable, but the 30 days are a bit harsh. (at least to start with)
That's mostly how Mastodon servers handle it. You post and post and post, but the oldest stuff starts going away. I think the only instances that keep anything forever are the ones like mastodon.social that's bankrolled by the millionaire who created it
I vote to keep the notes forever as that's a selling point for nostr, does anyone know how many kB the average note takes up?
Why would I want my past posts deleted? Every post has potential of getting zapped in the future. Every little zap counts even if it's one Satoshi. How are people gonna make money if their past posts get deleted. I might find an old post I like and zap it. I'm going to have to setup my own relay as it seems like lately the talk of relays going away. I'm still trying to understand relays. It doesn't make sense to me. The relay settings are confusing and I'm not sure what I am supposed to do. I remember receiving a pop-up from the nostr . wine relay asking me to pay and it thought it was spam. Nostr takes time to learn. We need a system where we can download our data and move relays. The relay websites also don't explain what we are paying for. Nostr is overwhelming to learn. We need time.
Running a relay costs money, time, server power & lots of HD space. As more users use your relay it becomes almost a full-time job. It looks like the relays will end up on the same path as image hosting websites. This is why I bought my own image hosting software "chevereto" and I am hosting my own images because I figure the nostr image hosting websites will end up on the same path as the original image hosting websites decades ago. They all went bankrupt and all the images I uploaded on their websites went bye. I'm not sure if I'm up to the task of setting up my own relay. That's some advanced cli linux docker stuff. It will be sad when relays start disappearing because there is also no way to export/import our notes to a new relay. Read the note at the very bottom. The idea that is passed on to relay operators is that they should purge old notes due to the fact that HD space is limited once the relay starts to become popular and used by many. The issue with deleting previous notes and only keeping a months worth of notes is that your previous notes could be missing out on getting zapped. Every Satoshi counts! Paying for a relay is a good option. The only issue is understanding how paid relays work. nostr:nevent1qqs0zv757suya06a82zmhjj2328mdn5vxw4kymw3g9mc3rv36g7xd4gprpmhxue69uhkummnw3ezuendwsh8w6t69e3xj730qgsyvrp9u6p0mfur9dfdru3d853tx9mdjuhkphxuxgfwmryja7zsvhqrqsqqqqqp7axg52 #cheverto #imagehosting #relays
Building a database for eternity is dystopian.
except for blockchain right? ;p
Gottem
There is a difference between a social network and its content, and the Bitcoin blockchain. Few 👈
💯
I wish my notes would always be deleted after 90 days.
Might even pay for it xD
Exactly!!
We have a spec for note expiration. Relays might already follow it - it's just missing in clients right now (afaik only NOS Social has it).
Expiration is different. The note expires for all relays. It doesn't allow you to send an expiring note now and later revert it back to non expiring when you move your notes from a free relay to a longer term storage.
how would you enforce all paid relays doing anything? Cant anyone just spin up a free relay if they went and run it how they like ?
That's why I said advocate. It's not an enforcement issue. :)
the better solution seems to add toggle UI to each client that adds when the users is okay with notes deleting
If you don't pay for your own storage, you don't get to decide when your notes will be deleted. Thats the relay operator's decision. So, with free relays, it's not really up to users to be ok with it or not.
I thought NOSTR was about freedom. Sounds like a whole lot of control you're imposing here. I respect that server space cost money and am actively thinking about scaling this protocol to over a billion people but your idea of how it operate is very controlling.
some notes should never die. have you seen that "save the devs" video? its timeless and nostr users 100+years from now would still zap that, whereas random thought notes could easily die. When I used Snort, I loved deleting my old notes or when I over shared. Now on primal, there's no option. adding a slider to notify the relay that this is a banger or an engagement metric along with a uniform request to delete button across all clients would free up tons of relay space.
I’m pro deleting what I want and keeping the rest in perpetuity (even if for a one time transaction fee). Or paying for the ability to permanently delete.
there is should have a option in the moment of the post
Which client are you using?
Sorry I think you’re referring to the proposed spec, right?
yes. like if you want a eternal post you pay with sats but the post stay for eternity
That’s fair. Haven’t read the spec but as an end-user I’d like simple toggles/options for each post. Nothing selected means post auto deletes in 90 days. But if I go in and select to make it a permanent/eternal post I’d pay fee. If I made a mistake and want to delete immediately I would (maybe) also pay. Not sure about this one though, seems like a good way to maintain the current way to make sure you don’t post junk just to do so.
This is insanity. Guess I'll take it as a warning to back up everything I can from my npub as soon as possible.
I understand this from a sustainability perspective, but hard to imagine looking back at some asknostr questions and possibly only seeing my OP with no comments anymore as the relays aren’t persisting the useful replies. I can run a private relay to backup my own notes but it can’t ensure I see related notes
Your relay can also backup notes from everybody else you care about. It doesn't need to host only yours. So, if you want to keep your friends messages, just save them :)
why? I don't understand this; is this is a way to try to create a market for paid relays??
Or just to make sure free relays survive. So many relay operators have given up that we have to change expectations of what "free" gets you.
How about a NIP to allow for note deletion from your account? I'd love to see that soon (and I'm too stupid to even code, as I found out the hard way).
I disagree and have strong arguments against. First, I'm building an empire of notes, a castle. Second, deletion should be an option. Perhaps one should pay to select posts to delete after a time. In the most difficult POV, I believe from experience that it is the ordinary layperson civilian who talks for the sake of talking without anything constructive over a lifespan. And so on.
If you a building a castle of notes, don't use free relays. Your messages are already been deleted. You just know which ones. Don't make a castle in someone's else property.
Right, good major point, I understand that. a) I have been using at least one popular paid relay. But it "sucks" if I have to keep paying over a lifetime to keep the notes there. b) My main point is the power given to an entity upon creation of a secure private key used as nsec: Such an entity, especially if additionally running a BTC node (which economically empowers Nostr protocol by orders of magnitude), should have the ability to FOREVER save notes timestamped to that private key, for example when saving to one's own local relay. The notes can/should be hash-timestamped onto the bitcoin blockchain as example. I know that practically certain mentioned concepts are seperate but they can be interweaved. If I back up each Nostr note to my own local private relay, and each note is hash-timestamped on "a" blockchain, then my castle of notes should maintain its construction. It should be possible to selectively see the presence of such notes in any relay that is built to accept them in the future, at any point. I don't want to be constantly talking and repeating myself online, even though that is what many algorithms value at the moment. That is the straling and manipulation of attention, perhaps one of the most valuable human assets. I want to state things once and that's it. After that the algorithm will see that I have stated something in a note and that is all I need as a service. Perhaps such relays need to be built. These would be the "decentralized empire organizations" of some sort, as they would contain the castles of the empire. The notes should be undeleteable as long as they are bound to the nsec through hashes timestamped on a DLT (ie blockchain or hashgraph etc, ideally on bitcoin). I have a need to know how to make this work so I'm ready for continued discussion. nostr:nprofile1qqs04xzt6ldm9qhs0ctw0t58kf4z57umjzmjg6jywu0seadwtqqc75spzpmhxue69uhnzdps9enrw73wd9hszynhwden5te0wp6hyurvv4cxzeewv4eszynhwden5te0wfjkccte9enrw73wd9hsxv8qkt
Expiring unpaid notes is a great idea, but it's such a big departure from what social media users expect ("wait, I can't even search my old notes? they're 'gone' gone?").
We need to get folks thinking of paid vs. unpaid as a first class component of each & every service, not as an attribute of an entire service by itself (nothing is unpaid, there is no such thing as a free lunch).
nostr:nevent1qqs0zv757suya06a82zmhjj2328mdn5vxw4kymw3g9mc3rv36g7xd4gpz9mhxue69uhkummnw3ezuamfdejj7q3qgcxzte5zlkncx26j68ez60fzkvtkm9e0vrwdcvsjakxf9mu9qewqxpqqqqqqztu7vqd Recent notes could be freely accessible and older long tail content could be accessible behind a paywall which can be unlocked by users. This is the most natural form of incentives, if users want the long tail content they should be paying for it. I imagine simple relays on VPS that freely offer recent content and pull older content from Home Server Relays upon request (start9 / Umbrel). When older content is requested it stays cached on the public Relays.