Hello Phill from Marketing. There are several misunderstandings here. First, the term "gossip" in this discussion comes from the name of my nostr client, the "gossip" client, which I named inadvertently in collission with a term of art that I was unaware of. We are not talking about a gossip protocol.  Also, relays don't relay notes around (at least, not within the nostr protocol they don't).

The gossip client, from day 1, tried to figure out where you post your notes to (if you were followed). Then it would go to that relay to get your notes, since the user of the gossip client was trying to follow you.  The idea is simple:  follow people.  Let the software figure out where.  That was later named the "gossip model" because of the name of my client.

If I posted to chorus.mikedilger.com, nobody using damus would ever see that note because nobody using damus types in that obscure relay. But under the NIP-65 scheme, clients that implement the outbox model (a subset of the gossip model) would look up my relay list, find out that I post on chorus.mikedilger.com, and get my notes from there.  Only my notes, mind you. No reason to get spammers notes (unless the spammer was followed).