Oddbean new post about login | logout 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.
😂 tombstone? And you thought my names were bad lol
I didn't invent the name, it's been suggested before
it's been around for a long time, apache cassandra is the first mention in this wikipedia article, circa 2011 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tombstone_(data_store)
There is no such thing as “delete purism” unless the data only existed on your local drive. And even then 🤔… nostr:note134w9drtptqyl75q4mvz5fqf35jc7ak5f4v7379tnwuqvrr3rxx3swrpdyz
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.
Yes, if you assume clients don’t store notes long term, then it comes down to relay choice.
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
