Oddbean new post about login | logout Gm Nostriches 🪶 Elon Musk is bending to Brazil’s censorship demands. Pavel Durov is bending to French government. Freedom of expression is being compromised by illegal authoritarian governments’ holding these CEOs and their assets hostage. Can relay operators be similarly coerced? What are the choke points in the Nostr protocol? Does the BITCOIN IS SPEECH argument help in protecting freedom of expression on Nostr? #asknostr #freedomofexpression #bitcoinisspeech #grownostr
Inquiring minds would like to know
@fiatjaf, any insight?
For example, how much headway has been made in the way of censorship resistance, as you’ve noted in your article back in March, @fiatjaf? https://fiatjaf.com/87a208d9.html
#Nostr has no CEO. No one can bend om behalf of Nostr. CEOs had massive power and and they have learned that this power has strings. Users hopefully will finally understand that creating your own notes, signing them with your own keys and posting them to your own servers is the ultimate win. But with the first two, you win massively using relays either way. Slowly then suddenly. The weak point if any is the relays. We need to keep building to bring the cost of running a relay so low that anyone can do it, if approached, anyone can quit or exit and everyone else will be just fine. I am still very bullish on Nostr.
The first 2 points put the data in control of the user. A relay has little power to censor you, they have no ability to ban or block you in any meaningful way, no way of stopping you from seeing content outside of their relay, and their relay is a tiny fraction of #Nostr.
Yes, relay operators can be coerced.
Thanks for the reply, Fiatjaf. I’m somewhat new in this space so I’m trying to figure out some of the mechanics. Indulge me - if you will - few more curiosities: If users flock to popular relays to achieve maximal reach, and operators can be coerced, then doesn’t that obfuscate decentralization? I’m finding that relay discovery is a barrier of entry to Nostr from a user perspective (not a dev, if that wasn’t already obvious). Do you have any suggestions for us plebs who want to filter relays by area of interest?
Users don't need to flock to popular relays to achieve maximal reach, they just need their followers to follow them on whatever relays they publish to. This is how it's supposed to work: https://how-nostr-works.pages.dev/#/outbox
How do I make my followers use the same relays I publish to
is there a guide for this
Yes, it's in the link above, click on the button that says "guide".
I got hit with the old “GFY mobile user” text “browsing on the phone is absurd and this website must be viewed on a desktop. thank you.”
You must buy a computer.
Switch to desktop view on your browser
didn’t work ): unless I clicked on wrong thing https://i.nostr.build/gQbpKNdIBcRBhVD4.png
It is a window size thing. I get that if I shrink the desktop browser.
no, that's exactly what the outbox model is, and the clients your followers use need to use it; that's why we insist on its importance so much; it (or something like it) is the only way nostr can become decentralized
thanks Pablo 🤝 @elsat feature request fren
https://github.com/nostrability/nostrability/issues/69
issue #69 ? yeah, this one’s gonna do numbers
Nostr needs from you outbox #nostrability memes sleepy. Objective is (to motivate and/or shame devs ) to implement outbox
Who’s the creator of outbox ? making a meme rn
Nvm I just remembered it was my boy @Mike Dilger
I find crowbars work nicely. Slap it against the palm of your hand a few times. They will get the point. More seriously now, I recently rewrote my webpage on this: https://mikedilger.com/gossip-model/
I appreciate the visualization. (FYI - At first I got the same "view on desktop" note as @sersleepy (on a laptop). Zooming out fixed this.) Thanks for this. I've found Nostrudle works nicely for discovering user inbox/outbox relays. Haven't been able to see other user's relay info on the mobile clients (Damus, Primal), which is where sharing them to your followers would come into play. I guess growing one's reach is better done using traditional/centralized channels for communication for now. However, I can see how the outbox model can give you more control over the content you are seeing, if you only connect to paid relays, for instance, you will the proof of work takes care of spam users.
We don't have many relays with filtered content yet, today all relays are all more or less the same mess, but if you are into cats here is something for you: nostr:nevent1qqstdeudu2kfw55eueeyzmcq9tng76wpr32s7xtxhvwk84udwrgztaqpzpmhxue69uhkztnwdaejumr0dshsz8thwden5te0vfhhxarj9e3xjarrda5kuarcda4k7tnrdakj7qgwwaehxw309ahx7uewd3hkctcm0sz6j You can use https://nostrrr.com/relay/catstrr.swarmstr.com to browse.
There certainly is beauty in the mess. This all positive to me! And Catstrr should age well: cats-only relay the first of its kind to filter by content Geniuses at work. nostr:note1qqqd666ml4cgqjnykk9fytrsmkaju9k0ckw64d3cykk4emt8d2psgqdzxv
Therefore it might is just important to connecto to relays from different continents and countries.
Nostr is not resistant to government censorship, only corporate censorship, which is a lot of the ongoing online censorship, so that already makes the project important. To maximize resistance to corporate censorship, however, we need, ideally, free relays which free speech policies that do not censor what they do not need to, so as to maximize freedom of speech. Relays can remove anything. I think, ideally, we should have relays run by non-profit organizations with freedom of speech as a goal.
