One solution to this is to only read replies from "safe" relays.

We don't have enough safe relays.

The meaning of safe can vary from person to person, but we need more alternatives. For example, micro-relays intended to be used by groups such that they will automatically ban people who have been muted or reported by other members of the same group.

We also need clients that take an instance on deciding where to read replies from, instead of the weird behavior of some of the existing outbox-capable clients that try to "fetch all replies possible and imaginable to any note" (but I'm sure this kind of behavior is also desirable by some, that's why we need different options or toggles).

nostr:nevent1qyfhwumn8ghj7mmxve3ksctfdch8qatz9uq36amnwvaz7tmwdaehgu3wd46hg6tw09mkzmrvv46zucm0d5hsz9mhwden5te0wfjkccte9ec8y6tdv9kzumn9wshsqgqrg37lhtmdfr96ej7xhlqkhhsdg9k49pcq0fd9aqvhhpx600h2cujg82na


Some words must be banned so that the clients refuse to publish them (rendering the posting button disabled once they are typed) or refuse to get the replies containing them.


Women are fragile beings, they were not born to fight for freedom


Those relays cannot be using Cloudflare, Amazon Web Services or one other service (a Hebrew-sounding name I forgot off the top of my head). That's why Nostr had already been censored.


wss://relay.poster.place is open to all
No cloudflare
Self-hosted


I already have that as one of my relays. :P


anything to do with group collective ban is BAD idea
reporting n marking is fine - MUTE n BLOCK should only be at USE LEVEL not at any other relay or collective level
relay admin FILTER it anyway


You can’t ban at the protocol level, which is the great feature of nostr. Clients and relays can cater to customers however they want, which is the free market approach


Do you even realize what are you reacting to?
Nunya reacted thoughtlessly to a hoax from a feminist (Marie). He fell for it.
Now you're talking about fragmenting the network even more than it already is by turning relays into servers (yes, they can't be called relays anymore in this case).

This is not what "dumb relays" means. This is not Nostr anymore. Thanks for having created it, but dude, you're destroying it.


that's beauty  core feature openness - relay admin has right block/filter/rate-limit whatever they think is harmful/illegal/DOSing-resources


if anyone think npub is BLOCKED by particular admin bc of political or technicall BIAS - just do ur own relay or move onto another relay so simple


When do we put a global algorithm for Nostr moderation ???


Never. Too many self declared moderators and snitchbots already


Twitter and Mastodon fags are ruining nostr

They should go back to their safe places


I know you understood it but maybe others don't, there should be a magic function of a client to declare the post as irony 😅


Came across a handful from there that I actually dont mind (have acct there as well), but a lot a the douche baggery does seem to be more and more. The mostr bridge idea was interesting, but not panning out so well


When it works, you should see a lot of based posts from the fediverse besides all the trannies.


Onion only relays. They're too lazy to figure that out.


Why not ??? It is a super good idea to connect with more people and more different platforms bro


nostr:npub1vwymuey3u7mf860ndrkw3r7dz30s0srg6tqmhtjzg7umtm6rn5eq2qzugd should issue an apology for that post based on lies, but he won't.
And nostr:npub180cvv07tjdrrgpa0j7j7tmnyl2yr6yr7l8j4s3evf6u64th6gkwsyjh6w6 has been slowly destroying his creation for a long time already (the Thought Police NIP is from last year), so we better start thinking of something better, something even more decentralized.


Oh my mistake. I only saw your post. Didnt realize it was in response to mr safe relays here.😔

These mofos trying to twitterize this place hardcore. Wtf man


Yea yea you me🍻


Wait so AM is the good guy or bad guy?


Good. Sarcasm.


Im just a raccoon bro 🦝


Hard to tell on here with all the safe speech and soylets


The great thing about Nostr is that even people asking for censorship at Nostr can express their opinions without being censored


A good Racoon, right?


Always seemed solid to me. Think he fuckin with the dude


It depends on who looks at it... from my view: a good raccoon


So fiatjeff basically wants nostr to be like Twitter and be safe?


I will always have the possibility of having my own relay and I am sure that not everyone will support this decision, not connecting to this type of relay should be enough, it just depends on me… This is Nostr


Regardless of censorship, Relay operators will soon realize that administrative controls necessary and this open free 4 all is terrible technology wise.


Pay to play. Like a buck to post as much as you want.


People freaked out and ledt when gab wanted to charge $5 a month for uploads


No.

Just ignore/mute what you don't like to see and move on. Simple.


Just clear ideas


Free market fixes this


Lol

Are you serious? I am talking about the software for relays and how bad it is currently. Terrible design decisions were made.

Ditto will come doon and make it better for admins to fight spam and block bad users or words and ket relays host their own uploads.

You should run your own relay and you will see how bad it is and the need for controls and why nostr is bad in its current free4all form

Sure. Everything looks cool from the user side but its a ticking time bomb not made to scale


xmr.rocks is like 45 cents. They use nerostr. Can code your own in 10 min.


Most users here are linux admins?


No idea. I'm gonna stay on free relays till someone spams the living shit out of them.

Their web page says 103 registrations.

I don't think they have an onion though. Maybe you can spin one up to make it gold standard.


I got two relays running now


People are paying?


I mean that if you don't like a relay, you can always look for another one with what you want and if it doesn't exist... why not create it??? and if he is successful why wouldn't others support him monetarily even??? and so on with each tool... from the software part if I don't have mastery... I'm just trying to apply ANCAP to daily life


Oh no, i would never charge. This is a public service


Symbolic fee to keep spammers out.


The problem is that relays all end up mixed together.  When you post, it goes to all the relays you subscribe to. If someone shares or comments , it spreads or relays share posts somehow.

Nostr is designed to be a big melting pot mess unless everyone on a relay only connects to that relay to interact.


Ditto solves that lol


People come and go.
People argue.
People being white knights and building groups to fight each other.
And again people ask for mOdErAtiOn and sAfE sPaCeS.
No matter which protocol, people keep being people.
You see, there is a pattern.
It's the people creating the problems, not software and protocols.
That's why relays should stay dumb.


I understand and what is the problem there ???


How does it work? One time payment like nerostr?


How?


Adding nostr:npub1tlakh7jnlewsddxklddxknzsfg6tz6pa8s48cyjmyja7qjl4uvyqamsnu0

Ditto dont do the one time payments but as an admin, you can blacklist npubs and have better control over who uses your instance and even censor words or spammer characters


The database grows very quickly in size and spammers add on top of that.

You wont be able to easily isolate posts for a relay or community because the clients blast each post to your relays


That works too, if you have the patience. Pay to play scales better though.


Oh. I don't think that's enough to fix the problem tbh.


Its a start. Better than the wild west now. Eventually nostr will need to be like Mastodon/Fediverse to survive with mass adoption


Yeap, you’re right, nuking the relay would solve the problem temporarily and put everything at ease, but I think it's enough


Communites need their history of content otherwise its just like anything else


I understand your point of view


I don't think it matters. They just need to take out a shit ton of ads. Jack Dorsey needs to pick a couple clients and pay Elon Musk 6 Gorillian dollars to shill it under every single post.


Have ads for native services like PornHub did with Chaturbate. No need for mass adoption this way.


That’s one of the big reasons I started writing my own relay:
https://github.com/nfnitloop/yastr?tab=readme-ov-file#yastr

If you make a distributed system that’s open to everyone all the time, you’ll get inundated with spam/trolling/bots/abuse. IMO a better solution is to let it be open to read, but restricted to write. People can quote and reply to content but it doesn’t mean I have to see it if I don’t want to.


Looking pretty good, except for the fact that it is written in Rust.


God himself created rust


cargo is the npm of lower level programming languages


well this is interesting approach
so instead of filtering out notes containing word, you would filter out any relay that relay the word. ie that would mean, when you see single note containing banned word, you would instantly ban whole relay.

nostr:note1yywtc4rzqgnfyzgmyywcfk2av0fgahmj243wh80f4wlrefnm92csgpgr4k

i dont really care what people do with their ban filters, but being this sensitive with word filters may not be what you want. you find out yourself banning thousands of relays by mistakenly putting too common word in your filter list.


not to mention how bad word filters are. they simply fail to capture context.

here is an example

"i dislike porn"

when your word filter contains word "porn" because you dont want to see porn, and you ban whole relay for this single message :D

nostr:note1qqqq904jqcpx6x3fnqhzaasrmzv65ewdptrplpmv9adjfa0hx3lqcc574n


True, that is a danger, but I believe that ability could be useful if use with great care.

Of course word bans would be safer.  I was just brain-storming / speculating.


Time stands still under @nobody timelines, as at least two women who were frequent nostr posters stopped using nostr recently. The reasons are complex and varied, but it offers an opportunity to talk about possible ways that may help guide conversations toward more signal.

When it comes to dealing with hate, abuse, and behavior that could be described as unhealthy, most social media looks at adding *rules of what not to do*. However, we should question how well that approach has worked in the past on other social networks, if it is likely to scale, and whether nostr may be much better suited for finding different solutions.

Social media is complicated, just like the people who speak their voices through it. Unfortunately, some people can create chaos to scare and quiet down other voices, in particular, those of women. Some social media attacks can feel personal and disruptive. As they carry on over time, they can wear people down, making them more sensitive to everyday conversations. A voice lost to an unhealthy environment is a voice too many.

nostr:note1fprernz6tljde6anfuyn0yvzp7n7lfe43qxgm6fejm590ed35fgq88yytd

## The what not to do approach.

Most platforms have tried to deal with abuse by trying to remove anything related to reported cases and other learnings across time. It is a difficult labor, because what is “acceptable” content depends on the times, context, and culture. Although there may be moments where these actions could be useful, they run the risk of not being specific enough or their use being misunderstood, over-applied, or gamed.

By adding parameters of what is not acceptable, unexpected content may fall under that umbrella. For example, words used in gaming can reflect violence. Sometimes, conversations within black communities can carry more expletives. People can misread, misunderstand, or feel offended by sarcasm, memes, and subcultures. Sometimes, removing specific words can prevent people from discussing serious matters, like those who are trying to bring awareness to an issue, or educational information to prevent further harm from a difficult situation.

No solution is perfect, and, sometimes, in trying to create a “safe” environment, the results are very different from the desired effects. Muting, blocking and removing certain words or people could be abused to quiet down those voices nostr is trying to protect and encourage. People can find ways around these rules to still get chaotic content through.

As social media scales, the content that needs to be removed can become an unwieldy number. Aside from reports, numerous man hours of content review, and the catch-all-word, algorithms, take over. Concentrating most efforts on what to remove, could easily become too broad a brush, leading to the opposite effect of what nostr is trying to avoid: censorship.

There are no silver bullets, but that does not mean there aren’t other options.

## What if, instead, we focus on what to do?

![nostr health](https://image.nostr.build/2741d1ed1edba662139e28a2c6e2a9b5839d2603c61a52954614003ffdf0eec0.png)

We should not overlook what protects us: our people, those real people whose voices we choose to follow. They may be the best compass on the information worthwhile.

### Web of trust tools

I remember earlier days, when the global feed was messier. Damus had added the option to blur images for people you did not follow. We had some early spamming incidents, that I did not notice, until people I followed started speaking about them, because all of those images were blurred for my global feed. I still keep that feature on.

A web of trust allows us to give priority to the content of the people we follow, often extending to the content of the people they follow. Various web of trust tools are already in use in different clients. If these features improve over time and are more widely adopted, people may reach more of the content they want without the extra noise.

#### Possible features

**Replies**

Showing top replies as those of the people you follow and who they follow. The rest of the replies could be hidden under an extra click.

An additional option could narrow down replies to only follows, or open it up to everyone, if you’re comfortable with that.

**DM’s**

Priority section for your web of trust, based on what you're comfortable with:

* People you have replied to
* People you follow
* People you follow and their follows
* A specific list of people of your choice

Have the option of removing people from your main DM’s tab.

**Mentions and Notifications**

I have not yet heard of a similar treatment for mentions, like that of DM’s, but it could ease some of the negativity if priority was given to what you’re most comfortable with:

* People you follow
* People you follow and their follows
* A specific list of people of your choice
* Everyone

**Your People**

* Easy-to-spot icon that you follow someone
* Icon for someone within your network
* Impostor flags on cloned accounts you do not follow
* Showing the people you follow are following someone you're thinking of following

**What are other possible tools for Web of Trust?**

### Content Discovery

Another important aspect for keeping the signal high on nostr is content discovery. Global has been shifting more and more to topic based discovery. A good step forward. If people are able to find more conversations around the topics they love, their experience is likely to be more positive, and to go deeper. This may lead them to discover unique niche communities with supportive like-minded people. This focus on topics may help lead attention to signal rather than noise.

An issue may be spam on hashtags, which is often content discovery for topics. We tend to follow hashtags and see that within our home feed. If the hashtags start getting spammy, what would be good solutions? Perhaps global feed should be specific to topics, and home feed for the people we follow. Making it easier to unfollow hashtags and discover new ones.

Topic hashtags could also be limited to our follows or network, but that would prevent some of the discovery process and be more likely to lead to echo chambers.

Perhaps navigation could be simplified with just one home feed, instead of global and home, but with options to switch between different options: List of follows, follows follows, topics, specific lists you put together, curated lists, communities, specific relays, all…

### What is the default?

Settings are an obscure feature that shines on nostr with unique choices. However, if people join nostr used to the workings of other apps, they are unlikely to make it into the Settings. Some protective features could be considered as defaults. Other options for customization could be displayed within specific elements without needing to go into the settings.

As feeds offer more choices for looking at your content, there may be good ways to limit or open up content shown, based on how you’re feeling and what social situations you may be in. If you’re getting too much noise, you may want to add more limits on the content you see. If you’re trying to discover something new, you may want to explore and remove some of the limits.

### Outbox model

Another present-future feature of nostr will be relying on the outbox relay model. It offers the possibility of retrieving the notes for those people who matter the most to you. It doesn't matter where people post, outbox will retrieve the notes, even from a small relay, hence, preventing their censorship. Perhaps then, blastr’s purpose will shift from sending your notes out to most relays, into making sure everyone knows where to find your notes by sending out your latest relay list and profile information.

### Delete vs. Zen

Deleting something is often a defensive measure. Unfortunately, it is an avenue often taken by those getting bullied in some way, instead of by those generating the chaos. What we often miss when we feel attacked is that having a voice on social media is an important meaningful aspect of our lives. The need to restart your social media experience takes time, and nostr will miss out on your perspective.

Although our notes remain on nostr, if someone is in need of time off, there could be a midway option before choosing to delete. A “zen mode” could be activated for those moments where you need a little time off or to tone down the noise. The app you use could toggle-on all those features that can improve on health. Your notifications could be turned off, all of your mentions and feeds could be limited to follows. Perhaps you could even segment your follows to only see specific accounts on your home feed of those people closest to you.

## Practicing the Art of Zenstr

![Nostr health](https://image.nostr.build/334c9e0e37fe6b33be6376bc773043c1d6297176801e052c31d571c44b5d429f.png)

We can all have difficult situations to deal with, whether in our personal lives, work lives, or how we connect and interact on social media. They seem separate, but they’re all a part of us, and what is happening in one area of our lives can affect the rest. As we dive into nostr, we may notice that the changes in incentives are leading to product features that care more about promoting a healthy environment. Nostr cares about its people. Timelines are not focused on incendiary notes that lead to more attention and hence more ad sales, but we can still run into negative feedback loops or the rare but loud voice who wants to generate conflict.

When we run into inflammatory comments, we must ask ourselves: Is it constructive to react to this note? If we feel too emotional, chances are, it may be time to step away from the screen for a while, refresh our spirit, and come back in a healthier way.

What if we can also ask what we can do to improve nostr? Is there content you wish existed? Can you create it? Is there a conversation you wish you could have, ask the questions. Start the hashtags. Be what you wish nostr was.

Only comment on what you feel comfortable replying to. Ignore the noise.

Being on nostr also means unlearning. Social media has placed more focus on reporting and cancel culture, but people on nostr are instead trying to learn from each other, respecting each other’s views and trying to share information you may be unaware of. It could be through a weird meme, but that’s nostr. We can be a little weird.

As people try to protect themselves from content they dislike, mute and block may be first on their mind, in some difficult cases, that may only be a temporary fix as people could circumvent that with additional npubs. The opposite is also true, you could flag someone for a single post, without paying any attention to what their voice offers on nostr, or without digging deeper into what they tried to say. Reading text is not the same as listening to people, sometimes we can give people a chance. Just because we disagree in points of view, does not mean we cannot learn something from each other.

On more chaotic cases, however, where you are experiencing abuse on nostr, do not hesitate to ask for help from the people in your community and make it known to developers on nostr. The product makers can help. In learning from your experience, you may help people have better tools to shape a healthier nostr in the future. You are not alone, and you can be a part of the solution.

As Web of Trust gets stronger, it is less likely that people who are only trying to create chaos will be able to get their messages across. People wanting conversation are unlikely to follow them, hence, not receiving their noise.

We can all use personal time away from screens, but out of choice, not out of need to leave an unhealthy environment. People should have more tools to help shape their nostr home in whichever way they want it to be. Nostr has always been about choice. Knowing that you can arrive on nostr and have a voice is a gift. We should protect it.

How can we help make nostr a safer haven?

This is a long form article, you can read it in https://habla.news/a/naddr1qvzqqqr4gupzpmax40gfzsk27g7lku8d8wda2jgy9yqu4fn0dp39ngwv2kjfwqmfqqxnzde3xs6rzde4xcengd33zxc0sc


Onward 🫡