Oddbean

Relays aren't truly redundant, but their data sets overlap, can be copied or mirrored, and the individual elements can be transported, discovered, and dispersed. This means that we can store all of the world's data on one system without having to store it in one place or create n number of dataset clones that need to be constantly compared to one another. Related events will be stored nearer together on a relay, but also copied and stored in proximity to disparate events, that they are also related to. Elements that are related to more things, or that seem more important to more npubs, will naturally have more copies. We can allow the data sets to evolve, just like genes and memes do. This is data storage that mirrors the information and communication architecture of humans. Just go with it.

That's what this is. 😂 I'm saying that we don't actually have to scale up much, we just have to navigate and discover more efficiently. If you think of a relay as a person or group of persons, that each has thoughts or pet topics, do they need everyone else on the planet to share those thoughts or topics? No, of course, not. Each thought stands alone, at the same time that lots of people could have the same thought in their head. If you want to find out more about a thought, you don't need to know every other thought that person has, you only need to know that one thought. So, you ask them and they tell you, and now you both have that thought. And, now, there are two people holding that thought in their head, who could be asked, and they might be in different geographical regions. That thought has now been copied and transported. The focus, therefore, should be on finding the person who has the thought I am looking for, not on creating a superperson that has all of the thoughts on the planet in their head and figuring out how to get them to share thoughts faster.

That is why, to "go viral" here doesn't mean a lot of people have seen it. It means a lot of relays have stored it because a lot of people have purposefully interacted with it. That is a much higher hurdle and it naturally makes that element more resilient to censorship.

Making this measure of interaction work would require clients to automatically rebroadcast notes on view. Not just scrolling by in a feed, but if I click on a post, my client should rebroadcast it to my relays, even if I don't like or comment or zap. Then other clients can measure the "viralness" of a post by counting how many relays have that post.