Oddbean new post about login | logout People are republishing it. And that’s fine. The fact some of us are not publishing directly to the centralized relays is a good step in the right direction.
Is it tho? Some centralised relays like lol has been self funded and continually improve its spam filters etc over the year and picked up on adoption, purely by merits. We seem to be passing some AA clause that merits don’t matter. If we want relay players to have fair chance in growing their business, then it’s not abt decapitating the big players - but finding ways to enable small relays to be more accessible, selectable, and have a fair chance in the game. The problem was that gossip was great theoretically but execution strategy was open to various interpretation. And some went for quick fixes. But if go one level further on what the problem is - then the problem is relay discoverability and adoption . If we look from this angle, this now opens up many more solutions on getting diverse relays out there. i think if there is funds and creators, then we should not limit everyone into a tiny box and force them to come up with solutions
This isn't about boycotting big relays, it's about making it possible to use small ones without heavy penalties.
And that's a great way to go about it - but right now all we are creating is cancel culture towards big relays while advocating fair chance towards small relays. That's AA. What we could do is highlight what makes these small relay players special. There are hundreds of relays I presume ? How are people selecting them ? based on features like wine provides? based on time taken ? based on trust not to get blasted ? based on connectivity and strength ? based on recommendation? based on who runs it and confidence level ? based on you just feeling good supporting smaller relays? private ? communities? localisation? topics based? language based? All these are great reasons - and we should put it out there for users and let users decide. Problems often leads to solutions - and if there is money, one can do a lot more and lot faster. I just think we should not box ourselves in. (PS : huge respect for all of you and the work you are doing - this is not personal, just a discussion on the topic)
Yes to all of that, for sure. nostr.watch does some of this, I have a few features in Coracle intended to help people sort that out (in fact adding more metadata to relay cards as we speak). Unfortunately, it's hard to have much of a value proposition as a relay right now, because there are so many, so few of them support AUTH, and blastr results in most relays storing the same undifferentiated/random collection of content. Lots of good action items, but differentiation is currently harder than it needs to be.
Yea, unfortunately blastr is commie / socialism style. It removes what makes individual relays special. It's probably like your cheaper, lower end version of gossip translation - easy to implement, but comes with many setbacks. I presume the tasteful version takes time. I don’t know enough but I reckon even with simple storage, arduino and basic programming everyone can have a relay. I think we should move towards more relays but it comes with educating users on relays. At some point this can also be a gig economy for crowd. Creativity and opportunity is endless, esp when you have funds. Coracle is def doing a lot more extra, thanks for taking the time to explain @hodlbod
Maybe nos.lol could stop accepting Jack's notes if it wants to cooperate.
why? Jack doesn't have bad intentions here, he is just trying to spread various small relays. Doesn't matter what he selects, and that's the point of gossip model. He is just trying to help in whichever way he can, that's all. For all we know he might rotate every week for the fun of it. We should promote small relays, we should promote all relays, we should encourage everyone to have their own relays, we can create various entrepreneurship gigs through relays as its a simple gateway between human and connectivity. The point i was trying to make is, to not limit ourselves.
Large relays boycotting Jack's notes is the only way to promote the small relays Jack is posting to. Otherwise, the notes get scraped by blastr and reposted to the large relays, obviating Jack's selections.
well, that's an interesting strategy, its quite funny how we run experiments around Jack so casually here lol. i guess big relays can do it out of goodwill for a certain period but might be tough to convince all. Anyone reached out to @someone ? She runs nos.lol and nostr.mom and has also patiently answered all my stupid tech question over the year. I am guessing she might be game as she likes to try new things. But you guys might be better off talking to each other - I'll be the connector. If @someone is game, then let's try speaking to another big relay player after this.
It might be an interesting experiment short term, and might get some people to support gossip, but long term we can't stop blastr, we have to be better than blastr. The real way forward is relays figuring out their own authentication and retention policies.
If i may? Please correct me if am wrong. If people boycotted your post, I assumed A. The post has little value of meaning to be spread. B. He should has his own relay rather than promoting any others. It is unfair to promote large ones while leave small one themselves, so be supportive to none of them is better than be accused as unfair.