Oddbean

Not sure "you own your own data" is the right way to put it (I don't word it like that), but here is what I think they mean. If you use a mainstream platform, the platform owner can, at least at the *technical* level (they might have all sorts of legal, economical and practical reasons not to): - Delete your profile. - Delete some (but not all) of what you publish. - Publish things with your identity. When you use Nostr, you know full well what data is signed with your key (or, at least, you *can* know), you can very easily have a backup of everything and everything is verified, so none can publish in your name. That said: > It's not even really clear where the authority to do any of this comes from. There's no user agreement or anything. If I do own the data, it's certainly not treated that way. Note that TOS are only as strong as the law makes them strong (usually contract law, but INAL and this is not legal advice). Laws exist that can overrule things the TOS say. Also, laws can say things TOS don't say and those things will apply regardless of whether there's any TOS anywhere. In the EU and the UK, for example, the GDPR will apply regardless of what any TOS anywhere says. So, at least in principle, you will absolutely have the authority to object to certain usages of any data associated with your identity, especially for targeted ads. Whether companies will follow the law or not, is of course a different question. But the answer to where authority comes from is always the same: from the law. And indeed only the law can give value to any TOS anyway.

Also note that when you publish to mainstream platforms you also can't take things down if someone else doesn't want them to go down. I can quite easily make a bot that backups everything you post on Twitter and posts it somewhere else. Once you send something to a receiver, there is never any technical way to take it back. It's an actual impossibility. And if you *publish* something, everyone is (potentially) a receiver, whether you publish it using Nostr, Twitter or anything else.

What ways do they have to limit audience? My point is that anyone receiving content will be able to retain it forever and republish it. Of course if only a few people ever receive certain content, and you trust them to never republish it, it won't be republished.

yeah, of course it boils down to trust and "loyalty" of receivers not leaking having public key of users you can do symmetric encryption of content and distribution of only such key for each viewer (be it pgp style or whatsapp groups or any other way to achieve "group encryption") would be a way to take heat off relays (they cannot censor / cannot see content) and also basically have an hidden profile (only metadata leaked as in time/size/amount of recipients) accessible for example only to subscribers. or for example send them the symmetric key when a certain amount of sats thru zaps is sent... sort of like medium style "articles" with "pay per view" on each post, some posts or how you desire

Well, Nostr does have private messages. The issue with private messages is that everyone can still se who is sending a private message to whom, at what time and how long. The only private thing, which not even relays can see, is the content of the message. My point was that Nostr isn't very dissimilar respective to your direct control of things that you publish (not just send to others privately): whatever you use, others may use that content in any way, including illegally. It's not really something you can technically prevent.

In a sense, data ownership on traditional platforms like Facebook and Twitter is governed by a terms of service, but on Nostr, it feels somewhat closer to publishing to the public domain. It doesn't feel forthcoming to compare Twitter's ability to delete your data upon request to Nostr's. Someone could, theoretically, be backing up your tweets, sure. But large platforms do quite a bit to prevent that, it's against their terms, and anyone using it would or should know that the data was obtained in bad faith. On Nostr that's not the case. Nostr's operating model has no real agreements. And the core idea of the model is that anyone can and should be backing up that data on their own servers. It seems much more reasonable for someone to think that the data could be used for whatever they want in that model. That is the de facto ownership model on Nostr and fediverse content right now. You own the identity, but you don't own your data. To be clear -- I don't think that's bad. I *like* the idea of that data being free and open when it's published -- who owns your words after you say them aloud? But it does inform what data I put here. And I think that's a big shift for most people coming from large traditional platforms. We should embrace that distinction to help people's experience here.

> In a sense, data ownership on traditional platforms like Facebook and Twitter is governed by a terms of service, but on Nostr, it feels somewhat closer to publishing to the public domain. TOS are a contract. They only mean something because of the law. Copyright law and privacy law still apply in the absence of a TOS document. Of course relays and other parties can break the law, but the same would apply for mainstream platforms. > Someone could, theoretically, be backing up your tweets, sure. It's not theoretical, it's very doable. This has been done before. > But large platforms do quite a bit to prevent that, They can't prevent that. It's why there was an archive of Trump's tweets, for example. Also tweets end up all the time on the Wayback Machine by the Internet Archive. I have accessed deleted tweets before this way. In fact, backups of large portions of social media platforms have been made before by data hoarders. > it's against their terms People can break TOS. > who owns your words after you say them aloud? If they are copyright-worthy and recorded, the speaker owns them. Mainstream platforms sometimes give users the delusion that they will be able to take things back, but they won't, or at least there is no guarantee that they will.