Nostr has it's own unique way of #shadowbanning users, since a handful of npubs effectively control what everyone is looking at.

https://i.imgflip.com/6gdvsn.jpg


Irl meetups fix this


Well there is one way around that, which is to sycophantically to those handful of npubs in the hope of being noticed.

In all seriousness though, reading replies to those top npubs is how I discover all the smaller accounts to follow. So you're acting as a sort of social coordinator.

Also though there various lists, hasjtags, and discovery services. Not tp mention other app types.


On legacy social media, the feed is determined by what the developers and their employers think users might want to see.

On Nostr kind 01 clients, the feed is determined by what the Kind 01 developers and their employers want the users to see.

What they want the users to see is mostly themselves, their friends, and people posting Bitcoin memes.

Are you one of them? No?
Are you their friend? No?
Are you posting Bitcoin memes? No?

Well, then, GTFO.


Hardly anyone looks at hashtags.


Also, hardly anyone looks at the threads. Most users just scroll the OPs.

You can tell this by the large differential in the number of reactions to an OP and the number of reactions to the replies under the OP. Also, the replies often contain comments that wouldn't make sense, if they had looked at the thread, before clicking. They're just replying blind, to the OP.


Love irl MIX@meetUps/grassyass!


All Nostr did was make the shadowbanning algo more draconian.

Everywhere else, you risk being added to a blocklist, that is determined by a small handful of people. Here you have to work, to get on an allowlist, that is determined by an even-smaller handfull of people.

Everyone starts out shadowbanned, basically.


¡Gracias!


funny you say this....it is true....I cannot post notes on or send DM's from Primal....I have several clients and my own relay so I don't need them at all, but I still occasionally check to see if they unbanned or whatever they did to my account.. the only function that works is editing the avatar and banner images...I cannot update wallet, nip-05, the about section... nothing will save. LOL.... Ooooohhhh scare me Primal, wield that styrofoam sword. Nostr is only censorship resistant if you have the tech and know how...Primal is a huge gateway to entry into nostr and they are such terrible ambassadors.


Happy Birthday Silberengel!!! LOL


reading this makes me sad cuz it's true


Think Twitter is WAY worse. Feel like my account is throttled, can’t get support to acknowledge that this might even be a problem or even definitively tell me I’m imagining it, and it’s not.

Here someone might ignore my response to them, but anyone who follows sees my posts and if they repost it, it goes out to theirs as well. That’s enough for me.

I can live with the human heuristic-based shadow banning — I understand it and if I really cared could overcome It by making good, interesting replies frequently until grudgingly everyone felt the value I contributed merited a follow.

But the algo on Twitter just caps my reach (as far as I can tell) and there is no merit-based way to overcome that, and no recourse except to quit.

Which I still might one day, but the schadenfreude I experience over there is just too good right now.


How is it true? My clients just show me what the people I follow publish; or do you mean that popular accounts get more kind:6s thus the people I follow give some popular pubkeys a disproportionate amount of visibility?


⬆ your comment above   "Also, the replies often contain comments that wouldn't make sense, if the had looked at the thread, before clicking. They're just replying blind, to the OP."

 I was just playing with you because, I read threads if I am involved in replying. just to see what others are saying or maybe add a new angle etc...LOL... I like your posts by the way...just sayin'


What are you referring to by “allowlist” here? Someone’s kind:3? Clearing someone’s WoT filter?


I've tried to overcome the shadowban, but it's like I've got npub cooties, and people who interact with me risk catching them.

I can sometimes see them discussing things I've written, elsewhere, but they're just like "I heard someone say..."

She Who Must Not Be Mentioned 🥴


Hilarious, yeah, it can be like that.

That's like why I switched to long-form, from 🧵. Nobody would read past the first note in the thread, so much hilarity ensued.


It couldn't be nostr tho, it's got to be the admins of the nostr clients who can control visibility on their client. Right? If so, I suppose that's technically fine, since other clients will come along to remedy this


For me it's the mechanisms here that have cemented to a certain extent the taste makers, incentivised appealing to these accounts for visibility to a certain extent - in their replies and boosts. The recommended users, the 'trending' lists etc. Regurgitating or even just copying bitcointwitter talking points and 'memes' is somewhat (unintentionally?) rewarded.

Obviously, you can just post whatever you like and not play along, you may find your experience is more like posting into a void, or an unread (micro)blog. Someone with a niche interest might post, they may get some interaction. I don't think people are ignoring or discouraging this, but they'll probably find they're not finding a vibrant community around many/any other topics, not getting a vibrant conversation on other topics, and feel somewhat compelled to return to the safe bets of bitcoin 'memes' and slogans, being reply guys to large follower accounts.

I think an alternative trending algo which takes into account follower numbers as a percentage for likes. Eg a 50k follower account with 70 likes should'nt be 'trending', but a 400 follower account with 20 likes could be... Something like this as a factor thrown into the mix. As well as a proper forum/topic -follow clients, rather than the twitter clone clients, could help this situation. Maybe.

nostr:nevent1qqsx0e45zs9ken2yzhefmmyp09w9dnmgm4efszur2dgurxt8m73f6yszyzw2p0t52p6z663qxxwqu02vv7wfupr2nhrsarh4ts5stcjq2g6qkqcyqqq823cvyap7d


Yes. Getting followed, boosted, quoted, replied to.

The top accounts have to dig you up, out of obscurity, and actively recommend you to others, in some way.


you say that, and I believe you, but never seen what the issue with your posts is.


In all honesty if I enter a post thread. I would rather wait for responses to pop up in a thread than scroll endlessly through reposts of essentially mind fodder in the main feed... sometimes I feel like I'm just getting dumber.. I came for the bitcoin signal, and found the same things I can see on Youtube and Facebook...Keep up the good work... I'm not technical....I'm just a spacy nerd who hates limits on speech.


Liking this idea of alternative trending algo that boosts signal based on %s


good old hashtags fix that? 😬


You, and other Very Big Npubs, have a completely outsized impact. It's like the Elon effect, but there are 20 Elons.

You have over 600k followers. Even supposing only 10% are "real and active", which is very low, if you boost or quote something, it will likely trend because it ends up in 60000 npubs' feeds.
If I do the same, it ends up in 70 npubs' feed.

Everyone is looking at what you are looking at.


We've been recommending such algos, for at least a year, already. 🤷🏻♀


Nostr has it's own unique way of #shadowbanning users, since a handful of npubs effectively control what everyone is looking at.

https://i.imgflip.com/6gdvsn.jpg


but is it worse here than other social media ? example bluesky already seems to be way more parasocial, lots of accounts with gazillions of followers that only post and never interact, that seems less so here
there's less focus on following and follower numbers here which has its advantages


Wow what did I miss?


I complained loudly and in detail about some client bugs and the way grant recipients are determined, and my feed subsequently went dead.


I try to use hashtags, but that has no discernable effect.

Half the hashtags are probably from me. 😂


following hashtags just makes no sense here, there are so few real people who use them
so it's mostly just bots, porn and bottom-of-the-barrel content (often bridged from mastodon)


It's a classic chicken and egg problem, and it's very hard to solve. I'm all for experimenting with new and different algos, but it probably won't move the needle as much as time will.


I could complain about Elon and Twitter, on Twitter, without getting shadowbanned.

I didn't need Elon to follow me and recommend me, on Twitter, for people to see me.

That's a distinction, with a difference.


I think I disagree.

Users have a finite attention span and a limited amount of posts visible.

Some things will bubble up, majority won't. I don't think it's intentional.

I love browsing #introductions and finding new interesting users. You can create your own network and ignore "the club".

I like that about #nostr!


I thoroughly enjoy your posts!


I'm fed up.


I don't know, but my feeling is that this effect got worse when I switched to mailbox relay setup.


I thought so, too, but I started writing directly to the largest relays, and it had no discernable effect.

Which makes sense, since theforest.nostr1.com is pulled by all of the big aggregators.


Definitely think time is needed. I think a tweaking of the mechanisms (or meta or whatever you want to call it) could help slightly and increasingly so over time.


haha true, it's a matter of scale too i suppose

Elon can't exactly personally keep track of billions of users and shadowban everyone who complains about him, nor does X have the staff for that

new users on X start deeply buried, basically shadowbanned, in a kind of sandbox that watches behavior if they're a bot or spammer or scammer, it sometimes misfires and the user gets banned until they dox themselves
(and actual scammers have clearly learned how to fool this system better than normal users)

there is some kind of reputation system that decides when to let you out and how much to show your posts to random others
it's just all hidden to users


Well, we have that, too. Try to get anyone to respond to you, if you have less than two followers. Assumed to be spam.

That's why the spambots all follow each other, on here.


I don't think you can leave the client architecture as-is, without it getting steadily worse.

Everyone's follow lists are becoming more and more concentrated because the bifurcation in numbers of followers has reached absurd levels, due to the heavy onboarding concentration to Primal.

People used to onboard to different clients, which each had its own discovery method. Now, it's like a funnel.


none of the above but im not gtfo lol


Nostr is when you can't complain about the software program using the software program.  The equivalent to not being able to complain about Thunderbird in an e-mail sent from Thunderbird.


TBF, TL;DR was not invented here :D


Is primal the most used onboarding client? I imagine it is up there. I wish they would even add some other options to their sidebar panel, something like 'hashtag discovery', even nostrband's daily trending users list is more interesting and useful than what is on offer now. No idea how hard this is to implement tho lol? #primal


I also understand the reasoning, but ditto not showing accounts who don't have a nip05 doesn't really help. But the spambot dilemma is also a nasty one to solve


It's not hard. It's just not wanted. Software design is about making choices, and they have made other choices.


Interesting take. Never experienced that myself. I'm screaming into the void, most of the time. But I don't have many followers. I don't want to be an influencer. And I don't care about metrics, etc. So, I feel it's kind of normal. Not because of Nostr.

Followed you.


Yes, but then admit that replies hardly make a difference. You have to get boosted or quoted.


is it that bad?
a client equivalent of mastodon's instance politics?

but yea nostr has a unique combination of FOSS politics and a social network, a different one than mastodon/fediverse, though there are similarities as well, and it may become more similar in the future as there's more adoption and spam/abuse


It's a different clique, but it's equally insular and myopic.


Just post about the big club more often. The oppression will attract the lefties


right, to some degree people are people, there are some social dynamics that are unavoidable, i guess, no matter the intent of the designers


This may well be an accurate description of the current status of the nostrverse.

But, I don't think it's the big Npubs' fault.

I rather think this is mostly the inevitable dynamic that occurs in a system that's designed in this way (no feed algorithms at all).

And I think it's kind of a bootstrap dynamic that mostly characterises the beginning of the network.

After this initial phase I'd assume that other dynamics will evolve. New social circles/ sub communities will form around high impact accounts that have nothing to do with the initial big Npubs.

So I think we need patience and we'll get slow evolution, because every npub is slowly bootstrapping their way according to their interests.


The slow evolution of each npub's follow list is where I'd like more tools from the client devs.

I'd like features that help me with systematic management of my follow list(s).

Example:

Give me a single button on each note (accessible without _any_ additional tap/click, so that it's minimal effort) to mark the note as "interesting/relevant to me".

Then show me statistics from these marks so that I can directly see for all my followed npubs:
- number of notes seen in the last x days
- % of these notes marked as relevant
- ...


Designers always have a target user group, that they are designing to cater to. If that group is "Furries" or "BitcoinTwitter" or "Fashionistas" or "Bible Thumpers", etc., or something similarly specific, then the software will cater to that group.

You have to decide to cater to a much larger and more heterogenous group, to get a different result. That's why communities are the answer, not asking the BitcoinTwitter people to Bitcoin more quietly in their BitcoinTwitter clients on their BitcoinTwitter relays.

Communities are specifically designed to each appeal to different demographics, without the designer having to aim at that demographic. He just builds a platform, that people can "plug" their community into.

If the Furries want to leave Fediverse and come to Nostr, they should do it into a Fediverse Community. Not land in a BitcoinTwitter community, and be like 😱 Where Furries? while people throw steak at them and tell them to stack sats.


“while people throw steak at them and tell them to stack sats.” 🤣 🤣


We tried to onboard a real-life human female, and she got piled on, by a bunch of memers, and was mass-muted into Nostr nonexistence because she's not a native English speaker and they claimed she writes like a bot. Then I pointed out that our team's sys admin knows her personally, and they were like "Nobody knows him; he's just a scammer."

That doesn't happen, in communities.


#shadowbanning is nostr possible at mega app level and circle of WoT scale - essentially new npubs gets less exposure what they post. Certain app can push certain npubs only not based on content of notes That's push side
it also largely depends PULL type skill of end user if they search keywords correctly. key is most of indexing NIP-50 are ignored due to many reasons. what is not possible other controlled/paid social gossip platform is TAG / INDEX / SEARCH openly but that need user skill + choice - nothing timeline feed when someone has no ability or interestest to CHOOSE own content. having said that - 90% transmitted over relay are REALTIME - if anyone not looking livefeed they unlike see the note unless search or visit npub post or it pops by coincidence. hence SEARCH + keyword most important tools since nobody can browsing 24/7 - WoT n Npub based ratings useless
to promote any note - somebody sometime can always GOOD note. most of my notes not good enough doesnot mean i never post good useful one. same true for fresh npub. judging a note no. of reactions can be futile. must some way "rate a note" based on consensus - that can pushed much more - e.g. quote of report maybe. usually global feed on an OPEN relay is most unbiased source once  alert bots/spam is filtered. i like certain alert bots i look them ONDEMAND only.
note1q2rx2rsgjprkadd285mhtdwqcamnw6dy98mpuz62v5k6u7m8wvgskdve4p


that's nasty

fwiw, it seems that bluesky looks at the browser language, then by default it shows posts in that language in the discovery view
which was really confusing to me because i interact with the internet pretty much in English only, but i imagine for most people that's a good choice


Most of the Germans on here write in English.


Another Example for a feature:

Somehow help with categorising followed npubs.

Categories could be:
A, new info npubs (news bot or heavy poster, never replied to any of my replies, not following me back)
B, high volume poster (not news bot like A, but frequent posts in discussions)
C, low volume poster (but is following me back, replied to a few of my notes)
D, ...

And for each category I'd like a separately scrollable feed.


Yeah, it got ugly. Nobody ever apologized, either.

I guess you got here after they tried to chase me off with dickpics and scat-eating pics in my replies, rape threats or threats to come to my house, bot armies aimed at me, etc. Had to constantly report, report, report, which is why I usually only read from relays I control, now.

Theforest is the result of me trying to figure out how to use Nostr without just being harrassed, the whole time. That's why I know so much about how all this works.


Plot twist: I didn't realize I wasn't following you until just now because people I follow boost you a lot. 😂


i'm so sorry to hear that 🫂

honestly that was kind of my worst fear when coming here
i haven't actually seen that much really ugly stuff here
which gives me some confidence that this can work
but we'll see i guess...


Granted that visibility should not be a claimed right, the basic difference is that Nostr offers a basic feed (the fake “Global”) that is so chaotic that it is used by few to discover new content. I think the solution is to create one's own circle and with that go and merge with other micro groups, thereby growing the social graph. And at the same time enhance the discoverability of content through search and thematic structures. Shadowbanning does not seem to me at all the correct term for the current situation.


You must follow very clever people.


It's the correct term, when done in a coordinated, intentional manner. Even when I'm recommended as additions to the lists and etc. (which happens not infrequently), they just ignore the recommendations or explain that I'm not the sort of person who should be on the list.

Who is "the correct sort of person"?
Anyone but me.
Anyone but me is the correct sort of person.

Okay, that's fine, but that just means the client isn't intended for use by anyone who wouldn't think I was an incorrect person. I'm a litmus test. Perhaps they should write that in their advertisements:

This client is not intended for use by anyone who might be tempted to read something written by Silberengel.


It took us a while to get rid of them all.


Hell yeah I do.


"Coordinated, intentional manner" seems a quite serious claim.
What clients and lists are you talking about?


Well, it starts with the fact that I'm constantly being muted by some of the biggest npubs. Only thing worse than not being followed by them is being muted by them. Their mute list is often just me, some crypto spam, bots who post gibberish, ReplyGuy, and some hardcore porn. That's how much they absolutely despise me and these people DETERMINE WHAT WE LOOK AT.

Then, they get my npub recommended to them, as a good follow, and they're like *shudder* no way. "She's stupid. Nothing she writes is interesting. She does not respect TheDevs. She doesn't even have a grant. Nobody likes her. She doesn't understand computers. She's a Marxist. She's AI." And etc. Etc. Etc.

Someone with a big account telling everyone I'm a horrible person basically takes me out of the running.

Then, they ask around for people to add to the recommendation list, who write about something other than Bitcoin and I never make that list, even if people actively suggest me. I'm one of the few active npubs that actually writes anything. There are hardly any real writers, here. I'm an asset, but they don't want people to see me. They would rather people see nothing, than see my stuff.

These people have it in for me and they completely own this place, and they own it even more, ever day.


None of this should matter to me, is the point I'm trying to make. A handful of people shouldn't be able to decide what everyone looks at.


I've seen the mutes.


I often see replies before OP, but that's by my design. I notice the exact same thing. Continuing threads are usually missed entirely. I originally blamed lazy readers, but nostrudel is the only client i've used that offers a large breath in threads.


It's not that difficult to log into any user's npub to see what they see either. Maybe client devs should do that once and a while.


Nostr has it's own unique way of #shadowbanning users, since a handful of npubs effectively control what everyone is looking at.

https://i.imgflip.com/6gdvsn.jpg


The observer effect has not been considered when developing nostr's censorship resistant properties. Its still less censorious than anything else though. But I dont believe for one moment people here give a rats ass about free speech or using it effectively to improve the world


PayPerQ (PPQ.AI) Premium AI runs pay-per-use on LN


Never thought I would ever use the phrase "toxic bitcoiners" in the Bitcoin community, but yes, they are overinfluential in nostr.

Do most communities get along well?


i think the idea of communities is that they don't have to, they can just post their own stuff in a sort of bubble


I know. I was curious for other reasons. Meh, It's not important.