Oddbean new post about login | logout Some people think Nostr cannot work with things like a "universal consistent like count" and other basic social media malignant tumors. Even if we ignore the bad psychological and societal effects of such practices and assume they are good, and even if we assume that Nostr is all running in a single server that has all the events (a Bluesky-like unavoidable requirement for such universal consistency) these people are still completely oblivious to the fact that anyone can create a bazillion keypairs and spam like counts. So when they ask for a "universal consistent like count" what these people are really asking for is for a centralized KYC barrier at the doors of Nostr that ensures only a single keypair can be created by each human.
Embrace anonymity. Embrace throwaway keys. Embrace inconsistent stats. Lose the follower count. Focus on conversations and quality of relations. How do we highlight the quality of our connections? And no it’s not through wot. It’s part of it but not the complete picture.
How to highlight the quality of connections? So web of trust is part of the picture … but current WoT implementations simply use “follow”, which nobody associates with “trusted” except lazy software developers … so I’d argue that WoT on Nostr needs a refactor. What would be “other parts” of the picture?
I believe @hh is working on a more nuanced WoT. The other parts could include how often you reply to someone, how long you’ve been following them, whether you share their notes, if the interactions are both ways, overall activity level between two individuals. I think the key is to look at interactions both ways because you can follow and influencer and respond to them every day without them ever saying anything back. A personal label is probably good too as long as you’re the only one seeing it. You can get a better picture of whether your connections to people are improving or not simply by counting the labels. Color indicators - something to let you know how you feel about someone. Many of these could backfire if done wrong. Gotta be careful and think through.
So we can’t trust likes … and nobody zaps … how to quantify engagement? nostr:note1m3lrrsd2h3k47vku5tyr7gppwctg6x595hzej6f2sneymztyt4rssuf7d5
We can trust likes, just not a universal like count from random people. By the way, if it's coming from random people we can't trust zaps either, very easy to fake without spending any money.
Maybe ask yourself the question: Do we need to quantify engagement?
It's not hard to only count likes/zaps/comments from users in a web of trust (ie only count likes within 2 degrees on my follows) Missing out on fire notes because we can only order by date is ngmi
I agree with you.
Right. It's not that all algorithms are bad. It's the lack of transparency and choice that's bad. We can solve this.
Yes. And. Followed != trusted. So WoT on Nostr will need better measure of “trust” to THEN provide the backbone for transparency and choice in the algos applied. Working on this also… for social onboarding. nostr:note1ta9gzmtewn7jnslhjd8ew9322qp3rnyc56e9a0rj9f0x2ftndxhqcy7dwt
In more-speech I differentiate between follow and trust. I trust my contacts. I follow people and threads by collecting the events in filtered tabs. From: manime<-mazin at 05/08 12:27 > Yes. And. Followed != trusted. > > So WoT on Nostr will need better measure of “trust” to THEN provide the backbone for transparency and choice in the algos applied. Working on this also… for social onboarding. > nostr:note1ta9gzmtewn7jnslhjd8ew9322qp3rnyc56e9a0rj9f0x2ftndxhqcy7dwt CC: fiatjaf CC: Thoreau CC: Derek Ross
What’s more-speech?
https://github.com/unclebob/more-speech From: manime<-mazin at 05/08 14:00 > What’s more-speech? CC: ManiMe CC: fiatjaf CC: Thoreau CC: Derek Ross CC: unclebobmartin
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q3gQ42aUhls&list=PLB2PP9uiaifzD0ULVx03AkFK8S-2P-q4y&index=2 From: manime<-mazin at 05/08 14:00 > What’s more-speech? CC: ManiMe CC: fiatjaf CC: Thoreau CC: Derek Ross CC: unclebobmartin
The theory of operation of more-speech is: 1. Relays are categorized as trust, web-of-trust, or all. * trust: Only events from those who are trusted (kind 3) are subscribed. * web-of-trust: Only events from those who are trusted, and those whom they trust are subscribed. * All: Every event is subscribed. Users make this choice based upon the volume of the relay. A very high volume relay will have to be constrained to just 'trust'. Moderate volume relays can be relaxed to 'web-of-trust'. Lower volume relays can be set to 'all'. 2. Every event is subject to a set of filters associated with tabs on the display. The filters within a tab can select or block based upon the ids of users, events, or the content of events. So, for example, I can set up a tab that will select for all events mentioning GAZA while also blocking certain nasty people based on their ids. I can also set up a tab that selects for any event sent as a reply to a particular event id -- thus capturing the thread of an event. From: manime<-mazin at 05/08 14:00 > What’s more-speech? CC: ManiMe CC: fiatjaf CC: Thoreau CC: Derek Ross CC: unclebobmartin
I'm late to reply here but kind3 of a trusted npub is good enough to assume that an npub isn't a spammer which is all I care about at the relay level. Sort of a bare minimum trust implemention that can easily be improved but already does a lot for us when it comes to stopping spam
This is a hot topic. Every time I post about it people have interesting takes. You are not alone in thinking “follow is good enough”. And still others have much more elaborate ideas for measuring trust. I should host some more panel discussions …
A “like count” as in the little heart or thumbs up? Who gives a shit lmaaaao
GM nostr, the only way for consistent like-counts is shifting trust from the edges to a central authority nostr:note1qsgkd9w0gaafnlxgnnnnxllpdpkwt4ysmnnu6rs7k8he3pxtfzwqsekykg
That might make sense for accounts like yours that have thousands of followers, but for those with only a few dozen followers, every interaction (including likes) counts and provides an incentive to continue engaging.
If you know the person that is liking, then you feel good. If you don't know the person that is liking you visit their profile - if it is fake or empty, then it means nothing and you may even mute that person. On the contrary if it is an interesting person, you earned a friend to follow. The whole "problem" is a non-problem.
Likes will be extinguished. They don’t have any value in a world where you can give a sat for a “I just like your content”. 1 single sat is currently the true “like” and the only reason because nostr clients are not killing likes is because of the “transition phase”. We are currently on that phase, where we still face some challenges to implement a 1-click self-custody solution and start to give “likes” with value as crazy. After this phase ended, I challenge all nostr devs to kill the normal like on their clients and implement a “👍” or “🧡” button worthing 1 ou 2 single sats automatically. Then, tradicional like will be dead. And we will just have an icon representing a small transaction as a “like”.
People can just zap themselves a million times from a million different pubkeys and become the most popular in all trending metrics.
Other way is to create a new process similar to the worldcoin iris scan, but completely descentralized and encrypted in a way that only the source will know the identity and confirm it with anyone he wants. A network will confirm that is a human, but not technically allowed to identify that human. Big challenge yeah, I’m not a programmer but I believe this can be achieved.
As soon as someone starts playing with random keys to spam likes, they will be insignificant, so each client will remove them or add some WoT algo to filter them out and let a vaguely useful signal emerge. Human beings will have to get used to less easy dopamine if they want to live in a truly free space. The question is, will they really want it?
He is ignoring the fact that you can filter out billions of reaction events using WoT without relying on a central authority... nostr:nevent1qqsqgytxjh85w75elnyfeeen0lsksm896jgdee7dpc0trmucsn9538qpz4mhxue69uhhyetvv9ujumt0wd68ytnsw43qygpm7rrrljungc6q0tuh5hj7ue863q73qlheu4vywtzwhx42a7j9n5psgqqqqqqsmtx00y
zaps are the universal like count!
Nope, zaps can, were and are easily faked
My wallet don't lie!
But nostr clients do.
Until I until myself......
I disagree. Allowing users to see the data they want to see is something that every client should satisfy. This is not a particularly difficult requirement, it just meets the experience needs of ordinary users. Displaying data does not need to be consistent. But it does not mean that displaying data is a centralized KYC barrier.
My guess is “they” referred to by jaff (wanting “universal consistent like count”) are not end users.
Not having privacy also dictates how you act. If everyone is KYCd, people wouldn't like, zap or interact with content they don't want to attribute to their gov identities. fake accounts are good, maybe exploitable, but I think the problem in "universal consistent like count" is the "universal" part, because each should have their own numbers they see, either by the relays you pick, or by blocking certain spammy relays, and each person sees a different thing so not being universal means you have more control actually
I don't believe people really care about consistent total count of reactions or like ( when even replies are not consistently brought up - thank you NIP-10 😅). That's why reaction polls are still not a thing 🤷♀️ Zaps may be a different thing -- can't comment on that.
fuck the haters - i love NOSTR. i don't care about numbers - everybody knows i am the best.
Those that think this way also don’t know that Twitter and any other company also can’t even be sure of the follower count. Even in a centralized service. Developers introduce hacks and bugs to get things done, intentional and unintentional. How many times have we heard complaints from people saying they suddenly “lost a lot of followers”. Because they eliminated bots was one explanation, but knowing which accounts are bots is not a perfect science, and there is certainly room for the follower counting process to have bugs. Many of us work at software companies, we all know where skeletons are. I have worked at companies that disagreed internally about the number of clients we had. Depends on what your logic is when running the query and there is room for debate on what an accurate count is. Do you count all existing users? Do you only count active users? Etc etc. In twitter’s case there just isn’t anyone else to argue with.
Define the problems around that
To quote Louis: Unfortunate and informative. Exactly why "stats" on Nostr do not really matter. They are nice, but more "there" than "useful".
