If in the future you receive a note from me like this, how would you react?

"After some deliberation I have decided not to host your content on my relay. You are free to repost your content onto other relays. Your subscription fee of 0 sats will be fully refunded once you provide a bitcoin or lightning address. Considering that content on nostr is generally mirrored, it has already been deleted from my relay."


Shrug and move on with my day


You are a cool cat.


I'm just wondering (as I write relay management) if the relay should send this kind of message automatically to anybody that has their pubkey banned via relay management.  Seems like the right thing to do.


Your relay, your choice.....add another relay


how do you receive it?


The message is actually the ethical thing to do, relative to the evil thing which would be a shadow ban.


Could be a problem actually if my relay is their inbox.


it would be quite insulting


This is great!

For scammers, CSAM/criminal stuff it more than reasonable.

For cases of legitimate users, It would be nice to have a way to export their data into a downloadable package just to make sure people don't lose anything important to them. You could prepare the package before hand and give them a link. That would be a plus.


I'm thinking, what was the point in Nostr if things can get blocked , taken down by relay hosts.  For which most people use the same few big ones.   Its better than twitter but only on par with mastadon (which is also more reliable )


Not shadow banning is a low bar by which Nostr should set its censorship standards   As every day passes I can see Nostr is becoming Mastadon.  Really has little going for it once relays are given the power to censor.  Actually activitypub offers better and more reliable comms in most instances.  We are all going to have to chose relays like we chose mastodon servers. Nostr has lost its was.


It needs to be for good reason, it needs to be in a transparency report by the relay operator, otherwise it's a "shadow ban". The reason could be any number of things, CSAM? DMCA? Law enforcement requirements? "I don't like what you're saying" is clearly not a valid reason.


Relay operators always had the freedom to shadowban and censor that was never in question.

Unlike mastodon, nostr still has:
* Identity ownership: no relay operator can take it or delete it
* Data ownership: content and social graph is not owned by relay operators and can be easily backed up
* Data authenticity: data cannot be untampered by relay operators, everything is cryptographically signed
* Data mobility: the same verifiable data can be moved to other relays easily
* Multiple communication channels: the ability to use multiple relays means that a single one cannot cut you off from the rest of nostr

What is possibly missing:
* Data discoverabilityv: if you use niche small relays due to big relay censorship, other users might not easily get your content. Outbox model mitigates this.


So than at least show the post and reason why the npub is getting banned


Great idea


Understood.  I've never banned anybody and don't expect to, but I am writing moderation tools for chorus so I want to think through how chorus should deal with this. I'll make it require a reason and include the reason in the notice.


Nostr provides censorship resistance via replication.  You use multiple relays and hope they don't all ban you at once. But there is no way we can force a relay to not censor.

Relay operators will censor, almost all of them will remove spammy posts and CSAM.

I have never censored anyone and I don't plan to (because I don't operate a relay that needs it given it is not public access).  But I develop the chorus relay and I'm writing the moderation code, and so I thought it would be useful to get community feedback on what that 'banning' process looks like.  Sending the banned person a notification seems right to me, including a reason, and a way to download their data.


Nostr provides censorship resistance through replication. You use multiple relays. If stuff is taken off one of those relays you are not censored, you just have 1 fewer replication points. At that point you go add another relay to your relay list.

I am not suggesting censorship, nor am I promoting it.  I have no intention of sending anybody such a message. But I develop the chorus relay, and some operators will censor stuff, and I wanted to add code to make sure that when this does happen at least the person being censored finds out about it.


👍 I agree.

Portable identity is the biggest win overall for the average user in a free(ish) country (over mastodon). Data authenticity being big for those in less free countries, or in situations where an identity could be used to lure or harm others with fake posts.

Relays are also much lighter software, so the financial barrier to hosting your own is lower.

I can’t think of a single valid reason to argue against moderation tools for relay operators. They aren’t obligated to host anyone’s content, and they sure as hell don’t owe it to anyone to go to prison for them. Nor would I want to be complicit in the distribution of certain materials.

The only thing I don’t trust Nostr to do (for free anyways) is data retention - which is why i write my articles in plain markdown and self host a copy. My shitposts don’t matter.


Great, but if nobody uses the small relays that choose not to ban its not much practical use.  In the end we just have to trust the big servers to not censor.   Nostr  becomes centralised around the big well funded well known servers.
  Saying '  well its not censorship because  you can always take your freespeech somehwere else'  is neither a technical or philosophical  solution to platform censorship,. Every other platform uses this clause - of course anyone can put their posts elsewhere  eg on Mastadon or Nostr  or twitter if censored by one platform.  But that has its limitations, and those limitations aren't solved with Nostr anymore than they are with Mastadon.


Which platform/client/offers user backs ups?  without running a Nostr relay?  ( almost nobody does this because  its impracticable - in the end we just have to trust  that major relay operators will not delete or censor us)

Yes, keys/crypto is an advantage.  I like that about Nostr.   But this does not address the censorship or centralization of relay operators problem.  Nostr doesn't offer what was promised re censorship because  few will run their own relay  and few will use small relays if nobody else is using them.  So if the main relays censor you, it becomes irrelevent that you can use a small unknown relay that won't. As nobody is listening there.


I agree with all of this, but it still doesn't address the censorship issue, there is nothing to stop relays censoring political content the owners don't like.   Using other relays isn't really an option if nobody else is using them.  MY argument is really against those who claim Nostr is censorship resistant. It isn't really, its only as censorship resistant as the large relay operators chose.  Other relays are not relevant, just as Facebook is not censorship resistant because you can  switch to myspace.


1)  People can and should post to multiple relays. I've seen people post to 17 or 25 relays (I recommend against that, but there is nothing pushing them to not do it).  So if I relay bans them, they don't fucking care, they aren't going to have their post removed from a dozen relays. So in essence, this is very good censorship resistance.

2) Unlike Mastodon, if you get censored from one relay, you have already moved somewhere else because you are posting on multiple relays.  You just drop that one and perhaps replace it with a new one.  In the mastodon case, you lose your account and all your followers.  In the nostr case you only lose an unimportant relationship with a relay you no longer like, and your followers don't even notice.

3) If clients are just using a few big centralized servers, then those client authors misunderstand the whole point of nostr.  Choose a better client.

4) If "nobody is listening" to the relay that you advertise as the one you now post at (when you move), then that is only because their clients are not doing nostr in a decentralized way (the outbox model).  You are right to notice something is wrong with their model, but it is not something wrong with nostr itself.

There is a tension between being being distributed + censorship resistant, and maintaining client privacy.  Some people want to provide better client privacy by not connecting to "strange relays" at the expense of censorship resistance.  That choice isn't right or wrong, but it isn't the choice I would make.  My stance is that privacy should be done right - via a VPN or Tor - and that nostr decentralization and censorship resistance can be maximized without sacrficing privacy when privacy is done right.

And finally, yes relays will censor. If you put illegal content on my relay, why should I risk my neck for the illegal content of someone I don't even know?  It is your job to find a relay that allows it. This feeling of entitlement, that relay operators must host your content, that you are entitled to their hosting, should really be re-examined.  We need to maintain liberty and freedom including the liberty of relay operators to host what they choose (and only what they choose), and yet still we can provide very sigificant censorship resistance by breaking the connection between central providers (twitter, mastodon servers) and your personally managed identity.

I hope you understand that this is the best we can do.


I think giving a person notice and a reason for their ban is a decent thing to do, and giving them a way to download their data is even better.

Why do you recommend against posting to 17 or 25 relays? (asking because I do it 🫣)


My stance, in both centralized and decentralized platforms, is that noboydy owes anyone a tool for free speech (especially if maintaining it requires money) and anyone can censor what they want, on their own server (in both centralized and decentralized platforms).

However, maximally permissive rules are to be preferred in general-purpose platforms. Not in the sense that the opposite is immoral, but rather that preferring them and providing them, although not mandatory, leads to the best consequences and is a better contribution for society.

Of course, anything which threatens the existence of usability of the relay (spam and illegal content) should be removed (else everything would).


Wau. Nostr is great, you seem to learn its name and write it.
It seems like thats not true for Mastadon.


Sure it is the decent thing to do to give them a reason, but also invites arguments so I'm of two minds.  They will almost inevitably disagree with your reason and get very angry.  Relay operators are humans and can't deal with angry people day after day, and being kicked off of a relay in nostr shouldn't be a big deal, you can just trivially go somewhere else.  If I was booted from a relay I'd get very excited and happy because "fuck you bitch I'm using nostr, and you can't stop me!"  and it would feel great to have such a retort.... It is like sometimes I wish a nuclear war would actually happen so I could feel good that I moved to New Zealand.... if nobody ever tries to censor me, what was the point of nostr?    So being explained to isn't really something I think relay ops need to do.  Maybe they just want to save on ISP costs (traffic, disk space).

Giving them a chance to download their data is also the decent thing to do, but probably not necessary in practical terms because ... well, because you are using lots of relays aren't you?

I recommend against posting to 17 or 25 relays only because it does not seem like the decent thing to do.  I don't plaster all the walls of your home with posters of my missing cat for the same reason, I just put it on a few telephone poles.


You really don't need to, if clients implement the outbox model correctly, and unlike Bitcoin, where every node needs to keep a copy of every single transaction in order to maintain censorship resistance, consensus, and full auditability of the supply, that is not the case for Nostr. We ONLY have the censorship resistance piece to worry about, and not every relay can store every user's notes, so being selective about the relays you post to is both wise and courteous.

One of the best things about Nostr is that you can personally host your own content privately, too. This way, even if all 5(or however many you use) of the relays you currently post to decided to ban you, you can simply change your public relays to somewhere else and rebroadcast your notes from your private relay. The reality is, even this is very unlikely to happen unless you really did something deserving of the ban such that all 5 relay operators banned you in quick succession.


I would be interested to know how much it costs a relay operator to host my individual data, to get a sense of how much I should contribute to them, at a minimum. 🤔 If it cost a lot, that could get me to cut back on my number of relays! 😄

I've actually thought about creating a new npub and adding tons and tons of relays, as an experiment, to see if it would enhance or degrades my Nostr experience... 🧑🔬


"even this is very unlikely to happen unless..."

nostr:nevent1qqsfe2uafrnpvk8kax8txylc54ees4z6cjecfucplhazf3pu7l7lwvgppemhxue69uhkummn9ekx7mp0qyghwumn8ghj7mn0wd68ytnhd9hx2tcpz4mhxue69uhhyetvv9ujuerpd46hxtnfduhscd5ls7


As of now people are fairly generous and the cost of being on a public relay is probably not very much.  But if every event is sent to every relay, scaling problems arise.

I think of this situation as analogous to posting a blog onto a blogging website, or onto my own website.  I can follow 100 different blogs on 100 different personal blog websites.  Or maybe I can follow them on a few centralized blogging websites like medium, substack, etc.  And it works suprisingly well with zero redundancy (just one website).   So if it works so damn well with zero redundancy, do we really need to be 25x redundant?  Even being just 3x redundant is a huge improvement over a blog on a website.  Being 5x redundant is really a hell of a lot safer.  I can't imagine a scenario where anyone would need more than 7x redundancy (except highly hated people like Alex Jones and Donald Trump).

Except actually I can imagine such a scenario.  If it came to be that popular nostr clients didn't use the outbox model.  Then people would have to post to all the popular relays too.  But even then, I don't see the benefit of going beyond 7x and just picking some of those to be the popular relays, and instead I start to see it as maybe being disrespectful, taking advantage of the goodwill of open relay hosts because you can...  potentially leading to those relays to shut down due to being overloaded.

And many have predicted all relays will eventually charge for service. lest they be taken down for illegal content or be flooded with excessive traffic that the operator cannot afford on their goodwill. It might come to pass.


You are a cool Mike


I am just wondering what is the best way to handle a large stack of DM messages to a friend list that should not be made public. do we giftwrap all of them or pick a select relay that is app specific for this stack of DMs?

the "right way" to do things on nostr feels like its moving and changing constantly so I am just asking


I'm not familiar enough with the DM chat NIPs to answer this with any confidence. nostr:npub1gcxzte5zlkncx26j68ez60fzkvtkm9e0vrwdcvsjakxf9mu9qewqlfnj5z and nostr:npub1jlrs53pkdfjnts29kveljul2sm0actt6n8dxrrzqcersttvcuv3qdjynqn and nostr:npub180cvv07tjdrrgpa0j7j7tmnyl2yr6yr7l8j4s3evf6u64th6gkwsyjh6w6 all know more than me about multi-party DM.


RELAY HOPPING is NECESSITY for DECENTRALIZATION -  not by choice or oponion


there should nothing called a strange or trusted or proved relay how do u know admin is not EN'ASS'OFA agent or signed or getting fund from cartel.


I don't know if I follow? Can't you just send each as a separate event?


Read this: nostr:nevent1qqsgn6ltu8c73r0d3pxkh5n05l5um6y9gd2sa74gts2e7v5luvuk9ssppemhxue69uhkummn9ekx7mp0qyfhwumn8ghj7mmxve3ksctfdch8qatz9ugzvqnd


"advertise" where? where should I advertise for everyone to find me? damus relay?


Just pick 2+ relays for your kind 10050 relay list and you should be good. Local backups are a good extra measure, either on a local relay or using a jsonl file.


You could but if a big stack of DMs goes to a large relay they can rate limit or block, as it can look like spam.

cc: npub1ymt2j3n8tesrlr0yhaheem6yyqmmwrr7actslurw6annls6vnrcslapxnz


If in the future you receive a note from me like this, how would you react?

"After some deliberation I have decided not to host your content on my relay. You are free to repost your content onto other relays. Your subscription fee of 0 sats will be fully refunded once you provide a bitcoin or lightning address. Considering that content on nostr is generally mirrored, it has already been deleted from my relay."


Does it matter if it's "shadow banning" when practically speaking you can't get banned from the network as a whole anyway?


Imagine you've been banned from Gmail, Outlook, iCloud and Yahoo all at the same time. Your messages would still be available across the Email Network, but most (yes, that's right) email users would no longer be able to receive messages from you.


Thanks for the reply. Your points are all valid and a focus in 3 and 4 solves the problem partially, but the downside is that people don't like spam so don't want small obscure relays so I don't think this will ever happen - people having 25 relays in their client.  But an even greater issue is that relay operators will come under pressure to censor from both  law enforcement and client users.  My fear is that Nostr ultimately has owners - client relay owners -who will always be held accountable either by govnts or by their customers.  The annonymity stops there and so then does censorship resistance.


If its trivial to go somewhere else after being  kicked of a relay, then why would any relay operator ever bother kicking anyone off for any reason.    Either kicking someone off solves a problem or it doesn't.   Either they can post or they cannot.  It makes zero sense that a relay operator would waste time banning anyone or anything if its trivial to carry on posting on a different relay.


I feel like this could become a bit like the 51% bitcoin problem only much easier:  if we have even as many as 100 relay operators used by most people it wouldn't take much for all of them to agree to ban someone by sharing the same ban list  - which already happens with spam lists - even if not intentionally its likely that censored people will just get added to a 'censor list' without much thought.


'I can't imagine a scenario where anyone would need more than 7x
redundancy (except highly hated people like Alex Jones and Donald
Trump).'

Well given that Trump  is running for president (no matter how much anyone hates him) I think this makes for a very strong argument against Nostr being hugly censorship resistant.  It would be easy for 7 relays to all agree on using the same censorship lists.   In fact I would say the ability for Donald Trump to never get censored on Nostr on most peoples clients would be the bare minimal needed to claim Nostr is actually censorship resistant .


If this were to happen for ideological reasons (has it already?), I will laugh at you 'freedom tech' slogan-speakers so hard. Sure, you can always replace a relay. But there is already a concentration around the same 10 relays. And if they all come together, for example, to maintain shared ban lists, then technically you can still evade, but you will still be pushed to the margins in terms of your reach.

nostr:note1rym60m5y3n6udrx4elw5dus9xm586ylamrpxhn2zt5x77g56560sec5wtt


That's a big if. 10x as many failure points as legacy social media. Also, this is what the outbox model solves. You should always be able to find your follows if their relay lists are properly set up.


The president of the US was banned on at LEAST 5 differnt social media platforms.  Thats the litmus test for censorship: Can Donald Trump post there.


How does this work exactly? Are relays synchronizing your notes with the relays that your followers use?


The biggest problem with paid for relays for non bitcoiners isnt the cost so much as  having to disclose yourself for payment details (reduced anonymity) , inconvenience (its boring and complicated buying bitcoin).  And cost is still a factor for some when there are free alternatives , but for everyone when they aren't sure if they will even like Nostr.  Subscriptions are a faf.  There are so many,  getting increasingly frustrating and difficult to manage. It doesn't feel like you won your data when you have to pay.  That doesn't make Nostr sound as appealing as it once was.  One of the big fears against paying for Twitter is that it removed anonymity.  I suspect a lot of people don't pay more because of that than cost.  How do we verify relays aren't spying on us and linking our payment details to our posts?   I think being asked to pay for nostr will kill it.  Its a major obstacle for so many reasons, but even when it is free right now people are reluctant to switch to nostr.


No, you publish a kind 10002 with a list of relays you read or write from. If someone wants to mention you, they publish to your read relays; if someone wants to read your notes they read from your write relays. This means even if you're banned from the top 10 relays, your self-hosted relay still is accessible. People only need to know that you write to it. That information can be suppressed on the top 10 relays, but those events are easier to replicate and can be more easily identified as suppressed.


Trump can setup his own relay.  Then he can choose to not ban himself.  He could probably easily afford a large network of relays worldwide.

Unlike mastodump, his relay network can't be "cut off" because clients contact relays directly.


Small relays don't need to accumulate spam.  I run a small chorus relay and only accept posts that tag me, and I moderate them for spam (which I haven't seen yet).

Nostr is no more or less censorable than the world-wide web.  Anybody can stand up a website.  Anybody can stand up a nostr relay.

If by "client relay owners" you are talking about clients that only talk to a relay managed by the client developer, then yes this is what many of us have been concerned about for a long time. Nostr doesn't require that model, and many of us have been pushing for a different model (the outbox model).


People need to know where to look, they also need to know he was censored by the relays in the first place.  But he can't relay that message if hes censored.  Will folk have to scour the internet to check every time he doesn't tweet for a few days, or can the outbox model solve this automatically?


NIP-65 says "Clients SHOULD spread an author's kind:10002 event to as many relays as viable"  the idea being that there is no centralized index, but these events are small and one-per-person (replaceable) so they can go just about everywhere without much overhead.  That way people can be found as they move around.