Oddbean

This is how I see it: "I'm going to put you on a list based on arbitrary criteria which I may or may not share, I won't tell you that I'm indirectly monitoring everything you say, and then I'm going to tell people you are a bad person with hateful ideas and suggest they ignore you by default. Since I don't agree with you, I'm going to tell people you are spreading dangerous misinformation. By doing so, I am nudging people into my way of thinking under the guise of keeping them safe and making their experience better. Even though people are free to make these decisions for themselves, I know damn well that most people will never go and verify whether or not you should be on my list, or if what I have claimed about you is even true. I also know that if I have hundreds or thousands of people on this list, virtually no one will spend the time checking. I will also associate you with well known trouble makers so that it adds credibility to my list, and by the time you figure out what I have been doing, the damage will have already been done." This isn't a helpful tool. This is how all traditional social media looks nowadays and what I presume most people here have been trying to get away from.

That's a story that I can get behind, spinning the tale in a way that requires us to actually think instead of just react. Thank you. I believe the issue is that most people don't know what they are trying to get away from, or at least they can't define it very well so while we might be willing to try new things, we don't like it when something goes too far out of our comfort zone. And the corporate silos have done a very good job of defining our comfort zone for us whether we knew it or not, or liked it or not. I think the lists will exist no matter how much we protest against them. Because there will be demand out there for something to keep the illusion of walls and silos so that people can keep their comfort zones intact. And if that's the way they want to see the world, that's on them and the developers who cater to them. But there will always be the "rest of the internet" so if and when people see the walls of their holodeck, they can call for the exit and we will be here waiting for them. Whatever tools that are built, I hope that they are transparent. To the point that we can plug our npub into a search field and see every flag, every mute, every list and claimed association. That way we can understand where we are and why some people are having trouble seeing notes or whatever. And so we can challenge them. I'll acknowledge that these lists are going to be centralized in some way, they have to be. But by creating them, the programmers and relay managers should be identified as people to contact, not wizards in ivory towers, untouchable.

It’s open source and all the published report events are public. The code is here: https://github.com/planetary-social/cleanstr You can get the reports with any if the nostr cli tools or reports viewers web apps. This is transparent and decentralized. If you have freedom to publish on nostr then others have freedom to publish as well. Unless what you want is freedom for yourself and not other people.

Sounds like you’re using a buggy Nostr client. Try a different or change which relays you’re using. Nobody but you can change your contact list. Maybe find the bug in the software you’re using and fix it. The vast majority of nostr apps are open source and welcome contributions.