[bflesch]

I feel projects like nostr ignore inherent human requirements for social networks. This is a striking quote from their landing page:

"Nostr doesn't subscribe to political ideals of "free speech" — it simply recognizes that different people have different morals and preferences and each server, being privately owned, can follow their own criteria for rejecting content as they please and users are free to choose what to read and from where."

Their statement underlines the fact that nostr is a stream of dirty sewage and they want users to submit their valuable user-created content into this sewage. Then they turn around and say that the sewage is not a problem because you can filter it and even use it as drinking water later on!

I don't see how a person with real-life social rank and social capital will sign up to something like this, or be willing to maintain a technical interface to the "stream of different morals".

You'd need to put immense trust into the "filtering" process so that you are not involuntarily exposed to rubbish. And on the other hand your valuable user-generated content could be showing up in another context with your name attached, directly next to some extremely degenerate trash created by "people with different morals" as nostr calls it. Advertisers have big problems when their brands are advertised next to problematic topics, it is the same with people.

How can you rationalize this as a good value proposition? People want to impress an audience with their user-generated content. And you only want to impress someone you look up to.

If I could sign up to a social network of people who can put a nail into the wall, take a daily shower, brush their teeth, and live in a democratic country I would immediately do so. If I want to get exposed to "different morals" I just open any of the other existing social networks. Until then I'm stuck here :P

[csense]

"Each server, being privately owned, can follow their own criteria for rejecting content as they please and users are free to choose what to read and from where."

Doesn't this same line of thinking apply to the Internet as a whole? Couldn't your question of "Why would anyone use Nostr?" equally be asked for "Why would anyone use a web browser?"

[verdverm]

A web browser is a viewing portal to a specific page, accessed upon request

A relay is a stream of stuff you then have to filter

It's really like apples and oranges, web pages or blog sites is probably a better thing to ask about than web browsers

[Nathanba]

a specific page is also stream of stuff you then have to filter

[verdverm]

if I bend over backwards far enough, sure, I can see how it can look like that

A relay is more like page updates across all of the internet being event streamed

[AuthAuth]

One could easily test the author's conviction on "rejecting content as they please" by spamming them with horrible stuff for a few months and the author would learn why 100% of content moderation should not be pushed on the individual user.

[mhitza]

I think that moderation should be pushed to the individual user to avoid censorship, but not in the form it's currently implemented by all these platforms.

To give an example on how I think moderation should work. If I follow you and you follow me on some nonexistent platform Y. You see the content I upvote, and I can see the content you upvote. So we'd start with block all by default, with transparency of why something is in one's list.

I pitched a P2P platform like this years ago to NLNet (taking heavy inspiration from I2P's Syndie app, minus the funky UX), though I didn't manage to get any funding due to missing clout as a public developer; to lead such an effort.

[bflesch]

Yes, the trust and content moderation needs to be a central part for the social network to be successful. The P2P aspect is a technical detail but in order to invest into yet another thing, it needs to have certain attractiveness.

Why are HN people moving to lobste.rs? Because it is an exclusive community.

[nout]

It's not easy to spam someone on Nostr. The apps that users use have multiple options that make it into a non problem. There is a lot of spam and offensive content, but you just don't get to see it unless you look at "global" feed and that's now quite hidden in most apps. Essentially your app restricts to seeing content from people you follow and then you limit visibility on random replies to posts.

Now nostr is actually much bigger than "twitter-like" app, including powering app stores, chat apps, collaboration, podcasts, music player, etc.

[attila-lendvai]

i think you cannot spam someone's screen in nostr. they just unsubscribe from your key, if they ever were subscribed.

DoS on the infra is a different question, though.

[AuthAuth]

I mean from multiple accounts. The idea is that they will get tired of constantly have to block content they don't want to see and they will understand why other people try to enforce stronger moderation defaults.

[fc417fc802]

It depends on if you frame it as a service versus as infrastructure that a service uses. The public roadways are similar streams of unfiltered sewage yet we see billboards along them and large businesses that care about appearances connect to them. Meanwhile gated communities also exist but are far from the norm.

> showing up in another context with your name attached, directly next to some extremely degenerate trash

Check out police bodycam footage on youtube for real world examples of exactly this.

[bflesch]

Such a bad comparison. The correct picture would be 10.000 people from St. Petersburg whose main job it is to drive through my street with a local number plate a million times per day, just to demonstrate to me that there is so much traffic on my road.

The economies of scale for creating sewage in social media are basically unbounded. Tens of thousands of people have a 9 to 5 job which consists of creating sewage content just to steer people towards a certain narrative.

[fc417fc802]

It's not a comparison but rather an analogy. Certainly it's quite a rough one. But it illustrates my key point well enough - that it is realistic to view infrastructure in a more or less neutral manner even when reputations are on the line.

[__MatrixMan__]

> You'd need to put immense trust into the "filtering" process

I think their audience for that page is people who want to implement those filters. It's not like you can log into nostr and start browsing any more than you can log into https and start browsing.

I don't appreciate the content either but a protocol that doesn't create high value targets for corruption (e.g. certificate authorities) is useful independent of the regrettable vibes that its fan club has. You're not going to catch their cooties if your public key is database-adjacent to someone else's.

[attila-lendvai]

i'm booted from facebook. does that really mean that i have no "real-life social rank" anymore?

in fact, the further mainstream social networks evolve, the more social rank it started to bring not to be there, and/or having been booted. it's early on this path, but i started to notice the signs.

[curtisblaine]

> If I want to get exposed to "different morals" I just open any of the other existing social networks. Until then I'm stuck here

I think the point is that "opening all other existing social networks" to get a rounded point of view has immense friction, especially in an enshittified world. Even with supposedly non-enshittified solutions like Mastodon, for example, you have to subscribe with different users to distinct instances that allow only a subset of the network and manage that for you. They can alter their banlist behind your back, for starters, so you have to manage that as well.

The proposal of Nostr is that you can follow as many relays as you want, in the same app, with the same user. Compare to having separate accounts for Facebook, X, Threads, Instagram, Telegram, TikTok, YouTube, <woke-friendly Mastodon instance> and <reactionary-friendly Mastodon instance>.

[oersted]

By the “sewage” analogy you are expressing the assumption that the vast majority of what people write is outright toxic and that being exposed to it is actively hurtful.

My experience on the internet does not reflect this, this is a very pessimistic view of people, bordering on perl-clutching.

Most raw user generated feeds are not great sure, but it’s mostly mediocre jokes and mildly provocative takes from bored trolls, and that’s usually a loud minority. Most people either lurk or make a modest effort now and then, particularly in niche communities like this where most people aware of it will already be fairly deeply immersed in tech. People have better things to do than to constantly be aggressively offensive, I imagine it gets old fast, and you really need to go out of your way to write something that legitimately hurts an adult.

Sure of course there are corners that are cesspits of hate, but they tend to band together and it is quite hard to bump into them accidentally. And when you do, you just feel slightly disgusted for a second, turn back and forget about it.

Some moderation is critical, but it usually needs to only be enforced for a few bad apples, most people act with decency and common sense, even when anonymous. And yes including people with lesser means and/or from shitty countries. People from different cultures are mostly the same when you peal away superficial customs, and I find much more in common with someone of my age with similar interests from the other side of the world, than with a grumpy old neighbor frankly. At least that’s my experience.

[viccis]

My experience is that most forum style social media has been devoured into the reddit world, and furthermore that any attempt at making an offsite version of reddit or similar forum-like functionality is either locked down with rules that would make the Stasi blush or quickly converges on a new Stormfront forum.

The problem with reddit's panopticon moderation, with its ill defined, nebulously (and now AI) enforcement of sitewide policies, ends up repressing a negative behavior rather than refuting it, and, when people move to a similar off-reddit site, they are itching to start taking part in discourse they weren't allowed to before.

The end result is that people who are used to policing their own speech to avoid the panopticon rather than because it's the right thing to do eventually lose that moral code that was previously shaped by discourse and pushback from their peers rather than anonymous opaque moderation.

[mothballed]

Repressing rather than refuting pretty closely models real life though.

Usually if you violate social norms people just push you out of the group and not bother explaining it to you. Not always, but usually. Yes if it is so bad it gets violent or something you will find out for sure why, but if you just show up to a friend function and start spouting off about gassing the jews or something most likely people just won't invite you back and never explain why.

Actually finding out why you were violating social norms I've found is mainly found either on the internet or from your parents when young. Hardly anyone in real life is going to bother telling you why, especially when some people are liable to act violently and there is no upside to them for bothering to explain it to you.

[viccis]

Socialization usually involves corrective action and nuance. A platform that will give you an AI issued permaban for saying "Say that again and I'll knock ur block off pal" about some silly topic makes people too aware of the repression and then it's sublimated in communities that approve of actually heinous stuff.