Thank you. If you are blocked by relays and clients, and have a flag on your content from "the community" - will It impact your content's ability to be boasted, even if people are engaging with it ?
Discussion
If relays won't accept your content, it will have a very difficult time spreading. However, every relay makes the decision independently, so it's not a blanket ban from the network. That said, relays may use automated systems, so a number of relays using the same software with similar configurations may still automatically act in unison and hit a content creator hard.
So it's pretty much "freedom of speech doesn't mean freedom of reach". Seems like theres always a control mechanism. Someone destroys the whole selling point of Nostr. Brutal
That's always been true everywhere. You have the freedom to speak, not the freedom to force people to listen to you. Relays are free actors, and it's unreasonable to expect them to host and propagate content they don't wish to support. Any relay that wants to allow a free for all can simply not enable any sort of automated moderation. You can even spin up your own relay so nobody can silence you entirely and any who wishes to listen to you can always get updates from you there.
If you run your own relay, then nothing really affects you from a relay perspective because you can force your server to be "blind" to it.
That said, every client also has a brain and this is where the real muscle is.
If I see you have a flag, my client will receive the content but can warn me. For example #Amethyst will blur NSFW posts but offer for me to reveal them.
Clients can also make a decision based on proximity: if there are reports of scam, but none of them are from your followers, or your followers' followers, then your client can choose to ignore the flag.
This is the nature of decentralised decision making, almost anything is possible. What is important is that if you are being unfairly silenced, your data is still available, you just need to work on finding or building the appropriate client(s) and relays and getting your audience to adopt them and you're back without having to lose your historical posts etc.
That's great. Sounds like they will be alot of gatekeepers. We already see this with Primal's terms of service. Hopefully it becomes more user friendly, many people want a voice but don't know about the different clients and relays. Just want to post without censorship
I don't know. It's all still new and there is no definitive rule. In decentralized environments, prohibiting is always complex. The important thing is not to give feedback and visibility to people who don't have the same moral principles as you.
I worry that it will be easy for people to launch mass reporting attacks on those they disagree with like they do on X/Twitter
These attacks on X don't have much effect, the community notes are robust enough to get around this. But on NOSTR there is no such attack option. Because if you follow the person you will continue to see them. If a relay blocks you, you can use another one.
Having your account flagged with reports will still suppress your reach though right? Because many clients and relays will deny your request. Your content then can't be boasted as well. So it's technically "freedom of speech but not freedom of reach" similar to X
Not necessarily. Because I can find a relay that doesn't block me or create my own. And when I update my relay list, whoever follows me will get my ratings from the new relay. In NOSTR there is no reach, because there is no feed algorithm. You only see in your feed what you follow and the client will get the ratings of whoever you follow wherever necessary.
Appreciate the explanations!