Social media and content hosting platforms were never intended to preserve your content, posts, and submissions forever. What is meant to fade, should fade.
Discussion
Been saying this for a loooong time. I wish Nostr notes were ephemeral by default. If a user wants to keep them forever, let him download and store them himself.
Agreed. And it’s not without precedent either. I default all of my Telegram and Signal conversations to auto-delete after seven days. Letting NOSTR users at least define a *preference* for a post’s time-to-live wouldn’t be the worst thing in the world. Not all relays would honor it of course, but it’s a step in the right direction.
I also keep saying that I hate that relays can do "stuff" other than simply... relaying. The fact that they store, I consider a huge liability that a lot of people will come to regret.
Doing it as preference is probably the only way to effectively do this given the decentralized nature of the platform. Disappaearing content requires centralized control,and Imus why there is no disappearing email.
Relays ignoring the preference would be akin to someone screenshotting tweets or snaps. Once you share something it's never 100% under your control anyway.
The one alarming thing with Nostr though is that while screenshots can be fabricated, and thus aren't always trustworthy, your Nostr notes are cryptographically signed, so you lose that deniability.just worth being aware of.