But you want to implement easy ways to delete content globally to comply with laws, etc. If you do so, it will be used by third parties too. Now, it's almost impossible to delete something for real because no relay is forced to follow your request, which is great. It's like real life: if you run through the city and scream something crazy, most likely the people who hear you will never forget and will keep spreading the story by telling others about you. On the other hand, if you do nothing out of the ordinary, most likely everyone will forget after a while. The same will happen on Nostr with relays. Just like in real life, people should think before they say something in public, which might help to ensure that people don't act like idiots too, as your reputation is always on the line.

In case the features you want are implemented one day, be sure that I will personally build a bot that copies all your notes with references to your account and posts them again and again 🤪

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Your approach consists in warning that with the integration of a deletion option, we'd rapidly face the same dependence on third parties than the one that has grown a lot in the ecosystem with the rise of custodial wallets.

Would it be technically feasible for a company to offer "custodied" Nostr accounts to their clients, meaning that in last instance the company could decide on which Notes - or accounts - to delete? If so, such a scenario must be prevented.

You’re missing my point, which is that relay can already delete your content at will. All I’m suggesting is that it should be possible for users to sign their own content deletion events that relays and clients honor. It’s already possible (and very easy) for law enforcement to pressure a relay operator into turning over information on their users.

Who will stop me if I build a relay that saves all data and purges every 24 hours all data except the notes that had a deletion request? No one can stop me, so if I don't build it to repost everything that got 'deleted', the governments will do it in secret. To achieve what you're looking for, you would have to "close" nostr, aka turn it into a centralized database like X.

No one can stop you, and everyone by default should assume that governments are scraping everything anyway. I’m well aware that once information is public there is no way to claw it back, but as far as obstacles to user adoption, deletion from relays is still right at the top.