This is an important issue. There’s free speech and then there is unaccountable behavior and harassment. Roya and others on Nostr, mostly women and queer people but also others, do face a lot of bad behavior.

This makes them feel unsafe. I’ve heard from a number of people who don’t post to Nostr any more because they felt unsafe. I’m not talking, somebody said a bad word to me, it’s more like i’ve been doxxed and I think my home might be swatted. There’s AI generated revenge porn created and posted in replies to my posts, etc…

I could throw out ideas for what to do, but i think the solution is on a number of levels and needs to be designed together. Apps can do things about what they’ll display, and how. Relays and clients can bothdo things like choose to respect a mute, when user x has muted user y, don’t serve y’s replies to x’s posts.

There’s a lot which can be done. And it can be done in a way that’s compatible with free speech and an open permissionless network protocol. Nostr is a commons, it’s a space which we find valuable, but which isn’t owned by any one person or company or government. A well functioning commons includes the ability to set rules, sanction and even exclude people who violate those rules. Some of the nostr commons operates on the level of specs, the nips. Other part of the commons is the clients and relay software which we’re running. A third is the social space created on top of these specs and running code.

We need to be able to kick the assholes out of our clients we’re using, or the relays we choose to use. Even if the protocol itself is open and permissionless, users on it can and should be able to set boundaries. Just like we have curtains on the windows of our homes, doors and locks on our homes, and a calendar for who’s going to use the soccer field tuesday at 3pm. If we don’t, then it’s too easy for some rando guy to decide they’re wanting to hang out and masturbate in our living room. We need to be able to tell folks with anti-social behavior that they need to take their actions and go to their own space instead of squatting in the space of others.