#[2] #[3] #[4] how does this currently work and do you have thoughts on how content propagation should best be handled?
Discussion
My understanding is that rebroadcasting is pretty standard right now. Many relays are also reading data from other relays to make sure they don't miss things.
It's an interesting set of tradeoffs and one that most users aren't aware of yet, I don't think.
One way that I could see this playing out over time is that as a user you're discerning about which relays you're connecting with for what purposes (or more likely, the clients that you use are the one's making the choices).
This would mean that maybe on Damus you're fine to connect with lots and have your content pushed out as wide as possible, but for chat apps or other use cases, you'd only connect to specifically private relays.
The private relay use cases haven't really been explored much at all so far.
#[5] probably has lots of thoughts on this too.
Reading up a bit more on this and found it interesting that initial intent for the protocol is that all communication would happen client-to-relay and relay-to-client. It was not intended that relays would talk with each other.
“Clients fetch data from relays of their choice and publish data to other relays of their choice. A relay doesn't talk to another relay, only directly to users.”
Rebroadcasting is an aberration.
That's the thing about open protocols (and quantum mechanics). Anything that's not forbidden, is required. 😜
In seriousness though, I think relay to relay comms was always going to happen and is probably a good thing. I think it probably makes the network as a whole more resilient. I guess to our earlier points, it's really about what the aim of your messages is – are they public broadcast or private small group. There is still a lot of work to be done on the private side of Nostr.