Anything can be tried, and there is no reason not to try this. But I still think it's a bad idea. Suppose it became a very popular relay, what would prevent a few popular and influential accounts from colluding to ensure someone they don't like can't post to that relay? I suppose it would depend on the policies that govern the censorship. My concern is that it creates a "mob rule" situation where others could be unfairly silenced.
Discussion
And having such a relay policy in the first place assumes that the reason for muting someone is always a negative thing. It is not.
What if a mute doesn't count if you still follow the person? Would that mitigate the issue?
It would be better, but I still don't like using "mute" as the criteria because mute does not equal spam.
so what if lots of people mute
then you might have mute-bots to silence someone
so let's take some sort of weighted graph of follows
great, we've re-invented the algo but with censorship as the goal
perhaps freedom is the answer
let people host whatever they want to host and mute whoever they want to mute
What if I make a relay that considers a person more of a spammer if they are being followed by more people?
What is the problem of having a very popular relay that bans people for any reason whatsoever? Nostr is supposed to work under exactly these conditions.
Because in this case the relays "decision" to ban them is based on the arbitrary actions of other users. There is a difference in a relay having arbitrary rules (such as "no using the word avocado on this relay") vs. a relay allowing the arbitrary actions of other users to dictate what/who is and isn't allowable. Maybe there is some more specialized use case for such a relay, and so I don't think it shouldn't be tried. But I don't think it is a good idea just for general use.
Don't use the relay if you don't like it.
nostr:npub180cvv07tjdrrgpa0j7j7tmnyl2yr6yr7l8j4s3evf6u64th6gkwsyjh6w6 is right. Go for it
nostr:npub1lrnvvs6z78s9yjqxxr38uyqkmn34lsaxznnqgd877j4z2qej3j5s09qnw5 be baseless fear mongering