Replying to coinbox

I think you are right to point this out. I don't see how nostr is different to how the internet started out and has always been but not used. People have alsways been able to publish their words to their own website or to a forum run by a community in a decentralized or partially centralized way. Most just chose not to. Its just as easy to publish your own blog on substack as it is on Habla or write a post on twitter as it to a paid nostr relay. But the risks are still the same in the long term because the relays that are popular are likely to be funded and resourced like twitter or facebook servers are - by big corps. Of course we can use other nostr relays (most won't - that is a certainty) but only in so far as we could use any of the plethora of social media networks that have tried to be the next twitter but nobody ever does because well, nobody else is connected to them. Nostr relays will go the same route once (if) the network expands and we are all back to square one again. On top of all this relay owners will be subject to copyright laws, porn laws, DMCAs, and all other legal compliance laws that twitter has to, and only big corps will have the budget, lawyers and high tech needed to comply and keep their relays running. I hope I am wrong.
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Greg 2y ago

I think we can have our cake and eat it too if

1. we make very robust open source relays that can have tools to automate that kind of work: DMCA takedowns, etc (if people want to comply with the law)

2. It’s easy to find and subscribe to many relays to cross pollinate widely enough that we don’t need central relays controlled by big players. Again requiring robust relays that are cheap to run and manage

That’s why I’m working on a relay discovery tool like Nostr.watch but with more of a community bent. I wanna see if I can convince relay operators to publish their community preferences and help people discover a couple dozen relays they should join.

But overall I think we just have to keep pushing for decentralisation and meet the challenges that incentivise centralisation as they come up

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Greg 2y ago

After the relay explorer. I definitely wanna see if I can add “relay plugins” that people can install to do things like check against a series of public lists of spammers. Setting the ground work for a plug-in ecosystem for relays to allow us to work together to automate the work of complying with the laws where relays are hosted and keeping them cheap and easy to host.

I dunno how plausible it is, but I think that’s where I’ll put my effort.

8c
coinbox 2y ago

I like your goals with nostr.watch but I fear there will be problems further down the road re your 2 points:

1) Isn't that all done with expensive AI? eg detecting copyrighted music in YouTube videos or book texts. We can open source such tech (though that is a challenge in itself) but who will have the resources to run that at scale on nostr relays? Big corps again. Already YouTube dominates the video market because it can (or claims it can) deal with copyrighted material. Blocking and censorship is done by machines and thousands of employed content moderators. Nostr relay owners can't compete with laws that already demand this level of censorship and filtering in order not to be sued into oblivion.

2) It won't be easy because any publicly known relay will be subject to (1) above. The only way that works is if relay owners are prepared to break the law and nostr is only used over tor. Which makes discovery difficult and therefore nostr not useful as an alternative to a global twitter/blogging/media discovery platform.

We do need to push for decentralisation but the only real way to do that is with anonymity/ignoring AI DMCAs etc, but that creates a barrier to entry and huge risks for relay owners, which is not good for adoption. A network with nobody on is not much use. Sorry I know that sounds very negative but I've been thinking about how nostr will look in 5 years and I DO see its popularity rising but I just can't see a way around it being dominated almost exclusively by the likes of Twitter and Google, with all the same problems around free speech / censorship of posts that we have now. Nostr works in the short term only when the network is to small for anybody with power to censor to care much care

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Greg 2y ago

We haven’t had much issue yet with DMCA takedown requests or anything so we have time to figure it out. The ecosystem will continue to grow.

I’m optimistic that this group of devs will find a way to make it possible to keep decentralisation and comply with the law.

But even if it’s not entirely possible now. Nostr “under the hood” means when it becomes possible we can push more down the decentralised path

I’d encourage you to think about solutions and join the building!