I suspected this could be the case.

They certainly are filtering certain things from the regular feed, unless you go to the "Nostr Firehose" feed option. I also think they are performing some spam filtering that is catching things that shouldn't really be considered spam, such as nostr:nprofile1qy88wumn8ghj7mn0wvhxcmmv9uqsuamnwvaz7tmwdaejumr0dshsz8thwden5te0dehhxarj9e3xjarrda5kuetj9eek7cmfv9kz7qgawaehxw309ahx7um5wghxy6t5vdhkjmn9wgh8xmmrd9skctcprpmhxue69uhkummnw3ezuendwsh8w6t69e3xj730qyg8wumn8ghj7mn0wd68ytnddakj7qgswaehxw309ahx7um5wghx6mmd9uq32amnwvaz7tmwdaehgu3wdau8gu3wv3jhvtcpz4mhxue69uhkummnw3ezummcw3ezuer9wchszythwden5te0dehhxarj9emkjmn99uq32amnwvaz7tmjv4kxz7fwv3sk6atn9e5k7tcpz4mhxue69uhhyetvv9ujuerpd46hxtnfduhsz9mhwden5te0wfjkccte9ehx7um5wghxyctwvshsz9thwden5te0wfjkccte9ehx7um5wghxyee0qy2hwumn8ghj7un9d3shjtnwdaehgu3wvfnj7qgewaehxw309aex2mrp0yhxummnwa5x2un99e3k7mf0qyfhwumn8ghj7am0wsh82arcduhx7mn99uq3xamnwvaz7tmhda6zuat50phjummwv5hsqgqudjezn946405jr0x5tj9kyyajm2cfd7ywfwjk0r2r6x26rp592y8mf7tq .

Why was he censored? What proof is there that he was censored?

The "it's no different from Twitter" is a gross overstatement, though I do sympathize with Will's view. I certainly prefer to select the relays I read from and have the client I am using pull notes from those relays directly.

That said, I also understand Primal's choice to use a caching relay for the sake of optimizing for new users who barely understand what a relay is, let alone how to select ones that will achieve their goals. New users don't yet HAVE goals they want to accomplish in their selection of relays.

On Twitter, you don't own your identity. On Nostr, you absolutely do, even on Primal. Yes, Primal COULD put fake notes that appear to be from your npub, but the fact that they weren't actually signed by your nsec would be immediately apparent when they cannot be accessed from any other client, and cannot be rebroadcast out to any other relays.

On Twitter, you cannot post your tweets to any server other than Twitter's centralized server. On Primal, you absolutely still can maintain your censorship resistance by posting to multiple relays, because relays reject notes that aren't signed by the correct private key.

On Twitter, you can only read tweets that were posted to their centralized server. On Primal, you may only be able to read from their caching relay, BUT those aren't just posts that were written TO their relay. You are still seeing posts that were originally written to a wide variety of relays.

On Twitter, you are a slave to their proprietary algorithm. On Primal, you get to choose your algorithm, or create one that suits your own needs.

Now, do I think this is ideal to only read from a caching relay? Absolutely not. Do I think Will has a lot of good points about why this is a compromise of Nostr's values? Yes, I do.

But it's not "no different from Twitter" by a long shot.

I would expect that their cache ingests from a fairly large number or relays so hopefully in most cases there would be an overlap between the set of relays that the note is written to. It could be a problem if you are trying to use some special purpose relays. I don’t know how they handle things like the Fediverse bridge relays for example.

Any notes that are visible ONLY on relays Primal doesn't cache from would not be visible on Primal, regardless of what relays you select. In Primal, you only WRITE to the relays you select, and you only READ from their caching relay.

That said, the likelihood of any notes only being on a relay that Primal isn't caching from is relatively small. Most people are posting their notes to multiple relays with at least one that Primal is pulling notes in from.

I don’t know if it’s the same but there is something called indexedDB that runs client side / in browser that caches a lot of stuff locally from your own relays.

If the Lightning node is not running on your phone, you only have a few other options:

1. You run the node on your own computer, such as a Start9 or Umbrel, or even an Alby Hub instance installed to your PC, so long as you keep it online 24/7.

2. You run the node on someone else's computer, such as Alby's cloud option for running Alby Hub, or Voltage.

3. Someone else runs the node on their computer, such as if you have an Uncle Jim you trust who could host your wallet, or use a custodial option such as CoinOS or MiniBits.

The "Primal achetecture" option would be most like option 3, where someone else runs the node on their computer.

Breez has been working pretty well for me

Thanks, I was trying to keep it fairly balanced and avoid the drama.

Anything is possible but I suspect the Primal team made the design decision to use a cache for their app so probably won’t change it.

I think it could make sense to implement a fail back to local processing of notes directly from the relays in the case that the cache is unreadable. At least that way the app would keep functioning if there was a cache outage, although that would likely be with a more limited set of features than with the cache.

I did think about colour coding it but it was just a pretty quickly made up diagram!

#realy already does this for user profile data and follow and mute lists and deletes and whatnot

i already built a "layer 2" interface for it and have some example implementations that use shitcoins and second databases for testing the space limiting garbage collecting feature i built into the event store, it would be simple to add a layer2 that forwards queries out to other relays and caches the answer for other users as well as returning the results to the client

There are relays that already aggregate notes from other relays which provides similar benefits to the cache. I’ve previously used the nostr.wine paid relay which does this and works well.

https://docs.nostr.wine/filter/readme