We have a nostr telegram group. Whats your opinion on why does it get heavily moderated, if it doesnāt make sense and those people building nostr should probably know all you mention here much better than the rest?
Discussion
Itās not an Apples to Apples comparison.
The Nostr Telegram group is for discussing the protocol, and itās not quite like a public square like Nostr itself is. A lot of people join to talk about politics, cryptocurrencies, and just generally topics that arenāt relevant.
The Nostr Telegram group is like someoneās house, you follow the rules while you are in it.
So you assume nostr telegram group is more private than your personal profile on nostr? Like, your own āwallā of posts, right? Like if you add a note and you see a person dedicates their life to saying shit about this post every day for 5 years straight and convince others black actually white, you must be fine with that because its free speech and if you donāt like it then nostr is not for you?
And what about free speech absolutism then? I thought free speech absolutism is when either any speech is free or not, but it appears somewhere free speech absolutists are ok with moderation, cancellation and other forma of censoring. Btw, on tg each individual user can also āmuteā every other user who they donāt like. But for some reason those with permissions decide what is free and what is not
I think everyone WANTS moderation of different sorts, especially when we talk about real scale, real spammers etc and not what nostr faces right now - there are more root notes right now than replies meaning mostly people talk to themselves. But some people still havenāt found out which type of moderation they prefer and believe āno moderation is better than bad moderationā
Nostr can really change things but all those screaming āembrace muteā, āno algoā, āfree speech absolutismā etc just because there is no technical solution for this yet ā can really make it stop
I think you are mistaken to think that everyone wants moderation so your whole argument falls on its face. Thereās not a single person on this planet that I would willingly trust with the power to censor me. 0ļøā£
I fail to see whatās wrong with someone spending their time convincing others that black is white. Who are you to say they canāt do that just because you disagree? Why should your truth trump everyone elseās? š§
I for one will not shut up about it as you suggest because censorship resistance is core to Nostr and without that itās completely pointless. š¤
Lets say I have unlimited LLM capacity and can create any content I want in any volume.
I send it to every relay, to produce millions of replies, and replies of replies ā¦ per note, and also produce billions of notes using different pubkeys connected in nets. Basically, a super spam, but not distinguishable from a real human
And in todays nostr terms all you can do is either:
1) manually follow your friends who you know directly and talk to them only. You can even hardly include friends of friends into this scope because it will be way too difficult to handle. If you bring private relays its basically the same - manually approved and very small community
2) interact with 99.9999% of generated content which adjusts to you and, say, is all about indirectly hinting you a message like āpeople who are named {your name} usually die 15 years earlier and leave no legacyā
So is this nostr you want to build? Or do you believe that since today nostr content is mostly fun to you then in future for some reason spammers and other bad actors wonāt abuse it by some unknown reason if it becomes popular?
Seems like you love moving the goal post but Iāll entertain you once again.
Iāve implemented rate limiting and paid relays to prevent that scenario that you describe on a per-relay basis.
If someone sets up public relay infra and allows all spam in it that is their choice and also your choice to connect to it or not, nobody is forcing anyone.
The goal is the same - make nostr decentralized social network and not decentralized personal blogs and not decentralized telegram channels
So first, you admit that you decided to moderate content even though you are pro free speech absolutist? Seems like you also want moderation :) its just like you personally call it anti-spam. Other people would call it topics. Others - hatespeech-free, but basically everyone WANTS moderation. To different degrees however, depending on their lifetime experience and needs
Could you answer 2 questions please:
1) do you agree that if nostr gets really popular then different kinds of undesirable content (in your case you call it spam) would grow exponentially until nostr dies or you have different vision?
2) if you agree with 1) then whats your solution ā siloing with closest friends in the same way we all have telegram chats for 3-7 people? What other options?
Oh, forgot to ask, since many people donāt think like that ā do you want nostr to attract millions and millions of regular users or you like it as a niche community it is right now more?
Yes
Victor. I think youāve missed a crucial aspect of feee speech.
Freedom, in general, is not achieved by restricting peopleās freedom to deny.
There is no version of freedom that is accomplished in this manner. In fact, without the freedom for individuals and groups to deny, reject, expel, ban, and ostracize others, freedom itself would be unobtanium.
Rather, freedom comes from oneās ability to choose. Freedom of choice (to choose from existing options or to create new options) is the only freedom that matters.
As long as individuals have the freedom to create and choose their own nostr clients, nostr relays, nostr groups, and other services, (whether or not any of these are moderated, or paid access, or even have banned said individual) then freedom of speech will always be preserved.
Freedom to block, mute, ban, and otherwise restrict undesirable content and users from any of these services is an essential aspect of nostr freedoms, as is the freedom to join and create new and independent services without limit.
It seems to me like you want to check initial post or this convo and see that nostr:npub1qqqqqqyz0la2jjl752yv8h7wgs3v098mh9nztd4nr6gynaef6uqqt0n47m is against providing users with freedoms to block, mute, ban, moderate etc
You are making shit up all the time so maybe shut the fuck up? I didnāt say I was against any of that.
I donāt do this often butā¦ fuck you
āBut when I do, I do it with styleā
Iāll just leave it here and consider that the problem is in my understanding of english. Sorry, wasnāt going to hurt your feelings 
You already have tools to mute others FOR YOURSELF depending on the client you are using. If you wanna call that a freedom then sure, you have the freedom to dig a hole for your head already. I am not against you or anyone from doing that. In fact, I encourage it because nobody is entitled to your attention.
Having the freedom to ban others to prevent them from posting on Nostr because you disagree with them is NOT a basic freedom, thatās a privilege. The problem is not me understanding English, itās you twisting words in a hope to gain some moral high ground or cause some reaction on the reader. For that you are an asshole.
You arenāt fooling anyone with your hypothetical scenarios. You are not fighting any real battle by restricting others speech about a topic you dislike. The actual battle is being waged by those that have actual power, with weapons and the willingness to stop others with unrelenting force.
So if you wanna do something meaningful go out there and do something instead with your own meat suit.
I still donāt see what you are debating against since Iāve asked you a core question to this and you hwve refused to answer.
But I can do it again. Do you want to build nostr to be worldwide social network for everyone or do you want it to be another niche tool for āfree speech absolutistsā?
Iāll answer for free when you build the LLM with unlimited capacity, otherwise send me 5000 sats and Iāll answer your question.
Sent
First I reject your ridiculous question as answering it directly implies I agree with you that Nostrās utility is minimized which just isnāt true. Iāll instead educate you on how Nostr works.
Nostr is not a social network but a protocol on top of which social networks (domains/spaces where speech can take place) can be built. The implication of this is that you can indeed build your own version in which you can restrict other peopleās speech if you wish.
NIP-72 allows for Moderated Communities to be built on top of Nostr, in which spaces can be created and restricted to a moderators content. The moderator you are subject to approves every post you make to that community. This is great for Reddit like communities that focus on a specific topic and have rules on the content that can be shared. Assuming your posts are rejected (or you get outright banned) from a community, that ban does not extend automatically to other communities unless all moderators agree on silencing you.
The identity function of Nostr makes it so that you can reuse the same identity across all of you wish (but you donāt have to) but you donāt have to.
But you canāt ban an identity from the entirety of Nostr, itās not technically feasible. The identity layer of Nostr is completely decentralized and thereās no authority granting access (or denying it). If you run a relay you can indeed control the pubkeys that can post to your own relay (after all itās yours) but you canāt demand others to do the same.
This is unlike the original NIP-01 which introduces event kind 1, allowing for a Twitter-like social network or public forum to be built on top of Nostr. Kind 1 posts are 100% public and as long as they adhere to the schema specified in the protocol they will be accepted and relayed regardless of their content. This public forum might be too much for some or at times and that is understandable so there are tools like muting someone from your viewā¦ but being here is a choice and nobody is forced to use this. What NIP-01 does not give anyone is absolute power to silence the speech of others: everyone is treated equally.
Thatās the best freedom anyone can hope for.
Hope that helps.
Thanks for very detailed explanation, but I still donāt see the answer to my simple question. I can rephrase: ādo you want the majority of population to use nostr or do you only want people with the same vision as yours?ā
Is this a question you refuse to answer?
In case you want to answer, I can follow it up with next question to make it clear why Iām asking: āif it happens you want everyone to use nostr, then do you want to adapt nostr to their needs or make them change their world views to embrace new nostreality?ā
And lastly, if you want to also answer this one too and you are also realist as I am and donāt believe that you can change minds of billions of people then the question is āhow we all build tools for others to build their own social networks with bans and whores in order to attract billions of people and keep those networks interoperability?ā
P.S. it doesnāt matter at all how everyone understands āwhat nostr isā: is it a new protocol, a protocol over websockets, http or tcp, does it include nips other than nip1ā¦ the ONLY thing matters - is what community WANTS it to be and in what direction it builds it.
As an example, see ābitcoinā, āethereumā
and ācryptocurrencyā ā definitions which often times used interchangeably and there are a lot of debates on what is what. But the communities visions are what actually make them different. Ver/Write also believed their definitions of bitcoin were true at sole point. Doesnāt matter at all. Community and vision. What is your vision?
So if some spammer idiot is annoying me I don't block @IdiotSpammer, but I have to find out what relay he's on and block that relay?
Seems stupidly convoluted but, hey, it's Nostr.
Today mute/block alternatives are
implemented on clients (apps) level. Some clients (i.e. Damus) may allow you to hide spammers content. It will not prevent from others seeing his content under your posts though
Proof-of-work fixes this. getwired.app
there are many more approaches to dealing with spam lol