Gather round, children, and I will tell you a harrowing tale about a very dangerous doxxer called: THE PHONE BOOK. Back in the 80s the phone book would tell everyone your number and address, you know, so you could communicate with neighbors. Scary, I know.

Maybe this is why I don’t feel this kind of fear of #Nostr that is described here?

But I could see a need for “quarantining” certain notes that pose a direct threat to others. It’s interesting to consider how this work could be accomplished in a decentralized way.

nostr:note10ycxxn34peh0djcskqgdj9d8gv390clfgat6mrdjhys22e6yyu9spst4gp

Reply to this note

Please Login to reply.

Discussion

Phone books were opt-in and you could opt-out again

Opt out of android and iOS phones also as they have everyone's phones numbers in their servers

Brings back the joy of randomly picking a number and asking if their Refrigerator was running. Well you better go catch it! 😂 being 12 in the good ol days…

🤣🤣🤣 I was thinking about that exact running joke 🤣🤣🤣

Having an unlisted phone number was a flex

Elite. Pinkies up lol

Good point but unlike with Nostr, I can't really think of any deep-pocketed organizations that had a financial incentive to see our landline phone companies fail.

If the Nostr community's commitment to free speech is genuine, once it really starts to take off we can expect an influx of bad actors (both corporate and state-sponsored). They'll use both doxing and disgusting content to drive away users. Even the most thick-skinned defenders of free speech will begin to worry if they're being viewed differently by friends, coworkers or customers for being associated with a network that harbors such content.

I don't know what's the best solution. Every family or neighborhood running its own private relay or Mastodon instance probably isn't going to help content creators who are trying to achieve global reach.

nostr:nevent1qqsr29ue2jm84tx06aadt7h7fq8z83sndd7p3u4d50d3e88y9fywudcpz3mhxue69uhkummnw3ezummcw3ezuer9wcpzqxwu6j8cgmnxy02jvnnqr3qae0scf6kd4ekkmgv3ejdcr2teg77dqvzqqqqqqydygxtl

I think the best solution is to innovate and cultivate tools and systems of trust. Ideas about “right to privacy” are interesting in a public forum.

I personally grew up the daughter of a preacher so we never really had a private life. I lived in the church (there was a built-on apartment) so our doors were open all day every day and everyone knew where to find us, bad actors included. So maybe I have a thicker skin than most when it comes to privacy anxiety?

Or maybe all those “it’s 10:00…do you know where your kids are?” commercials made it to where now Gen x doesn’t want anyone to know where they are ever? Idk lol super interesting topic though.

My dad wasn't a pastor but he was friends with enough of them that I can empathize with the lack of privacy.

You might be onto something about gen X. A lot of them describe themselves as latchkey kids who had to become self-sufficient but in retrospect it does seem like a lot of effort went into scaring the crap out of us. By the time we got to high school, we were convinced that we were gonna end up on a milk carton, run over by a drunk driver or force-fed highly addictive illegal drugs. 🤣