Nostr Web Client

Interesting. Not sure I fully understand. Seems like a whole other internet country or something.

What is a janny?

Earl Turner 2y ago

A janny is a moderator or admin of a fediverse instance. Many of them will use their position and petty power to defederate individuals or other fediverse instances which contain individuals who get under their skin. When you defederate someone, no one on your entire instance can interact with them again until you remove the defederation.

Sometimes this power is used simply to protect users from seeing illegal or otherwise undesired content. Often times it is used to censor politics the admin does not like. Many times it is used just over personal beefs.

There are hundreds if not thousands of small leftwing instances which have other anti-fascists blocked for "fascism" which usually just means they had a minor disagreement on LGBT rights.

On the other hand there are right wing "free speech" instances which block people and entire instances for making fun of or criticizing the admin.

The end result is a system that create far greater echo chambers than any mainstream social media site.

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Discussion

this should be on wikipedia

It’s funny how ppl here don’t know that term lol. But yeah, fedi is very fringe and toxic in general.

Toxic Positivity 2y ago

Some ppl grew up on 4chan and some ppl didn't. We will never be the same.

That’s what I mean. You all seem like you come from a whole other internet country.

I don’t use 4chan, I’m not even sure where I learned that term.

I don’t know what 4chan is either. I thought it was just another word for the Fediverse.

Just read a bit about 4chan too.

Earl Turner 2y ago

They have a wiki for this but they just use it for writing blog posts about how mean #[2] is.

I think he just means the term janny lol, and maybe info about the fediverse. It wouldn’t surprise me if there’s only a mastodon article and nothing else.

I think #[2] is so nice

It would definitely be cool if there was something to help non Fedi users to understand it. Sounds like there’s a lot going on. I think it’s interesting.

Fedi is in the middle. Nostr is also in the middle since it uses relays, but it leans more toward the right due to decentralized identity (though that changes just a bit with NIP-05 verification, bringing it closer to the middle again).

Nostr started out trying to be more decentralized than federated, but it's creeping gradually toward being a federated network. Right now the nodes are more-or-less the same, but as time goes on, relay operators will start "tailoring" what is and isn't allowed to go through their relays and which relays they do/don't talk with, etc.

This is super helpful thank you

Just keep in mind that this graphic is an oversimplification. In reality, the big blue dot in the middle one doesn't actually exist. The green dots are instances (on fedi) or relays (on nostr). The red dots are people's computers. So the graphic isn't an exact match, but it's close enough to get the point across.

Ok. Thank you. It’s definitely helpful.

Earl Turner 2y ago

Fedi doesn't have any centralized server, it's more of a combination of the middle and right.

Nostr and Fedi actually have a very similar architecture, with the main difference being that on the Fedi you are reliant on 1 server which manages both your account and aggregating your follows/notification/ect on your behalf, while on Nostr you manage your account and all your follows ect, and you can use as many different relays as you want at the same time.

This should hopefully take the power of censorship away from the hands of the relay operators and give the end user the final say in what they do or don't see.

I still don’t understand how nostr really works, like if relays talk to each other for example.

Toxic Positivity 2y ago

I think sometimes they broadcast to each other, but usually no, they don't.

Honestly, the best thing to do would be to start reading the NIPs. #[8] & co. have done a really good job making them readable (not boring like the ActivityPub specs).

https://github.com/nostr-protocol/nips

Ok. Will do.

Earl Turner 2y ago

I need to read about it more too, but my basic understanding is that you use cryptographic keys to prove that you are the person making your posts/changes to your account, in a way similar to how crypto currency uses them to prove you are the person who made the transaction.

How that info gets from my computer to someone else's is still a bit of a mystery though.

After skimming through the NIPs, I didn't actually see any explicit wording for how relays talk to each other.

I imagine (again, having not done any actual coding on Nostr yet) that a relay could just act as a client to another relay and send/receive a bunch of messages that have already been signed by completed unrelated entities.

A message is just a message that I can pass around, whether I'm the one who created and signed it, or if it was created and signed by someone else. As long as the message ID checks out, then it's a valid message.

See https://github.com/nostr-protocol/nips/blob/master/01.md#events-and-signatures

Got it. Thx.

i think this is the complete guide for nostr https://uselessshit.co/resources/nostr

There is a Wikipedia article about the Fediverse. I’m reading it now. It mainly explains the technology, somewhat superficially.

Nothing about the culture though. Glad I can get that from you all.

Got it. Thanks for the explanations. Sounds like too much power in the hands of one person. Makes sense that it creates echo chambers.

It also tends to attract deranged ppl, sort of like any other position that gives someone control over others.

Yeah. Power tripping.

How does a janny even get “appointed?”

Just by making an instance, and the instance admin can also appoint moderators.

What’s an instance?

It’s like a version of Twitter you host yourself, and the different instances communicate with each other. So you could make an account on seal.cafe and talk to ppl with accounts on whinge.town.

Got it. How long has the Fedi been around? Is there one person that created the technology? Is it also decentralized and no corporation behind it?

I think it’s been around like 10+ years? But it’s very obscure really, though a lot of ppl moved over after Elon took over Twitter.

I know it’s based on a standard called ActivityPub. There’s no corporation directly involved or funding it, no. There’s three main versions of fedi software made by different ppl, but I’m not sure who started it all.

Toxic Positivity 2y ago

It was created by some kind of open source foundation over 5 years ago, it's based on a different protocol call OStatus that's much older. But from what I understand it's abandonware. I don't think the official ActivityPub site is even up anymore, The Fedi is ironically built on a dead standard even though it's the biggest distributed microblogging network around.