Nostr Web Client

Mods are stupid, no one owns a topic, it should be moderated by "everyone" filtered by WoT.

I've done it here: https://pollerama.fun/feeds/topics

That is 100% false. Topics are incoherent and subjective without that performative element that having a tyrannical moderator introduces. There can still be a dialogue or splinter factions regarding the necessary and sufficient conditions for something to be in a topic, but unless you can point to a specific person who created and owned them, you can't say that a topic exists in any meaningful way.

Nostr's greatest virtue is that nobody owns the users or their notes, but that's also its greatest flaw.

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Discussion

mrclownworld 5mo ago

Tyranny only occurs when you can’t exit. All cyber communities are opt-in, opt-out.

No one owns a “topic” but, yes, people organize themselves into groups and submit to rules and enforcement by leaders every single day

They do this because it brings benefits that you seem totally unaware of, despite all the evidence

Most people don’t want to scream into an open, unbounded void, and until someone defines boundaries they don’t see the appeal, this is why Nostr is not seeing adoption

Kevin's Bacon 5mo ago

Right, nothing wrong with leaders and owners of communities.

Scoundrel 5mo ago 💬 1

Eh, I dunno. If a moderator refuses to announce, explain, or accept feedback on their judgements then I consider that pretty tyrannical, especially if they try to present an appearance of being more levelheaded and principled than they actually are.

When my account disappeared from funnyjunk.com nobody knew it happened. Even I didn't get any kind of message or notification indicating that I was being kicked out by an actual person and not just some cryptic bug. It was very clear that many users and moderators looked down on me, but even the administrator refused to publicly stand by what happened to my accout. Personally, I'd like to be able to call that tyrannical, even if us users technically had the ability to opt out of things that we were not allowed to know were happening

Since that event, my highest standard for a platform is that there be tangible guaruntees and transparency for its users.

Everything else you said is spot on though.

mrclownworld 5mo ago

So my idea solves for this exact situation

Everything about the group - name, description, mods, members, ban list, rules for posting (really just preferred instructions for client filters), relays, everything - would all be contained in one canonical event. Then that event could be hosted as many places as possible. Then all the other event kinds, posts, comments, upvotes/downvotes, etc would be stored on at least the relays listed in the canonical event.

So in your case you would be able to publicly see when the members list and/or ban list was updated to change your status. (And theoretically you could also have a kind that is moderator endorsements before a canonical kind is considered official, so you could see which mods endorsed this update.)

You wouldn’t lose your identity or any of your previous posts, provided copies of them still exist somewhere, it’s just that default client behavior would now be to filter your content out and prevent you from signing new events from your npub. If you had a copy of your data you could archive it, display it, etc.

It wouldn’t keep the mods from kicking you out, but it would keep them from being able to pretend they didn’t know what happened and have you lose all history of your account like it never existed.