what's your solution? everyone already knows the problem
Discussion
I don't agree with requiring POW in the public key. But it could be added as a one-time challenge when a client connects to a relay. Or on each message (but too much overhead).
With [Nostroid](https://chat.nostr.info/) I'm working on that solution. You only see what was authored by follows of follows of follows ... and what they comment on. It makes the experience of each user sort of invite-only but extended to 10k users or maybe even 1M users.
don't most clients work this way already?
The biggest twitter spam issue isnāt your main feed, itās the replies to tweets in your main feed. Thatās where the bots are the biggest problem on twitter today - bloat and low quality replies that devalue conversation and create annoying reply notifications.
And as for more public forums like chat and perhaps reddit like topics with replies, they would be pretty dead without the random public peopleās contributions. Three degree separation is pretty small across moderate to niche topics or chats.
I did not say 3 degrees. Grow it as necessary but keep it "invite only". If new accounts with zero follows can make it into your experience, you're open to spam. If you see only the "closest" 1 million authors, you should be almost spam free.
My LinkedIn is filled with effectively bot accounts. They seem real, but itās low grade and all within three degrees. And they look like real enough, at follow or accept connection point I have no way to really know. And worse, I have colleagues who accepted them and make them seem more legit.
That's where I need a negative signal, too. Public block lists, ways to disregard somebody's follows or only consider the first 100 follows each, etc.
Most of the spam I get on Twitter is from accounts that have not even any followers. Of course you can grow accounts to enter people's social graph but those losely connected can be identified. An impersonator marked as 5th degree contact would have a hard time pretending to be somebody I assume to be following already.
testing replies. please disregard.
Dumping my thoughts here:
1. Look at public chat only on relays that filter spam effectively,
2. Spam filtering tools in clients (banning a key will probably be ineffective, but matching content patterns should work)
3. Friends of friends
4. Everybody buy ASICs! š