Replying to Avatar Girino Vey!

The good news is: this kind of attack hasn't happened yet, and simple word filters remain the most effective way to block spam on Nostr. Maybe spammers will get smarter someday—but if they do, we'll adapt accordingly. For now, they’re embarrassingly unsophisticated. A basic word filter is more than enough, and regular users don’t need to waste time on complex solutions.

If you're interested in building smarter defenses, go ahead. But claiming that “simple filters don’t work because spammers *might* get clever eventually” is nonsense. They *do* work, and they’re the easiest method available for users to eliminate spam. If spammers were truly smart, they wouldn’t be wasting their time and money just to mildly annoy strangers while gaining absolutely nothing from it.
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the axiom 6mo ago 💬 3

nostr has 40k users and is incredibly useless and boring today so there is no point in doing adhoc "solutions" for the current users

once nostr gets to 80k users (still small and useless) we'll probably be getting much more spam

now imagine 800k

or maybe you're incapable of imagining future possibilities

by the way, the old reply guy and girls from last year, and the spammer that used tons of emojis, those were all impossible to counter with word filters, they have only stopped because they decided to, they were not countered

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Girino Vey! 6mo ago

actually, they were both easy to counter with word filters: they had the same urls for images in their profiles, so just filtered by those urls. clients that filtered by word were all safe from them.

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the axiom 6mo ago 💬 2

it was a different URL every time for reply girl, hosted on a public blossom server with a random hash

the recent spammer could do the same by just changing one byte of its media randomly every time before publishing

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Girino Vey! 6mo ago

And yet, developers of many clients simply told their users: “Add this string to your mute list.” Users complied—and the spam disappeared. Even though the spam used different URLs hosted on public Blossom servers with random hashes, the mute word still worked.

Mute words remain an extremely effective anti-spam tool on Nostr. In fact, they’re the only method that has consistently worked against every spam wave we've encountered.

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the axiom 6mo ago 💬 2

the spam has only disappeared because the spammer decided to stop

he even came public and said so

he said he only wanted to help test nostr's anti-spam

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Girino Vey! 6mo ago

Oh no, that was long before the spammer decided to stop. But you've already made up your mind against word muting. You don’t need to take my word for it—just check the posts from that time.

If you want to keep pursuing sophisticated anti-spam strategies, go ahead. Just remember: sometimes simple solutions are the most effective. And don’t chase theoretical “optimal” solutions that end up useless because they’re too complex for the average user to apply.

Occam’s razor still applies. Look at what works in practice.

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the axiom 6mo ago 💬 1

you have no idea of what occam razor means

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Girino Vey! 6mo ago

Speaking of razors, I’m pretty sure Hanlon’s is at work here.