So what's the deal? I won't use shitty relays then. or running my own.
Discussion
Eventually, people and instances will be blaocked from one another simply by association
A relay can only prevent me from posting to their server but they can't stop people from viewing content I host on my own relay server or stop users from finding the content on other servers.
"Clients can connect to whatever relays they want. Clients aren't married to any individual relay, they can grab events from dozens of relays at a time. Events stored at one relay can even point to events stored at totally different relays."
I'm currently connected to 20 relays, 6 or so paid and others free. As running your own relays become easier and easier, nostr will become increasingly decentralised and censorship-resistant. It's already possible to run your own private relay on rumble.
Umbrel *
I get supporting relays by paying. Is there otherwise an advantage to paid ones and how much do they cost? New here.
the advantage to paid is the cost creates a barrier for spammers or abuse that might get you banned, long term paid is not a good solution, iris for example already handles spam well on public relays, your sats would be better towards devs like #[7] and others that are really pushing nostr forward
#[6]