I think you are right to point this out. I don't see how nostr is different to how the internet started out and has always been but not used. People have alsways been able to publish their words to their own website or to a forum run by a community in a decentralized or partially centralized way. Most just chose not to. Its just as easy to publish your own blog on substack as it is on Habla or write a post on twitter as it to a paid nostr relay. But the risks are still the same in the long term because the relays that are popular are likely to be funded and resourced like twitter or facebook servers are - by big corps. Of course we can use other nostr relays (most won't - that is a certainty) but only in so far as we could use any of the plethora of social media networks that have tried to be the next twitter but nobody ever does because well, nobody else is connected to them. Nostr relays will go the same route once (if) the network expands and we are all back to square one again. On top of all this relay owners will be subject to copyright laws, porn laws, DMCAs, and all other legal compliance laws that twitter has to, and only big corps will have the budget, lawyers and high tech needed to comply and keep their relays running. I hope I am wrong.
nostr:npub180cvv07tjdrrgpa0j7j7tmnyl2yr6yr7l8j4s3evf6u64th6gkwsyjh6w6 I’m trying to understand the whole nostr protocol in depth (reading all the NIPs and reading the code for common open source clients and relays)
One thing I’m wondering is, at some point in the adoption curve of Nostr wont it be difficult to be subscribed to enough relays to know all the conversations that may mention you?
Especially if paid relays become the default (which makes sense), wont we have to subscribe to a large cross section to make sure we get alerted to all @ mentions?
PS if there are people to follow or podcasts / blogs that talk about Nostr at a technical level I’d love to do my own research, but I’m not sure where to go.
Discussion
I think we can have our cake and eat it too if
1. we make very robust open source relays that can have tools to automate that kind of work: DMCA takedowns, etc (if people want to comply with the law)
2. It’s easy to find and subscribe to many relays to cross pollinate widely enough that we don’t need central relays controlled by big players. Again requiring robust relays that are cheap to run and manage
That’s why I’m working on a relay discovery tool like Nostr.watch but with more of a community bent. I wanna see if I can convince relay operators to publish their community preferences and help people discover a couple dozen relays they should join.
But overall I think we just have to keep pushing for decentralisation and meet the challenges that incentivise centralisation as they come up
After the relay explorer. I definitely wanna see if I can add “relay plugins” that people can install to do things like check against a series of public lists of spammers. Setting the ground work for a plug-in ecosystem for relays to allow us to work together to automate the work of complying with the laws where relays are hosted and keeping them cheap and easy to host.
I dunno how plausible it is, but I think that’s where I’ll put my effort.