The problem we are trying to solve here (atleast what I want out of it ) is to make censorship optional. In other words allow for curration but give the user the ability to opt out. We can build layers on top of nostr communities that allow for more fine tuned controls. But users should be able to access the underlying relays in other clients. I block bots on my relay. Users can choose to only use paid relays. ( which are super cheap, even 10cents a month will deter bots), clients can have filters that can be toggled. But the user should never for forced to only read what a admin allows. I think we can already do that but spam control is a issue. A little spam is better than a lot of censor in my opinion.
Discussion
I'm with you on the intent, though I think Nostr's approach may be self defeating. You have a house with no front door, anyone can just walk right in. There is no "investment" required to reroll your presence on Nostr, so things like muting/ignoring/banning/whatever are just a pointless whack-a-mole.
Your users will end up forced to wall themselves behind a bunch of generic filters or whitelists provided by clients, or only use scrubbed relays. Isn't that counter to users not being forced to only read what is allowed? What legitimate user wants to constantly see re-runs of 2girls1cup in response to every comment? It's disingenuous to say "users can choose to see everything if they want" when everything beyond the filter is midgets fisting each other's assholes.
Paid relays are proposing that the front door becomes money. I'm not convinced that really solves anything other than alienate normal users.
And ultimately the problem with places like Lemmy isn't being able to see everything, it's being able to interact with everything without censorship. Nostr's response to its spam problem, where a moderator is hypothetically expected to vet every single post, is way more draconian.
Some interesting thoughts but what I think you are missing is what nostr actually solves. And that's decentralized identities. We can actually build lemmy off the nostr protocol. Where you have to register the same way except with public keys. We can then limit who can post based on those public key registered users. We can slow it down by requiring Captchas, emails, applications whatever. The difference is that the admin doesn't know the private key. So your followers can find more ways to follow you. We can handle spam the exact way lemmy does without owning identity. By registering identities to instances. so I don't think your argument really makes any sense when you think of it like that. We just have this bare bones protocol and now we need to build those anti spam features off it. Lemmy too was susceptible to spam when it first came out. Really still is
On top of this we also have a concept in Nostr called web of trust. You can make it so you only see content from users who are in your social network or extended social network. Defined by who you follow. So there is investment even without building layers on top like requiring registration. Reputation can be used as a filter.
If you do all that, don't you end up with a kind of Lemmy but with decentralized identities?
Are decentralized identities even that important? You can find Lemmy instances that won't ban you because others don't like you. Hell, running your own instance achieves that too.
It's meaningless though because being banned by the instances with people on them cuts you off from content. What good is a decentralized identity if you can't interact with any of the communities that matter?
Conceivably I can spend a lot of effort posting to your community here, only for you to get fed up with me and yeet me off it. Isn't that still a petty dictator?
The alternative being what it is now, where there is no control over anything and we're one retard away from being treated to graphic pictures of anal prolapses.
Decentralized identities are pretty important. It solves the following problem,
"My followers can't read my content because their admin says so".
Obviously hosting your own instance as you alluded to doesn't solve that problem because the admin of your followers can ban your instance. It's better for users to push and pull from multiple instances than to have a home instance like the fediverse. This is kinda complicated to wrap your head around if you are new to nostr and the fediverse. But in nostr you can switch instances without changing identities. This makes it easy to pack up and go if your admin is shit. Without losing followers and stuff.
"Conceivably I can spend a lot of effort posting to your community here, only for you to get fed up with me and yeet me off it. Isn't that still a petty dictator?"
Yes I can make it so I don't approve any of your post in communities I make. And if another moderator doesn't agree I can remove them because I am the community creator. But.... You can just open your own community and if your content is good people will subscribe to it. I can't tell other people not to follow your public key. There is no concept of defederation. Nostr's chat functionality works for communities with no moderation. The moderated community feeds are for currated content. The job of a moderator should be to keep things on topic and interesting enough to keep people there and if they want to leave they should be able to leave without losing followers. Nostr allows for this, the fediverse and centralized social media doesn't.
We will get clients that display multiple communities in a single timeline. We will get better spam control. Just give it a year or two. We can make quick patches to deal with sudden spam inflows.
Well I remain hopeful, let's see how it pans out. Thanks for the explanations.
if you reroll your id you lose your followers aka social graph, your reputation, its not without cost
It is if all you're doing is trying to spam, you just need throw-away accounts for that.
yep so this has been done, bots that generate a new npub key for every post, nostr:npub1xtscya34g58tk0z605fvr788k263gsu6cy9x0mhnm87echrgufzsevkk5s shortly introduced ip bans at his relay and we could also make proof of work needed on npubs at relays or posts
nostr works, due to nostr:npub180cvv07tjdrrgpa0j7j7tmnyl2yr6yr7l8j4s3evf6u64th6gkwsyjh6w6 's common sense nostr has choosen a path that works and subsequent devs have done similar, any problems that arise will have solutions
the vet every post is just one stupid way of doing this community thing
you can already use #tag etc #explodingheads and you have your topic covered, what we really need for communities is moderator aka curator lists or groups