Technical question: why / how do following lists get nuked?
#asknostr #nostr
Discussion
Essentially, your follow list gets saved to certain relays by one client. You go to another client and add or remove a follow and instead of taking your existing list into consideration, it creates a new list, nuking your existing one because relays only keep the most recent version of your follows.
This is why backing it up on the regular using Citrine or other tools is a good idea.
Thank you so much; I will look into Citrine.
Itβs weird, Iβve been using 2+ clients at a time since I started using Nostr, and this never happened until recently.
Nostur for iOS also keeps a local copy of your follows so in the event a relay nukes you, you can usually recover it quickly.
Did you try a new nostr app recently?
I donβt think so. Iβve used all the following at the same time for a while without this happening:
Damus
Primal
FreeFrom
Listr
Nostrudel
Coracle
Nests
Cornychat
As far as I remember, thatβs everything that has this npub, apart from Iris which I havenβt used since the first month or two I was on Nostr.
Nooo wait β¦ Fountain having my npub is new! Iβm not sure if exactly concurrent with the problem but it might be π¬ gotta think about it
I am guessing you mean nsec, as with npub only an app cannot modify your contact list
https://github.com/nostrability/nostrability/issues/75
nostr:npub1unmftuzmkpdjxyj4en8r63cm34uuvjn9hnxqz3nz6fls7l5jzzfqtvd0j2 ser 
Yes oops!! I am talking about nsec
Ahhhh well that looks like what mightβve happened. Darn
Try using https://metadata.nostr.com/ to restore your follows
Tempting, but before I begin β¦
Iβm still having trouble with people Iβve unfollowed still showing up in my feed. Sometimes to the point of it actually saying Iβm following them again, but weirdly, more frequently, their notes are just there and itβs acknowledged Iβm not following them.
Itβs not because of hashtags, and Iβve logged out and back in but this still happens, in both Damus and Primal (mostly Damus).
I donβt want to make the problem worse and refollow lots more people Iβve unfollowed π
How can I learn a little more about how this app chooses what to restore?
Damus has a known issue https://github.com/damus-io/damus/issues/1483
Regarding the restore tool, youβd have to ask the creator and the community. Godspeed, and lmk what you learn π
nostr:npub1e2rd2k45ym2jmctnysfadxumrvrr57vqj69ck6trt2y62c40r0kqs9lx8t I can see the your latest follow list in the Fountain relay has many pubkeys - it doesn't seem to have been nuked. We also have logic in the app that prevents signing a brand new follow list so this shouldn't happen.
Can I ask where you saw your empty follow list?
Correct, itβs not completely empty, but I went from 500+ to 300ish. Iβm going around now refollowing people I know I didnβt unfollow.
I believe the loss of 200ish follows predates my use of the Fountain update. But Iβm less sure thatβs true of my apparent βrefollowingβ of people Iβd unfollowed.
Iβve been seeing notes from unfollowed people for the longest time of all these bugs, but it at least hadnβt been claiming anywhere that I was still following them.
Itβs entirely likely it wasnβt Fountainβs fault, I just donβt know what happened, and I think it is the only new client Iβve used.
The timeline here is so uncertain, sorry!
Ok interesting. I did some investigation and it looks like your latest follow list was only on certain relays. Other relays had various copies of old follow lists. Fountain does try to find the latest follow list but it's possible that it didn't. I have updated the logic for searching for the latest follow list for the next version which should catch cases like this. I'm still not sure it was Fountain that did this - but either way the additional checks will be helpful.