We've only seen the tip of the iceberg with spam, I hate to say it but the bigger we get, the more of a threat it is and the more it's bound to happen.

On the positive side, it's possible to fix, we need to br working on solutions to filter it, not stop it.

If we focus all our energy on stopping it or find ing who is running it, we are wasting our time and are going to cause more harm then good, we simply need to be one step ahead.

We need good tools and relays, free open relays for everyone, and inner circle relays and webs if trust.

We need to go about this however in a way that we aren't causing unnecessary censorship and problems, one way I think we can achieve this is to have clear communication and warnings about the type of content a relay/client is censoring.

An idea I had is what if we came up with a event kind for Nostr Relay mutes, for example they say the things that are removed or not allowed and a user can choose which relays they want to use.

Another is a web of trust system where people can Sign Relays they trust sorta like what Zap store is doing with apps, you can choose relays based on what your friends trust.

Another way would be allowing users to mute whatever they want for themselves only on the relay level, though this would be very hard to implement i think.

Anyways, this might not make any sense at all, Just some random thoughts.

Reply to this note

Please Login to reply.

Discussion

You lost me when you said free relays. Free anything is not the solution. You and many developers need to get out of that mindset.

I think all the socialist indoctrination has really got to the developers as I see many of them trying to build solutions that involve something being free.

I don't know much about the web of trust relays but I think they don't seem to be working. It might of minimized the spam but it's still there and since Nostr is still quite small it's easy to defeat.

Once Nostr has billions of users not even the web of trust can defeat it.

Your random thoughts didn't quite make sense. You're trying to think of solution but can't see to find them.

The solution is quite simple and but definitely doesn't involve free things.

No free relays, no growth. People won't spend money on relays before they know what Nostr even is.

That's the attitude that everyone has on the internet. They build free software, website and other things and wait for everyone to come use their service then hope in a decade or two that they can monetize their product but in the end they get brunt out and never monetize anything. It's a terrible mindset working all those hours for nothing in return. It's very socialist.

I would say the growth of nostr if it was all paid would probably be not as fast as keeping the service free but there is lots of people out there willing to spend money. We can see confirm this on X as there is more and more people paying for a subscription.

I think their is many developers out there who have been in the fiat system so long that they have fooled themselves to work for free.

Unless it's their hobby then that's different.

This is a for-profit, centralized mindset that completely misunderstands what nostr is, and how it works. There are thousands of free relays run by individuals. People aren't going to suddenly stop running relays. As nostr use grows, so too will the number of free relays. I'd say free relays are the glue that holds nostr together. Sure, lots of people go on to subscribe to paid relays, or run their own paid relay, but free and open relays are absolutely necessary to handle new users, and supplement paid relays.

There's no pressure on this system that would make it dissappear, so this idea that nostr needs to centralize and become a paid service is ridiculous. People aren't going to pay for relays before they've had a chance to actually use nostr. And if we only had paid relays, the active user count would plummet. I wish people would think before posting declarations about what is needed.