The problem with each individual npub muting botfarms is that they're going to end up with gigantic mute-lists.
Discussion
does the longer the mute list, the bigger the cache become a problem with user experience, slowing it down etc?
Yes, unless they do it at query level and are very clever with the query design.
They have to use the mute list to filter the feed, notifications, DMs, etc., so they have to pass the data past it. Longer it is, the longer it takes.
Npubs could end up with hundreds or thousands of mutelist entries. Longer than their follow list.
I think the eventual solution will be relay ‘Allowlists’. For the absolute minimum ’allow’ you might have to do a PoW at a certain difficulty. That’ll cut out the bots.
Yeah, whitelisting instead of blacklisting. Easier.
Yup.
The nice thing about these discussions on #nostr is that they are technical and nobody is trying to appeal to an amorphous moral authority.
It's much nicer to talk about things you could do if that's what you want instead of things that everyone must do or else.
Yup, I often say that ‘should’ is the worst word in the English language.
Wait, how do I know you're not a Bot?
Why's that a problem?
1) Performance
2) Impossible to read the list, anymore.
I just accidentally muted someone and went to unmute, and it's like... Damn, like looking for a needle in a haystack. 😂
3) network and storage load - both follow and mute lists in some cases are exceeding single figure kilobytes in size, this is a problem
That's true. Some relays will eventually cut off long mute lists, as well, as they have max-event-size.
half a megabyte is probably typical, but i can see that being reduced
there is also data storage strategies that could at least shrink those long strings of repeating pubkeys down to small, varint references, and existing data stores have compression to reduce such duplication of data but at some point the network is gonna be the big pain point
Do we need to read the list?
Performance makes sense, good point. Especially with the volume of bots.
Are you proposing a barrier that prevents bots in the first place? Some sort of filter so they don't even reach the point where they need be muted?
Ah so clearing the mute list of inactive npubs could help performance. Interesting
Do you still have the tool that shows who muted who?
You can see mutes in listr.lol or Nostrudel under Lists.
I remember there was another tool. It had throughthemetaverse in the domain name. I think there was other queries in it as well. Had it in my nostrnet .work but the domain expired. I’ll try to find it.
Ah, okay, but that would only find the ones that you were following, not the ones that you had muted.
It shows who muted a particular npub.
I agree, this would be awesome on the DVM bot 👀
The way mute lists work now is that mutes are either public or private (encrypted). Amethyst for example uses private mutes only, which is better for privacy, but also means other people, as well as external tools can't see who muted who anymore.
So I finished the cleanup. Big improvement speedwise 🤙🏾
Yeah. I think relays have to play a big role in filtering out botfarms. And they already are, it just isn’t a transparent process and the labor is going unpaid.
I've noticed that paid relays don't really have this problem, or they handle it, quickly.
But you have to because Saylor is a Wizard now and everything that uses op_return is retarded and spam - every god damn wannabe cypherpunk at the moment