Because asking permission for freedom sounds like a paradox.
Discussion
Yet you ask for permission from every relay and server in Nostr, AND you ask permission from ICANN to reach those relays.
That's just a few of the things Pubky does better.
Didn't you notice Primal & Damus trying to charge fees for their services? That is permission. All servers on earth are permissioned. Do you know why?
I've read your blog and am interested. Is the Pubkey app the only client. Can anyone write a client and Interact with people on the Pubkey app?
There are some other small demo projects, but pubky.app and Pubky Ring are the first major apps for the system.
Anyone can make any aspect of it they want. It's all open source and public data.
Thanks, I take back my comment. I wasn't aware that the protocol was open sourced.
The main thing holding me back is the community and network that I have built on nostr.
Pubkey seems like an upgrade to nostr, why build it as an incompatible network instead of a few NIPs?
Sure, the main challenge with social graphs is their lack of portability. People call this "network effect" and believe it means that new networks cannot replace large networks...yet over time, they always do seem to get replaced ;)
Relays are fungible. Exit cost is zero.
In "Exit and freedom" Szabo writes:
"Large proportions of the population of these countries could easily move out of the country if their local rights were violated," and this mechanism is what makes the Nostr relay model powerful. Trivially exit bad relays.
How easy is it to switch home servers in pubky?
You keep asking me questions but not learning anything.
Also, stop quoting people, especially if they weren't even talking about Nostr; speak for yourself.
Watch this if you want your answer.
Thanks for the video.
Pubky exit: "all you need to do is update that DNS record, and the mainline DHT, and change your provider." (What does "change your provider involve? Copying data?)
Nostr exit: "replace the relay in your relay list with a different one."
Nostr exit can be accomplished in a web client without asking any trusted server to do anything. Relays don't have to be trusted *because* the exit costs are zero.
You're right about relay centralisation concerns. Using the mainline DHT is a good solution. Seems like a useful thing to add to Nostr one day.
I don't understand the value of putting pubkeys in the DNS. Is the problem there that you're worried about authorities censoring/stealing homeserver domain names?
I notice that you can now get an SSL certificate for an IP address through Let's Encrypt. What about using the standard BitTorrent DHT mechanism to link to IPs instead of domain names? That's the whole purpose of non-mutable "announce" calls.
Thank you for taking the time to answer my questions, I appreciate it.
Were you aware that you can use Nostr without ever interacting with Primal or Damus in any way?
You can even write your own client, if you wish, and use any list of relays among tens of public ones (or run your own).
Centralized DNS is an issue. Some communities are working on that issue (Namecoin, ENS and many others). It's not an issue specific to Nostr.
The only parties that can stop me from using Nostr are the same that can stop me from using pretty much anything else on the Internet: my government (they can arrest me), ICANN and a few other parties.
There is no party whatsoever specific to Nostr that has any power of any sort on me as a Nostr user.
You are describing the entire web, not Nostr alone.
There is nothing in Nostr's design that makes it more resilient than the web, aside from using keys as identities.
The rest is exactly the same.
You put your data on web servers and hope other people can access and share it.
Relays can censor you, DNS can censor you. Apps can censor you.
So, yes, the web is fully open, and if you host everything yourself, you do have more control.
But Nostr didnt provide that, DNS did. And if you need any other computer on the web to help you find or distribute data, you become censorable again.
No one relay can censor me. There isn't any central party, there isn't any special relay.
Client developers and relay operators are just random asses with a computer. Anyone can use as many relays as they like and whatever app lets them read what they want to (or develop their own).
This is in contrast with mainstream social media. If I go on Twitter and write "cisgender", Elon Musk can shadowban me. If I get on Nostr and say something any specific person you can name doesn't like, none of them, individually, can censor me.
Of course if the whole world agrees to censor me I will be censored.
Using Nostr doesn't make you depend on any specific computer owned by someone else, except those which we'd be using regardless of Nostr (DNS servers, ISPs and so on).
Fiatjaf cannot censor me as his own individual choice. The operator of any specific relay cannot censor me, because I don't depend on any specific relay and no relay plays a central role.
You ignored everything I said and replied with a bunch of noise.
Just read it again if you want a reply:
nostr:note1jknch3u47706rtpl7wcv4zhaf5cmxwh3y38s0xmhgsdzs6sp893scqaqsr
The problem is that almost all of the parties you mention (clients, relays, media servers) are running at a loss, at least without grant funding in the picture.
A good client takes at least one dev to maintain, and that's one dev's fair compensation, with some clients running full teams and a hefty amount of in-house infra on top.
Many relays are running at a pure loss, when you look at infra costs, as well as spam and CSAM mitigation etc. If you add at the cost of incorporation and licensing, which are being almost completely ignored by multiple parts of the system, this only adds to the list.
So in the end what can end up being the censor is simple economic reality. If grant funding stops tomorrow then economics steps in and says "you play by my rules now".
ActivityPub is different because it can actually run on its own financial steam. BitTorrent as well, it has the financials worked out. But Nostr is still at very high risk of being censored by nothing more than the need for humans to pay rent every month.
ActivityPub is not censorship resistant, nor meant to. If your account is registered to an instance and that instance censors you your account is fucked.
Sure but Im not talking about resistance to being shut down by an instance admin . Im talking about resistance to being shut down by pure economic reality. In that department at least AP is far ahead of Nostr
You seem to be busy asking ICANN for permission to get those IP addresses of yours, while completely not realizing ccTLDs exist...
Primal and Damus are charging fees for their services just like Synonym will start charging people money to host their own homeserver or get extra premium hosting or some crap.
At Nostr.land I charge a fee to host content. Like it? Pay for it. Don't like it? Self host your own, no one forces you to use a paid service
"Facts! 🤔 But if freedom's the goal, how we supposed to get there without a map? What’s your take on that? #FreedomTalk"