I dont mind paid relays or paid services on nostr removing users who violate their TOS. However, they shouldn’t be banned from running their own relay and posting.

Not sure if others agree or disagree with that thought.

Free speech means tolerating speech I might not particularly like, and that's a truth I don't think the world is ready for.

We already have a standard that has been agreed upon, and that's the law. On Nostr I believe we have and will continue to provide tools to allow people to curate their own feed.

My recent article outlined a few cultural things I consider important to preserving the safety of this place - which I am still chewing on.

Regardless, banned topics sounds a little too much like banned books. I don't think it ends well in any previous reading of the story I have read. What people think they're even gaining by pushing things underground, I'll never know.

Ideas need to be set free, and exposed to the heat and pounding of criticism (not mobbing) to prove themselves worthy, or be destroyed by reason (not hatred). I am fully aware that you cannot kill some ideas, but you also can't defeat an enemy you cannot see.

*end rant* 😆

I’m all about smaller/niche relays, basically covens instead of global free for alls.

Imagine an intranet where you could let your kids “online.” Imagine a noster where you could go 2 posts without seeing a ai generated Bitcoin inspirational graphic. Imagine a place where Nazis could go high five eachother (little known fact, but that’s what they’re trying to do when they salute) but then we didn’t have to look at it. Imagine a relay that just excluded posts if a certain percentage of characters were a language you can’t even read.

Relays do all that if we keep our ham hands off it and let them.

What a fascinating problem we will have here, what are inevitably inherent in the #nostrgrowth

What would happen if a group of Nazis founded their own relay to promote totalitarian and racist ideas? Or if a group does it with child pornography?

On the one hand we would have to fight with the idea that we are here to create an strong uncensorship network and that's fine, it's our number one goal. But we will also going to have to deal with the appearance of these characteristics that seem incompatible with life itself, and in fact they are.

I believe that even the most incompatible speeches must be tolerated at all times, because the path of censorship has only one way and no way back. But we and society itself are also purifying these minority groups in their comings and goings of history, because it is in our nature and in our science to accept that we are all equal, individual, we have rights and we live in a society that evolves. Every day it is in each one to mark that limit. Every day.

It happened to #Bitcoin before, when it was a refuge for strange people, drug buyers and murders in its beginnings. But in its nature we know what it is and that it is unique in its kind. Let's look at where we are now.

Time and history show us the right path. Don't worry, #Nostr is in its first steps. We will succeed 🧡🫂