Subnostr

Community relays are a bad idea

Community relays get mentioned a lot as a solution to spam or illegal content. The basic idea is that specialized relays can moderate and filter content. Choosing relays would be akin to choosing the type of content you want to see.

I think community relays create more problems than they solve:

1. Spam or illegal content filtering through relays only works if you also stop using unfiltered, general purpose free relays. This would see you isolate on a small, relay-bound network island.

2. By using specialized relays, you give those relays power over you. If relays are generic and interchangeable, then being banned by one of them doesn't matter. However, if you get banned by the largest Politics relay, for example, you can no longer reach that community.

3. Filtering at a relay level is impractical to begin with. It's similar to expecting node operators to filter what makes it on to the blockchain, though admittedly with a bit less permanence involved. Relays should have basic spam filtering in place, but no sane relay admin wants to actively monitor and police all content that their relay carries. Even if they were so inclined, they would need to use a client to do it.

4. Relays don't actually host any illegal media, they only carry text. Illegal media such as CP, for example, needs to be uploaded to a 3rd party platform, and displayed by a client. The relay can potentially carry a URL to such content, but it never actually hosts it and it's clients that display it to users.

5. Communities, reports, content filtering, these are all easier to implement at a client level. Ultimately, the website or app where the content appears is the one that will be held to account, along with the platform where the media is stored.

Please do not give power to relays, I ask you this as someone who runs a free relay.

j 2y ago

mucho texto

but also you need to get over your ptsd. relays are not miners. miners are not evil. people running computers for free is not good (as in, the opposite of evil).

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Discussion

splinter 2y ago

I'm really struggling to decipher your nugget of wisdom, are you implying that community relays are good because they can charge people to join the community?

j 2y ago

Sorry for the obscurity

I'm saying that power is a natural consequence of being valuable to people. A good relay will have power in so far as people value it and that's ok.

j 2y ago

The obvious correlate is that many people will find value in their relay blocking spam for them

splinter 2y ago

Thanks for clarifying. I think the issue with relays blocking spam is you only get the benefits if you limit yourself to those relays. I don't think network islands are good for Nostr in general and for their users in particular.

I think that there are many other ways in which relays can provide value, like being reliable, offering data retention services, not banning you for your speech, etc.

Ultimately relays are back-end databases and there's only so much coin someone is willing to fork over that. A model where relays are free is feasible, they're very light on resources and there are examples from the past where this has worked, see large IRC networks. IRC servers play no part in filtering channel content either.

j 2y ago

Your assumption is wrong. You can use the spam blocking relay for some things and look at spammy relays for others. You can just have both amd get the best of each for whatever context makes sense.

splinter 2y ago

Be specific, can you still see notes from spammy relays or not? And if you can still see them, are you still getting spammed with unwanted notes or not?

j 2y ago

Sure. You see the notes from spammy relays but only when you want to.

For example, you can use a client like get-tao.app to look at the spamiest notes possible (from anon accounts, the only barrier to post is POW) or you can use your insular ingroup client when you only want to talk to fellow turkish rug enthusiasts.

Easy to imagine clienta that would allow you to seamlessley switch between the two contexts

splinter 2y ago

Ok, so we're agreed that you do have to be isolated on the insular group in order to avoid the spammy notes, but you're proposing that being able to easily switch to spammy relays solves for that.

I suppose when the turkish rug enthusiast relay goes down, we take a break from talking about turkish rugs? What if it never comes back?

And why can't both spam and communities be solved at a client level to achieve the same thing?

j 2y ago

The group can have multiple relays, obviously.

j 2y ago

They could too, more options is better