Nostr Web Client

14 TB of notes served from the damus relay in March.

Over time, I think 2 things will (or should) happen if we want nostr to be scalable to user bases as large as Twitters and beyond.

1. Most relays will become either paid or ad-supported. For the latter, I know this is a big topic, but there are ways to do ad-supported without it turning into the garbage you see on social networks today. There will of course still be a smaller number of free volunteer relays, but those will probably be the minority.

2. As I love to rant about, a combination of NIP-65/Gossip on the content discovery side, and automatic selecting of relays to post to based on uptime + server load of known relays, in order to evenly distribute the load.

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Discussion

Pablo Xannybar 2y ago

Or perhaps some relays can use the Stacker News model.

Pay a sat to post a note.

For spammers this will quickly become pricey especially as the network grows.

For regular users it's a tiny tip to the relay runner.

I imagine an implementation where you can choose your relays per note so you could dedicate your highest quality content to those relays and your shitposting can be on the free ones.

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phil 2y ago

I think over time we will also see paid relays needing to move to either a recurring subscription model or a pay per event type model as I don’t see the current one off payments as being viable long term as relays need to scale up.

I’m not entirely sure how ad supported relays will really work, it would be easy to have clients that just don’t display ads that the relays return.

Clockwerk 2y ago

Given the notion of running actual stores via ostr/lightning- perhaps a model of sellers paying for a nostr shopping experience and relays receiving a cut of sales.

Ivo 2y ago

Ad supported relay is a big shit. The best thing at nostr is that is ad free

Andrew 2y ago

That’s how it is currently because of the smaller scale. Paid subscription relays will be able to scale without ads, but if we want nostr to be used at a scale like Twitter, the majority of casual users have absolutely zero interest in paying a subscription for social media, and so ads will be needed to sustain most unpaid relays.

Andrew 2y ago

I don’t like it either, but it’s the reality of it as far as I can tell

Ivo 2y ago

We are not casual users my friend

Andrew 2y ago

haha nope, enthusiasts like us are more likely to go the paid route of course

Adam Ritter | rbr.bio 2y ago

I don't want to select relays to pay. I want my client to do it automatically.

j 2y ago

This seems wrong on so many levels but here’s two questions to better understand it:

- Why wouldn’t a client just drop the ads?

- Why don’t we just convince people to pay like they do for newspapers/magazines?

Andrew 2y ago

- Clients could definitely work around the ads if it’s easy to distinguish regular notes from ads

- They’ve gotten used to social networks being free and ad supported, they see newspapers and magazines as media, so they’re more willing to pay for what they perceive as professionally made content. Harder to convince someone to pay for a social network since the content is just random people posting, in their eyes.

Andrew 2y ago

These are my observations of how casual users behave btw, this isn’t my personal view of social networks.

j 2y ago

- What do you mean by “if” every note is signed 🤔 it will be completely obvious

- OK but, obviously, that’s just an assumption in your end right?

Andrew 2y ago

Yeah these are all assumptions/predictions on my end based on my observations of casual users on social networks.

Andrew 2y ago

I’d love to be wrong about this!

j 2y ago

No offense, but I’m starting to think you don’t have an answer to my first question. Relays can’t show ads because they can’t fake signatures.

Andrew 2y ago

It would probably have to be some sort of new event kind that allows relays to sprinkle ads within regular notes. Would still be easy for clients to just not allow those event kinds if they choose.

Andrew 2y ago

What are your thoughts on how nostr could sustain a user base the size of twitters?

j 2y ago

This is an open question and it’s good to speculate about it. But ads, at least the way you’re thinking about them, is just a bad answer. Detracts from the conversation.

Andrew 2y ago

shooting down ideas as “bad answer” while adding no answers of your own isn’t a conversation, it’s classic online snark. leave that shit on reddit lol

j 2y ago

bro, sorry to be blunt but your “idea” is stupid. clients aren’t going to implement a new note kind just so relays can spam their users with ads. if anything clients need to be better at removing spam.

I think there’s lots of good ideas and if you took a second to read through my timeline that would be obvious, but here’s a couple:

- “uncle jim” relays like wss://anon.computer where some tech savvy person whitelists their friends and family

- dropbox model: free but you get bugged over dm when your “storage space” is running out and asked to upgrade

- the pay to post relays we already have

Andrew 2y ago

and the last 20+ years of social network data has shown that while enthusiast/heavy users of social networks are willing to pay for the service, the vast majority of casual users have zero interest in doing so, and are willing to put up with ads as the compromise.

So if we want nostr to expand beyond enthusiast users into a global social network the size of twitter, hoping casual users will miraculously be open to paying isn’t gonna cut it.

Btw, if you’re going to so quickly resort to lack of social awareness with “nope bad answer” and “stupid idea”, then feel free to ignore my posts and keep the autistic outbursts out the replies.

j 2y ago

lol

Moss 2y ago

Agree

balas 2y ago

the difference in nostr is the ability to not see ads is just switch to another client, so the ad ridden client needs to have a really powerful set of features that no one else has to be able to get away with it, in other words, social media ads are dead, what you'll actually see more is "influencers" shilling shit, because they have the audience. so IMO, the model will switch to full on endorsement ads, and those will popup on your feed because you follow those accounts.

Andrew 2y ago

yeah, I can see things like that, getting a percentage of zaps sent to posts, referral links, when products are shared, etc

j 2y ago

lmao, so clients would have to opt-in to ads by implementing some new events kind?

I don’t see why a client would ever do that.

elsat 2y ago

I think of relays as similar to telco provider. Pay, and you have service. Don’t pay and you are cut off.

Iris 2y ago

How can we build the ecosystem so that the user paid model is the default choice?

What needs to be in place?

The ad model will win if we are not putting our act together and choosing to do it differently this time.

People pay if it's convenient enough. Ask any Netflix or Spotify users vs. torrenting content.

Adam Ritter | rbr.bio 2y ago

One easy way to pay for relays is to be able to know how to do it. I would happily pay, but there's no ,,pay for relays'' button in my client. It could just distribute money to all relays that I'm following and take a part of it, and it would be a subscription.

Also I want half ads for that money!