Subnostr

Fundamentally on the same page as you but ptsd from the burn of enthusiasm from the mid 90s lingers.

As nostr grows will we see a facebook/google/vc team come out with a client/relay combo for the masses? KYC/content censorship becomes the norm and alternative clients banned under tough regulation. Us rebels then sidelined into the dark corners again. I'm aware of the argument that they can't touch us, nostr is uncensorable etc but we pretty much thought that in the early 90s too.

Are some clients/relays already monetising/manipulating our data now?

Will clients ban images of Xi Jinping, as midjourney AI have done, with the justification that users in china can therefore use the product?

I'm not trying to be negative, I'm genuinely interested in thinking through how nostr with lightning and dare I say maybe even some other BTC L2 like fedimints or drivechains will move forward.

mleku 2y ago

if they use the protocol but don't retain the openness, is it really nostr?

you could have said the same exact thing about http/s comparing the late 90s openness (not even encrypted mostly!) to now.

the expression 'world wide web' once had the same connotations of freedom.

it was in contrast to things like AOL and Compuserv silos of the 80s and 90s.

don't despair - we are making sure that they don't get the same monopoly on software distribution that would be critical to strangling free relays and clients.

and by the way, this is going to, by definition, extend to web browsers, capturing them is going to be easy, relatively speaking, once they capture the githubs and atlassians etc.

personally, i can see even linux and git itself being targets of regulatory/oligarchy capture as well.

so, yeah, we are already on the case, doing what we can.

with all the scum and villainy around teh internet, it can be hard for those with funds to identify those with the vision, ethics and capacity to build the solutions to this kind of capture, so it takes time for the chaff to be shaken out and the resources gotten to those who are going to do the right thing.

but the only way for it to happen is to prove it with some real solutions deployed on one's own back. this is where i am at in my work currently.

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Discussion

SovereigntyQuest 2y ago

Good to hear that. I salute your work🫡. Tell us more about your ideas about browsers, that's interesting. Are you thinking we see nostr based browsers in some form? As a protocol I imagine nostr can expand to all aspects of future internet, right? Now we just have to find a way around those pesky ISPs.

mleku 2y ago

yes, absolutely there should be nostr browsers. most of them will be built on top of the electron chrome engine of course, and this makes embedding regular web pages easier, and apps that use other GUI systems (gtk, qt) will likely system web views in a similar way.

getting around ISPs is not gonna be an easy one because they are thoroughly embedded with the government regulations. they opened the monopolies up in the 80s, breaking up the telephone/telegraph/post government companies and then opening those all up to competition, we are still quite a long way from having any realistic chance of people managing the bulk of the last mile of internet access at a community level, and really, the backbones are always going to be managed by specialists, same as specialists in road building build the roads.

it will just be a matter of market forces and activist users using their power to vote with their feet to concentrate demand high enough to yield such breakthroughs.

small, mostly autonomous regions like here in Madeira are places where this has a greater chance of catching on. that's why it is one of the places that is rising in this way, Boracay in the phillipines also has some potential for going this road with the very active LN activity there.

SovereigntyQuest 2y ago

Another thought.....How do you foresee users being able to "don't trust, verify" when it comes to choosing clients/relays as we grow?

mleku 2y ago

it's a thorny problem. it's going to hinge entirely upon reputation and identity authentication as far as the average user is concerned, that's, unfortunately, how humans manage the division of labor, leadership is our vulnerability.

as for whether it is practical for the big silos to adopt the small, horizontal model at all, that remains to be seen. i'd say it will end up being similar to CDNs et al, with distributed databases enabling massive relays with single DNS names.

this is the sort of detail that will be important in the "verify" thing.