If users can't choose their relays by themselves, we have not changed anything in social media.
Discussion
I find that's one of the biggest hurdles for people when first joining nostr
Yes!
I keep hearing people say they use Primal. But I use NOSTR.
I'm okay with someone saying that they use a certain platform. Most people didn't shill HTTP to average people, they shilled Netscape. Platforms will be more known than NOSTR. This is okay! Technology should fade into the background.
I used to hear the term: “can you Xerox 2 copies?” 🖨️
normies always gonna get brands and technology names mixed up. 😂
*everyone* does this. Xerox, Popsicle, Q-Tip, Band-Aid, Google, etc.
And it is correct to call Primal a platform rather than a Nostr client since the feed is centralised and it could potentially suffer from the same issues as other centralised platforms.
How is their feed centralized if they literally allow you to add relays AND switch caching servers?
Unless something has changed recently, it only uses the relays that you configure for writes. Reads are exclusively from the cache and therefore the cache can be manipulated in any way they want to. I verified this by blocking access to the cache IP with a firewall rule and the feed stops working.
I agree that switching cache servers is an option but at this point I’m not aware of any alternative independently run cache servers.
I keep hearing people say they use Fountain but I use PODCASTING 2.0.
Few.
I usually access NOSTR via Primal.
To the normie issue, though, when I posted my ‘goodbye, find me on Nostr’ FB post, tons of people asked if I got hacked 😂😂
Most primal users don’t know the difference 🤣
Correct. And in addition to this, clients should consider supporting a large pool of known relays and randomly assign them to new users. Then, allow users to go in and make changes, adding and removing relays at their leisure and using WoT indicators to help them navigate relays.
Love this idea.
we are so past needing to randomize like this, we have nip66 rolling out. you can run a nip66 agent to advertise your favorite relays and tag them with #wot or etc so people can search by tag or geocode or type of relay.
this doesn't help brand new users that don't understand technology. a client still has to choose relays for them one way or another. suggesting relays for them to use is still aiding them in making this choice.
It does though, if clients implement support for nip-66. Then users just type the domain where relays are hosted and they have a list of the public relays. This is as hard as typing "mycelium.social" into a box and clicking the relays you wish to browse regularly. Right now anyone can do this in a web browser without instructions.
The "hard part" is for clients to adapt to offering collections of relays, which Jumble (and another new client) have started doing, but those also don't support nip-66.
Jumble already supports NIP-66 🫡
My mistake! Looking good!
You clearly don't understand brand new users or non technical people. They don't know relay names. They don't even know what relays are! This makes everything more complicated for your average non technical user. You're talking about advanced options for advanced users.
That depends entirely on client implementation. These processes can be essentially automated by the community. Clients can become very flexible to cater to non-technical users.
If the client has popular/trending relays advertised and accessible at the click of a button, it's a non-issue. The same way clients recommend relays now.
This sounds highly technical
This is actually a brilliant idea 🤔
This, 100%
Way too many type of relays, the average user has no idea what all those terms even mean or how many relays they really need. Clients need to have a better ui/ux for relay settings, specialy Amethyst.
They will have to learn. Or none of this matters.
Then you won’t get mass adoption. Maybe that’s not the goal anyway.
This. It’s all super confusing and nobody seems to make any effort to explain anything in UI.
I advocated for UI helper tips more than a year ago and as far as I know there hasn’t been any progress at all.
We have the capacity to here on nostr, but I don't feel like we have a clear way to make it a meaningful choice with clear consequences. I'm still unclear on how to make a good decision on which relays to choose, and any time I've seen someone ask about it or asked myself, there's never really a clear answer. I've set Amethyst to use a bunch of relays in general, but I still haven't picked any for inbox/outbox or search, where using dozens isn't ideal, because I don't really understand the differences between relays that would make it a significant choice.
Is there really such a client?
is there a world where a client has its own built-in relay...and the notes you follow from npubs and you send frkm your npub are stored there? that way everyone has their own relay on their own device from the get go? im certain its not a good idea for some good,reason but curious 🤙
Twitter, as of today, is just a client with their own relay. And look where that took us to...
im sorry, i meant the relay is run on your local device via the downloaded client, not like a twitter or primal-esque setup where the client itself runs the relay. think like everyone has their own citrine relay from the get go that is sending / receiving notes. would that be a disaster?
In theory it could work, but other folks need to access your relay to download data. I don't think you would want that coming your phone all the time :)
ahh for sure, so comes back to you got a relay running on a server ( ideally your own but could be subscribed). in an built out outbox model world, are we all capable of just using our own relay and no one else's?
You're pretty close to describing a self-hosted ATProto PDS.
I like how in some NOSTR clients you can click on the relay and get information.
I think relays could zap people and get paying clients.
That said,
I've paid for relays and have totally forgotten who I paid for so I've lost sats.
Maybe a feature work be npub associated to paid services, if you want this.
We are were Linux was in 1997.
for FREEDOM
Indeed.
Not choosing the relays is "Custodial Nostr".
Not your relays, not your social network.
🫂
Every client lets users choose *some* relays themselves. So it will quickly devolve into:
-You aren't letting users choose their own relays
-Yes we are
-No you aren't
-Yes we are
if people don't run their own relay, we didn't changed anything on internet.
check out alienos and run your own relay, whitelist your friends, and connect to it using jumble by nostr:nprofile1qqsgzfdez8ksa9xmuvqg5zly3nl9e5xqkpvj8nllj9aw06ra4pqq3qcpzamhxue69uhhyetvv9ujumn0wd68ytnzv9hxgtcafn9rr:
https://github.com/dezh-tech/alienos
of course, there is a lot more options to run personal relay, soon ill make a document a liat of relays and explain their pros and cons and features. so you can pick one and run your own relay. just run a relay!!! 🫡
True facts.
If users can't choose their relays by themselves, we have not changed anything in social media.