Nostr Web Client

Got a #nostr noob question: reading info about relays and i see that the nodes can “choose” to store notes. 👀 Not sure what that means. How exactly are those “choices” made? Are they done programmatically or by human intervention? Also, how is scalability handled as the storage data on relays as the storage load grows? It seems that once daily notes scale to the millions, the single relay node storage capacity will run out very fast. Is mitigation for this already planned in? #dev #relay #notes

MichaelJ 11mo ago

It's all up to the relay operators. Operators choose what note kinds to allow (or not), how to store them, how long, whether to respect deletion requests, etc.

Different relay operators set up different infrastructures. Some are free, some are paid, some are invite-only. Some relay operators have distributed nodes under the same domain name to provide optimized response times by routing you to a node near you geographically. Some relays even sync and share data with others to better reflect the overall state of Nostr's network.

The relays are quickly becoming a rich landscape, and they are, IMO, one of the most exciting parts of protocol development right now. nostr:nprofile1qqs99d9qw67th0wr5xh05de4s9k0wjvnkxudkgptq8yg83vtulad30gpp4mhxue69uhkummn9ekx7mqpz3mhxue69uhhyetvv9ujuerpd46hxtnfduq32amnwvaz7tmgd9ehgtnwdaehgu3wd3skueqyluj3x, nostr:nprofile1qqs8eseg5zxak2hal8umuaa7laxgxjyll9uhyxp86c522shn9gj8crspz9mhxue69uhkummnw3ezuamfdejj7qgjwaehxw309ahx7um5wgerztnrdakj7qgkwaehxw309a3x2an09ehx7um5wgcjucm0d5hsvlnggv, and nostr:nprofile1qqsyeqqz27jc32pgf8gynqtu90d2mxztykj94k0kmttxu37nk3lrktcpz9mhxue69uhkummnw3ezuamfdejj7qg3waehxw309ahx7um5wghxcctwvshsz9nhwden5te0d4kx26m49eex2ctv0yhxcmmv9ume3twc are all doing exciting work in this space.

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Discussion

ᴛʜᴇ ᴅᴇᴀᴛʜ ᴏꜰ ᴍʟᴇᴋᴜ 11mo ago

i totally disagree about things like respecting deletes and not honoring privilege in private message types tho, if a relay operator is not respecting that they are violating people's privacy, the other things, well, there's really no reason to not retain a user's data for at least the time they are paying for the service... this raises the topic of storage and traffic accounting and paying on this basis, something i think should be happening too

Big Barry Bitcoin 11mo ago

Paid relays will be clear about what they do, if you pay enough, they might even get audits to ease your mind. Free ones will do what they want.

Each note you post is like publishing a webpage online. https://archive.org/ is a cool website that scans the internet and archives everything it can. If you change the page, or if the site goes down, then these guys have historical records to look back on.

This is no different than public records of public events in libraries for example.

Remember that your posts are public. If you want private comms, use group chats on privacy focused apps like Signal, but then you aren't getting public reach. Tradeoffs. I use private chats to share personal photos, I don't do that here or on any social platform. Not even Instagram. I don't trust it not to feed my pics to AI and in the past I didn't trust them to not leak photos, sell them to advertisers, or take pictures of children and sell them to pedophiles. Not that they did any of those things, but I don't take risks I don't need to.

If you ask to delete your data, the relay can choose to behave like https://archive.org/ and say "no, it is a matter of public record" or say yes and do it, and a malicious relay could say yes and then keep it and sell it etc.

It is our responsibility to preserve our own privacy. There is no undo button in life. The undo button only existed when you were editing documents on your personal computer. Once we started doing things on the internet, the undo button could never truly exist anymore.

ᴛʜᴇ ᴅᴇᴀᴛʜ ᴏꜰ ᴍʟᴇᴋᴜ 11mo ago

i'm well aware of the issues which is why my focus is on building a relay that allows people to use it privately, instead of trusting telegram or signal or simplex or whatever else nonsense

what other people do is not my liability or responsibility, my relay has no configuration to either disable deletes or to not honor them or to re-save the deleted events, by design