engagement buying will be a constant problem
webs of trust / verifiable reputations are probably the best way to mitigate it
Discussion
I worried about the fake accounts I’ve been seeing and reporting too, just saw a fake Ross account. It was trying to collect zaps by reposting what he had said. Sad.
freedom protocols build scalable trust
nostr:npub1u5njm6g5h5cpw4wy8xugu62e5s7f6fnysv0sj0z3a8rengt2zqhsxrldq3 👆🏻
Is that maybe just a for of payed Advertising, but I guess you get the money back in your own wallet, so probably not. And you can rince and repeat.
Nostr is just like the real world , people will naturally gravitate toward signals they can trust.
People buying engagement are verifying their bad reputation.
🎯
And hopefully, the people in my grapevine who are paying attention will be able and willing to flag the bad actors as such. (This would be an example of what I mean by explicit contextual trust attestations.)
How would you flag something like that? So we need a report option for "paid shill"?
You could use a NIP-56, kind 1984 event to report a pubkey using “paid shill” as a custom report type.
Your personalized WoT relay could gather all reports with this type (or similar types), discarding reports authored by pubkeys not in your WoT to mitigate gaming the system. If paid shills becomes a problem that people actually care about, they can start using this system.
Hmmmm
#asknostr
💯% agree
This is why we need explicit contextual trust attestations IN ADDITION TO proxy indicators of trust. If someone I trust flags someone else as doing specifically the bad thing you mention, I’ll know not to trust that person in that context.
Verifiable reputations? Sure. Might help a bit.
But it's tinkering at the edges.
The core issue: we're optimizing for the wrong things online. Engagement, popularity, scale. Often hollow.
Forget that. It's a distraction.
Focus on depth. On authenticity. On being genuinely useful or interesting.
Stop measuring breadth. Start noticing substance.
Build things for the people who appreciate real. Reward that.
Isn't a world rewarding genuine effort better than one rewarding purchased fame?
Perhaps engagement will not be ultimate incentive in NOSTR interactions.
Can we talk more about this please? 🙏