Subnostr

Every user should host their own static content.

Setting up such a service provider should be single-click easy (no harder than signing in to nostr), and either free (if you do it on your own metal) or requiring of whatever minimal monthly cost the cloud provider of your choice charges.

Whether you choose local or remote, redundancy (backups) should be just as easy to opt-into (again, free if you provide the compute/disk, fee if someone else is providing it).

Not only does that completely remove the “but who’s gonna provide this and how?!” problem, but it also removes the content moderation problem. if users are hosting their own files, the liability stays with them.

Reply to this note

Please Login to reply.

Discussion

the axiom 1y ago

Every user? No, that would not be reasonable. Users can cluster their stuff into a bunch of different providers.

vinney...axkl 1y ago

You might be right. But go there with me: why is it not reasonable for users to host their own content?

🇵🇸 whoever loves Digit 1y ago

Most users don't have much infrastructure

vinney...axkl 1y ago

Do they need much?

Maybe if you're Kanye or something. But the vast majority of people don't need to worry about a global audience. And if they do, they'll be able to deal with that "problem"

🇵🇸 whoever loves Digit 1y ago

Strange that you're acting like you're not familiar with the internet

When the people with the infrastructure don't host content for the people without infrastructure, the people without infrastructure don't have a voice

See also: old school TV and radio

This is another thing I'm amazed at how it's hard for you to wrap your head around

If you're going to run relays that don't host my content then please make sure first you have assassinated the president or taken other actions to protect me from the FCC and allow me to have similar infrastructure on equal footing with you as a fellow member of our democracy so we can have more of the talking kind of democracy and less of the shooting kind

vinney...axkl 1y ago

I'm talking about large files, not notes.

If you want to host and distribute a 10GB pirated version of Shrek 2 on your own infrastructure, be my guest. But I don't owe it to you to host and distribute that for you out of my own pocket.

Likewise if you start posting 1000 gifs a day.

🇵🇸 whoever loves Digit 1y ago

If you have a lot of infrastructure and you haven't done anything to protect me from the people stopping me from doing the same, and I don't have enough food for both of us, why should I go malnourished instead of letting you die?

Do you grow food?

🇵🇸 whoever loves Digit 1y ago

What about homeless people, who neither have much infrastructure, nor can afford much food? If a homeless person makes a movie, you're ok with them being at risk of their work being lost before it enters the cultural record and starts being preserved by people, because you're allowed to have sufficient infrastructure for all your own files but the homeless can only afford solid hosting for text?

vinney...axkl 1y ago

If someone wants to provide a free image server for homeless people's movies, I hope they will. Maybe I'll even do it, if I have the extra money.

What do you mean by "the cultural record"? Who's cultural record? If you just mean their own, then yes whoever made the movie will have it in his own "cultural record", and any friends he can show it to.

But whyshould this person be given free resources and donated labor to have their movie inserted into someone ELSE's cultural record? What privilege does this filmmaker have that no matter how much people like or dislike the movie, it should end up - with it's rent paid out of others people's pockets - in some larger record than his own?

🇵🇸 whoever loves Digit 1y ago

I bet there will be at least one brilliant AI movie written and carefully sculpted by a homeless person and then lost to time. Could even be you or me, you never know.

But not everyone has empathy so I focus on the brutal reality of how this shit is gonna end up.

"Ballot or bullet, you better choose one."

When Killer Mike wrote that sentence, he was mainly saying every individual must uphold their duty as a member of a democracy, and if they truly feel ballots are not a way to make any difference, then they must be ready to fight.

In the case of people who own servers or can afford to host all their content on the cloud or whatever, these are the people who control communication infrastructure. The choice between "ballot or bullet" isn't just individual when you control communication infrastructure. The holders of a centralized, censored communication infrastructure must choose between the ballot or the bullet for which type of votes they would like cast and counted in general, not only in their own case. If you'd like to decide winners by counting ballots instead of bullets, and you own a server or can afford all the cloud hosting you can think of uses for, then you must try not to let that movie be lost to time whether you care about the movie or the person or not.

vinney...axkl 1y ago

We agree. If someone owns some infrastructure, they can CHOOSE to host someone else's content, for free, for whatever reason they like (culture, democracy, empathy, etc).

But now you are talking about an individual's sovereign infrastructure and their own individual choices - which is literally the same thing I'm saying.

🇵🇸 whoever loves Digit 1y ago

We only half agree. I'm saying I'm a commie and I will look down on anyone who sees communication infrastructure as sovereign individual property in an era where it's got bullshit centralized censorship going on and everyone should be focused on solving that. Furthermore, we're going into world war 3 and all this bullshit censorship is ultimately people choosing to fight because they can't handle hearing each other's ideas to solve differences in life.

vinney...axkl 1y ago

I'll choose to focus on the half where we do agree and ignore everything else. After all, I'm a sovereign individual and I am free to do so :D

I'm going to doubly-ignore your "everyone should..." recommendations. No thanks, I'll do what I like.

🇵🇸 whoever loves Digit 1y ago

You're having cognitive dissonance or something. Get a grip.

vinney...axkl 1y ago

I don't have a responsibility to you unless I choose to. Whether about hard drive access or anything else.

I am choosing to uphold the voluntary responsibility of "keep answering about image hosting", but since we're not talking about that anymore....

🇵🇸 whoever loves Digit 1y ago

You fail to wrap your head around the simple premise I'm explaining.

When you control communication infrastructure, and you use that control to limit democratic discourse, you are increasing the other kind of democracy. It's an inherent reality of living in a physical world with other humans.

🇵🇸 whoever loves Digit 1y ago

And we do all have responsibility to each other as humans - that's why I hope you don't put yourself in a position to starve to death because other people's file sizes hurt your fee fees.

vinney...axkl 1y ago

Well this is easy now: I disagree.

I _prefer_ if people do nice things for each other, but nobody is obligated to do so (what if they refuse? Kill em? Lock em up?)

🇵🇸 whoever loves Digit 1y ago

Nobody is coming after private server owners, much less random cloud storage customers. Most people don't care about petty issues like that, and even to someone like me who does care, it's still a petty issue. However, I think we're right smack at the brink of a big population collapse and everyone's choices impact. Petty shit like this will cause indirect consequences, hence the obligation, not with any direct consequences attached.

vinney...axkl 1y ago

I am not controlling things for anyone else.

Everyone controls their own stuff.

Literally the opposite of "someone else controls my stuff", you see? I run my own relay; you do not run my relay. You can't touch my communication infrastructure.

The problem you are pointing to is "what about people who cannot afford stuff to control". Yes, that is a **different** problem.

🇵🇸 whoever loves Digit 1y ago

If you have an online server or pay lots of cloud server bills, you're in on the global scheme to control communication infrastructure. It's moved from TV and radio to the internet but it's still the same thing - give those who are part of the club a platform, ban enemies from the platform, give the platform extremely imbalanced impact over public discussion partly by pretending it's much more inclusive and representative of the general public than it really is (hiding the censorship and exclusion as much as possible).

Again, if people want sovereign property that's also communication infrastructure, it would be best to work in a team where one person assassinates the president and the others fund the servers, condone the assassination on the basis that people who can't afford centralized online storage are banned from storing and transmitting their own shit, and challenge any attempts to shut them down on a first amendment basis, so that the servers can operate without the operators being in on the censorship.

Nobody has done that, so server operators are basically just a textbook example of typical petrodollar transactions saying "I'm so ready for the mass deaths we're heading for, I'm not even thinking for 2 seconds about where my money goes."

🇵🇸 whoever loves Digit 1y ago

I meant private server operators in particular here. A much easier approach is to just not see your communication infrastructure as sovereign property because you haven't earned it with sovereign authority since your group doesn't have anyone willing to take one for the team by assassinating the president to assert your right to sovereign communication infrastructure.

vinney...axkl 1y ago

What is this assassinating the president thing you keep reverting to? I'm missing this point, but you keep making it everywhere, so it seems important.

And who is "my group"? I'm me.

🇵🇸 whoever loves Digit 1y ago

Without a group, you definitely cannot claim sovereignty over communication infrastructure in this day and age. I have zero faith in one individual's ability to BOTH assassinate the president AND keep a server online indefinitely. I also can't think of any other possibilities where one of the other possible ways to exert sovereignty would be compatible with keeping a server online for one person. If you're only one person, you must just be using the shared communication infrastructure that belongs to everyone, where everyone needs help overthrowing the saboteurs running it.

vinney...axkl 1y ago

You keep saying "give". what do you mean "give"? "give a platform"?

How about you think about "building a platform", and stop thinking in terms of who is giving who what with what permissions. You're on a permissionless network and you're obsessing over who allows what...

TAKE control of a sovereign platform, if you want. nobody is stopping you. Set up a server in your closet, put a nostr relay on it, become the system you want to see in the world. Provide the Shrek 2 hosting service to the homeless. build your commune!

🇵🇸 whoever loves Digit 1y ago

The people who built the platforms you're using gave them to you and largely ban me from them. Nostr is an attempt to resist this.

I have time to think about building platforms AND think about who is giving who what, with what permissions. These topics matter and are worth time.

There are many people with guns stopping me from "taking control of a sovereign platform." Look up the FCC. You're sucking big tech dick for the people who use that tech to do censorship.