The problem is the nature of what Signal is hiding away there is different in kind.
What is the point of Nostr without relay awareness? It'd be like abstracting away the flavours at Baskin Robbins. You come, you get Vanilla, and if you ask then someone will take you to the back to see the other 31 flavours. Makes no sense.
If do you that then just go IROH and WebTransport for the stack.
You remind me of a friend, who takes no privacy precautions online, and his argument "why care if they know everything about us anyway?"
It's a nuanced subject and I believe there is a sweet spot between UX and censorship resistance
I think I'd like your friend.
For me it's not about a sweet spot between UX and censorship resistance. Tying relays to censorship resistance exclusively was a bad idea from the start. There's so much more to relays.
Also without maximal user awareness of relays then I can't see what the point of Nostr's underlying stack is. Websockets for what?
There's a more to relays, sure, what does that have to do?
Because coming at relays a different way means relays can be the first thing in every user onboarding flow. Like the very first. Which they should be. But super digestible.
And if they are the first thing then this whole sweet-spot spectrum doesn't really exist anymore.
Basically if we have to find out where relays sit on some kind of sweet-spot UX spectrum then we've already lost. The entire concept of Nostr rests not only on relays in a technical sense but on users being aware of them too. Like that is the most fundamental thing, by a long, long shot. It's almost the entire justification.
so according to you, the sweet spot is where the user doesn't have to think about relays at all?
Of course not
if users don't have to think about relays upfront, they'll probably never think about them. that's why i believe every nostr client should ask for the relays to connect to on first launch.
defaults are centralizing, so many people won't change them.
how you make onboarding as smooth as possible is a matter of good UI. nostr:nprofile1qqs84k6jpsav0jmdeqjn2zxlpnsajaw6f8l0m2d4e9t8gjsyn53s4nspzamhxue69uhhyetvv9ujuumfv9khxarj9e3k7mgpz3mhxue69uhhyetvv9ujuerpd46hxtnfduq3vamnwvaz7tmjv4kxz7fwdehhxarj9e3xzmnyhat8ky seems to be doing an amazing job with 0xchat lite. users should be *aware* of what is going behind the scenes, they deserve to know, let's give them free will.
making decisions for other people is always bad unless they're not able to, and this is not rocket science, everyone uses the internet nowadays and has some idea of how it works. btw, nostr:nprofile1qqsyvrp9u6p0mfur9dfdru3d853tx9mdjuhkphxuxgfwmryja7zsvhqpz9mhxue69uhkummnw3ezuamfdejj7qgswaehxw309ahx7um5wghx6mmd9uq3wamnwvaz7tmkd96x7u3wdehhxarjxyhxxmmd9ukfdvuv are any UI changes in that regard coming to outbox amethyst?
Fully agree. If we’re going to put relays behind advanced settings then we know that less than 1% of new users will have anything to do with that setting.
Ergo, as you say, the default relays will be the forever relays.
Which leads to the question: What are the default relays?
To which there are only bad answers.
Right, like no-one uses VPNs because that's not the default in any OS.
No amount of UI in your face will motivate you to understand what a relay is, it will just frustrate and you will put whatever just to get by.
People motivated enough will find the setting.
There's a lot of reasons why relay variety and supply in an open protocol will thrive.
That doesn't acknowledge how fundamental relays are to nostr. It's in the name! VPNs are not some fundamental element of MacOS or Linux.
Without relays absolutely front and center, you have to ask: Why Nostr? If relays are just a credible exit then choose another protocol that is way faster, and way more consistent, and that also offers a credible exit?
What's the answer? For users for whom relays are some shadowy thing that they may or may not ever discover, why Nostr?
