To those who dislike the idea of paid relays, what's your proposed solution? And don't say "everyone running their own relay", because my 25 years of experience tell me that will *never* happen. Some will do it, but the vast majority will not. So how do relays recoup the cost without ads and without being paid? I'm genuinely interested in your solution ideas.
Discussion
The other part missing with the “everyone will run their own relay” is that if you’re popular, even if you are the only writer on your relay you will end up needing a beefy infrastructure to support all the readers. Expecting every individual to be able to pull that off is a pipe dream. Much harder than running a bitcoin node.
I can see running your own small relay for private family-and-friends networks. That would certainly work. But for a large-scale network looking to compete with the likes of Twitter you need serious hardware and bandwidth, and that's expensive.
Exactly. Personally I’m less worried about paid relays and more worried about who’s paying for the free ones (long term). The “if you’re not paying for the product, you are the product” adage.
What would you build if Twitter didn’t exist?
I think there will be clients that offer relays with ads or as part of a subscription fee, might even be the Twitter company.
wss://elonsplebs.twitter.com
My issue with ad-driven relays is that they invariably result in algos that drive people to the most contentious content in an effort to increase engagement and grow revenue. That's how Facebook and Twitter became the hellscapes they are now. So while I'm not against advertising in principle, with social networks it's never worked well.
I think that most relays will be ran by people who are just generous.
How much would it cost to run a relay? Like $15 a month?
And If it's an exceedingly popular relay, it wouldn't be hard to just ask for donations.
Like, relays are just websites. It's the same idea.
Most people don't make people pay to use websites. You can go to a website for free and they work just fine
Those websites cost money, and those bills are paid through ads or product sales. The websites aren't "free". If anything is "free" *you* are the product. Same with relays. The hardware and bandwidth and time to maintain cost a lot of money for large-scale enterprises. Nostr is no different.
Scuttlebutt basically works with personal relays and inter-relay gossip. That and the linked list signed log are the main differences between ssb and nostr. It does work but honestly it takes a lot of processing time and is a pain in the ass. I know, I built one. I think there could be unpaid but community limited access relays too. Host a relay for your friends.
You could have the relays become self sufficient with free energy and in turn sell the excess energy to pay for the relay cost.
Wonderful discussion everyone. So many good ideas flowing in this thread. I'm off to bed but look forward to seeing what else got posted when I wake up. Goodnight for now! 🛌 #[1]
Great discussion on paid relays.
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Paid relays and paid image/video hosts are an ideal market based solution. If you don't like the price or quality of service you can choose one of their competitors.