Subnostr

I've been noticing this bot/spammer today. This is the problem with free relays. Bots & spammers can easily connect to free relays and start their spamming.

There will always be free relays but relays that care about keeping Nostr free from spam should charge a fee just to be part of the relay. It doesn't even need to be a big fee. That would clear up the spam and make it too expensive for bots to operate.

Free relays are going to become full of trash as Nostr becomes more popular. Paid relays are the future.

You can see which relays the spammer is connected to and using to spam. I noticed that after I deleted the relay from my relay settings I was not able to see the spammers post anymore. The spammer seems to be connecting to different free relays and spamming but it is also using multiple accounts which makes it harder to beat.

I added many different free relays to my relay settings to test and understand relays. I'm starting to understand how relays are important and will be important as Nostr gets more popular.

Boycott the relays that allow spammers and don't clean up the spam fast.

#spammers

#spam

#bots

#relays

#nostr

Kurt 1y ago

Ok, thanks for the tip. Can you recommend good paid relays?

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Discussion

mar 1y ago

I'd like to know the same thing. In fact I've only seen like 2 paid relays and there doesn't seem to be a list anywhere.

nostr.wine seems to be the main one but they don't seem to advertise their prices and I'm not a member of them.

I tried some of the relay software and there doesn't seem to be an easy way to delete spam or see reports. The relay software is definitely lacking features for administrators.

In sure eventually we will seem improvements but charging micro transactions will definitely solve the problem.

I charge 0.10 cents to register on my forum and it completely got rid of spam. I could even go lower.

Stay hopeful

Kurt 1y ago

Ok, I'll look into it, I understand that free relays cannot keep up with the massive requests of blocking spam accounts, considering anyone can freely and quickly create an nsec and username. Paid relays may indeed be a solution with micro payments, I am certainly open to this.

Anyway this spam attack is very annoying, and I have no doubt that the Nostr community with its fantastic devs will have an answer to this .

I am fairly new to the space. Are such spam attacks new or is this more common?

mar 1y ago

I'm not sure whether they can or cannot keep up with spam attacks. You'd have to ask them and see if they even care. I'm sure some of them just setup a relay and don't watch it while others are actively developing their relay software.

When you click on a relay you can see who runs it. Some of the relays don't even have a contact information.

Yes it seems to be common. I see spam all the time on the global feed. I'm sure it will be fixed in the future. Nostr is fairly new.

Kurt 1y ago

This is the first time I see such a spam attack. I'm using the relays that Primal suggests by default, I suspect Primal is keeping a close eye on all that, probably that's why it's quieter with me by now :-)