I see, that sounds sensible.
But I believe you've also mentioned a mechanism where if 5 people I follow, block someone, that user will also be blocked for me. Has that stopped?
Discussion
Correct. So separate from the automated anti-spam filter (which is an Amethyst thing), there is the usual Nostr reporting system with NIP-56.
In that system, people can report you for Spam, Scams, Explicit Content, Impersonation, and/or Illegal Behaviour. Anyone can report you or your posts at any time. Reports are saved on relays and might last forever. Many relays use that information to delete posts they don't want on their servers.
Your reports only affect the people that are following you. When you report content, you add a warning sign for your followers. BUT that warning sign only shows up if 5+ accounts that a user follows reported the same note.
So, alone, a reporter cannot do much damage. But if there is some agreement among the people a user follows, that user will see a warning post that shows who, among the people he/she follows, reported the post and a "Show Anyway" button.
At that point, they can agree with their follows and also report that content or simply hide the reported user from their view entirely, OR they can disagree and report the reporter.
If the report is not for a post, but for a user, a similar 5-reports-among-follows happens. BUT, for users, we cap the report in 24hrs. So, if your user (and not a post) gets reported today, tomorrow the followers of the reporter will start seeing your posts without the warning again.
The reporting system does not hide posts from global feeds or chats, it's only between the user and the people that user follows.
For instance, I have 100s of reports on my user. Many of them were deleted by relays that evaluate reports. But I believe 108 are left out there. Those reports only affect the followers of the reporting accounts. Since they are mostly random accounts, it doesn't affect anyone.
Thank you for the explanation. I think it is mostly the 'reported users' which I find a bit confusing and iffy. But you are saying all clients do this? Seems pretty weird to me that a user would be hidden if they said something somewhat (seen as) controversial or unpopular, and pretty easy to abuse as a system to block/silence users if there ever were to be bad actors collaborating (in a worse case scenario). Or just a very realistic scenario you disagree with the personal or political opinions of 5 prominent users...? But this is protocol-wide you say? That makes me feel a bit hmmm something lol:/
Am I completely misreading this?? I'm mostly an egirl but I'm wearing my investigative journalist serious hat atm
Not any "5 prominent users" it must be 5 prominent a given user follows.
If the user agrees with those 5, then the user doesn't want to see it as well (it doesn't matter if it is a correct report or not).
If the user does not agree with those 5 prominent accounts, they can:
1. Report those 5 for misleading reporters (if the majority agrees then those 5 accounts won't be prominent for much longer),
2. They can unfollow those 5 (or just one of them)
3. They can follow the reported account (which then, like I said in the anti-spam explainer, removes any blocks to that user).
In general:
1. Users are free to post whatever they want.
2. Other users are free to report whatever they want.
3. Followers of those users can then agree or disagree and take action as well.
The reason I added prominent users is that most users will follow prominent Devs or other sorts of users which are recommended, there is also some cases where a client will automatically have a new user follow people from the start. If these prominent users had the same political opinion and didn't want to see the content of an opposing political opinion (or personal opinion of whatever eg) they are making a blocklist/shadowban, whether intentionally or not. And as a user you might agree with this actually. But it is quite difficult to undo or even notice, especially as a casaula user, even moreso when you are not even aware this is happening, and in fact nostr is sort of touted as not doing this. How is this different from the vibecheck we were lampooning BlueSky about?
Sorry, I think I am more pondering now lol
> But it is quite difficult to undo or even notice,
You will see a huge red button on the screen. So, don't worry. Everyone will see when that happens. That's the whole point. The entire reporting system is public and can be analyzed by anyone else. The bigger the account, the bigger the loss for misreporting.
Maybe it is a glitch in either the spamfikter or the reported user function, I don't know... But I have had to unblock people by following them. In one case I only noticed cos I have the pingstr thing set up which alerts me of DMs via a telegram message, and they happened to message me. There was no big red button, no indication at all. There's been a handful of people I've seen to date, and it's just people noticing and alerting. For example plebstr was showing me these user replies whilst amethyst was not. There was also no 'show anyway' option or anything. Which makes me wonder if amethyst is doing something different (?)
Yep, if any account that you don't follow has sent repeated messages to you, it will go into the anti-spam filter.
This is a very typical spam we see in Nostr (random accounts messaging everyone, all the time). Once you follow them, you tell the app knows that you trust the account and thus it doesn't go to the spam filter.
In that sense, it's quite similar to the Gmail Spam folder for marketing accounts. Repeat a few times and it all ends up there.
Is there a way to check what has already been marked as spam and hidden?
Yep, Security Filters in the left drawer of the app
I've come across a few people blocked for me which aren't populated in the security filter. Just as an fyi
Followers or random people?
I've seen both examples 🤔
Then send me over when it happens. It's almost always duplicated messages.
Yes, I will do. Well, hopefully I won't have to lol but I will if I see it. Thanks for your answers.
I'm still going to start a prog/dungeonsynth band called Amethyst Shadowban, the name is too good. But you are welcome to join it;)
As long as that helps develop systems to monitor users and their reports, it should be good.
I think Vitor is watching this and will improve results overtime. Nothing perfect. He may implement a switch off for users to opt out but 99% is really good
Yes, I am grateful he answered my questions, even tho I'm just a lil silly goose casual user lol. I like to think he (I mean like everyone else) has good intentions.
In these cases it wasn't repeated messages. They were replies (one reply each) and then one DM, (from a normal person lol). I can only assume they had been reported for unpopular opinions by people I follow. But there was no 'reveal post' or any alert or indication in any of the scenarios I've come across. (Apart from using plebstr as a sort of amethyst plugin to reveal these posts). I'd like to think these things can be less common. I'm also not that keen on having to follow people just to see their replies lol. I wonder if there is a solution to this (?)
It's also possible that Amethyst is not finding the message on relays. Did you find the accounts in the security filter session in the left drawer? If they were never there and you never saw a red button, then it is something else (like a slow relay or a relay amethyst cannot connect to)