Nostr Web Client

jleger2023 2y ago

👀🤯 THE MOST SPAMMING NOSTR RELAYS LIST

I put together a list of the most spamming relays to see if any particular relay(s) are the biggest source of the spam issues. As it turns out, there are 4 that are by far the worst offenders.

What I did was take the number of posts over the last 24 hours to the relay (as indexed in NostrGram) and divided that by the number of users for that relay. I keep stats on how many users each relay has, and rebuild those stats a couple of times a day.

As it turns out, the worst offenders BY FAR are:

**relay, post count (24 hrs), user count, posts/user (24 hours)**

wss://relay.nostr.bg, 74892, 6544, 11.4

wss://nostr-relay.digitalmob.ro, 65063, 194, 335.4

wss://nostr.drss.io, 56028, 467, 120

wss://nostr.einundzwanzig.space, 36742, 453, 81.1

Since paid relays are the most likely to reflect how often real people post on average, I checked the average of all the paid relays in terms of posts per user per day. They average 1.2 posts per user per day (the Damus relay also averages about 1.1 per day).

**The top 4 worst offenders average 140 posts per user per day.** 🤯

I am removing those 4 relays from NostrGram indexing effectively immediately, and I recommend you remove them from your read/write list as well to prevent performance issues on whatever client you use.

s/o to #[0] for suggesting I put together some metrics

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Discussion

signal_and_rage 2y ago

#[3]

I Satoshi with you 2y ago

Thank’s for the heads up 🫂🤙🏼

Strikerkid 2y ago

Do you lose who you are following or followers if you remove a relay?

🆃🅷🅰🆃 🆁🅴🅳 🅶🆄🆈 2y ago

in theory it shouldn't

Joe Milliken 2y ago

Excellent report! Thanks for sharing, I’ll be taking your advice of removing those relays immediately to see the impact.

But, I honestly don’t really care about my global feed, I find more people by digging through follow list and such

#[0]

₿anon👾 2y ago

thank you for this, been trying to find some solid data on relay performance

🆃🅷🅰🆃 🆁🅴🅳 🅶🆄🆈 2y ago

i'm not liking the idea of discussing creating a digital ghetto announced in public because the spammers might notice and simply swap relays, rendering the whole effort not only useless but also permanently tarnishing the reputation of the affected relays; on the other hand transparency is always appreciated

jleger2023 2y ago

It's the transparency I'm interested in. Because the spam issue is such a problem, it's important to understand where that's originating and to try and find a solution. It's not a "shame and shun" effort.

StackSats.IO 2y ago

Pretty sure #[4] runs nostr.bg which would be his strfry implementation. With the exception of Vida I believe the rest of the paid relays are nostream and that’s being used by a lot of free ones too.

Wonder if there are any tools that could be shared between implementations to fight spam?

Ivo 2y ago

Yes I run the nostr.bg realy, strfry has no possibility to filter spam or rate limit the writes at the moment. If somebody has an idea what is possible to be done, will do it.

🆃🅷🅰🆃 🆁🅴🅳 🅶🆄🆈 2y ago

yeah, my point was basically to inform the ops of the afflicted relays so they could silently limit the scope of these spam posts without outright banning the accounts (so they could keep spamming to the void without them even noticing) but all things considered this could effectively signify the beginning of shadowbannings and/or isolated instances like what you can see currently in mastodon (and one of the main reasons why it sucks so much ass). it's an interesting topic surely, and weighing the pros and cons of the various options should be considered with care

Cosanostra 2y ago

should ask before pointing and acuse them of "offending"

jleger2023 2y ago

Since cutting out the most spamming relays, the NostrGram database load dropped so much that I was able to double the number of relays that it's indexing without affecting performance at all. That guarantees even better relay coverage when you use Nostrgram. #[1]

Cosanostra 2y ago

You should ask first relay administrators is something is going wrong in their relays. That is why relay metadata info has a tag including nostr admin pubkey.

Cosanostra 2y ago

Pointing servers or its administrators for spam on nostr is not very polite. I am suspicious if you are doing this to promote yourself and nosgram.

I Satoshi with you 2y ago

Thank you Brother I NIPped those relays in the butt, gone forever

🤣🫂🤙🏼✊🏼

Fabio 2y ago

Do we already have a NIP for something like LN credit verification and slashing to filter out bots from the relays?

jleger2023 2y ago

I haven't seen one if so. Maybe write it up and submit it for feedback?

zeph 2y ago

some metrics to help you

#[2]

Cosanostra 2y ago

You mean post as "notes" or all kind of events? I push more than 100 events a day, even more, am I offender? I dont understand your point to censorship a entire relay before checking with its administrator if is something going wrong. So abusive .

Cosanostra 2y ago

I have my list: The most tiranic analyst on nostr:

Winner: #[3]

Lack of transparency, where he gets the data? is he asking the relay admins what is hapenning?

StackSats.IO 2y ago

Jon develops a client and has built a caching server to optimise it for user performance. He’s completely within his rights as the dev to make these decisions for his client and users - if they don’t like it they will switch.

In a decentralised world you don’t have the time let alone the means to contact every relay operator out there and ask them to check things.

Making a mountain out of a molehill.

Cosanostra 2y ago

OK block it but not advertise it as a spamer this is not polite.

Cosanostra 2y ago

Maybe something is going wrong on these servers and you are pointing them as spammers, offenders and I don't know, maybe in the future you say they are pedos..... OK Be more polite next time and do what you want to do techie

StackSats.IO 2y ago

All of the notes are there, go read them yourself if you think he’s making up spam (?), he gave you the relays to look at if you doubt.

And he’s not accusing anyone of being anything, he’s simply delisting the relays which are pumping through the most spam. It’s not a value judgement on an individuals worth, he’s not labeled anyone, he’s made a technical decision for the benefit of his users.

If you don’t understand this stuff it’s best to ask questions to clarify rather than go off on a rant at a dev.