Okay, my mentions are now filled with spam. I guess that’s cause I “picked bad relays”? How do I (a normal user who doesn’t have the time to investigate the relay offerings out there) fix this?
Discussion
Make relay cuts, I see 1 bot / day
Yea, which, how do I decide? Also how do I do so without impacting followers on different relays from seeing my posts?
Most relays use the gossip model, which should reach most of your audience. For those outside of that radius, I would say they are tech savvy enough to find you either way.
Imagine you're in a big playground with lots of friends. The gossip model in Nostr is like a fun game of sharing secrets, but instead of secrets, we're sharing messages!
## How the Gossip Model Works
**Sharing Messages**
In this game, you and your friends are like little messengers. When you want to say something, you don't just shout it out to everyone. Instead, you whisper it to a few of your friends. Then, those friends whisper it to their friends, and so on. This way, your message spreads all around the playground without you having to tell everyone yourself[1][3].
**Special Message Boxes**
You have two special boxes for messages:
1. An "outbox" where you put messages you want to share
2. An "inbox" where your friends can leave messages for you
Your friends know to look in your outbox for your messages, and they know to put messages for you in your inbox[3].
## Why We Use the Gossip Model
**It's Like Hide and Seek**
The gossip model is used because it's like playing hide and seek with your messages. It makes it hard for anyone to stop all the messages from being shared. Even if someone tries to stop you from talking in one part of the playground, you can still share your messages through your other friends[3].
**Everyone Can Join**
This game is special because anyone can play. You don't need a big, fancy playground. You can even make your own little corner of the playground and still be part of the big game[3].
## Downsides of the Gossip Model
**Sometimes Messages Get Lost**
Just like in a real game of telephone, sometimes messages can get mixed up or lost. Not everyone might hear your message, especially if you don't have many friends to share it with[4].
**It Can Be Slow**
Sharing messages this way can take more time than just shouting to everyone at once. It's like passing a note around the classroom - it takes a while for everyone to see it[4].
**Too Many Messages**
If everyone is sharing too many messages at once, it can get confusing. Imagine if all your friends were trying to tell you different things at the same time - it would be hard to understand everything[4].
Remember, the gossip model is all about sharing and making sure everyone can play, even if it's not always perfect or super fast!
Sources
[1] The Gossip Model - YouTube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VvApmH7rmVQ
[2] Nostr Explained Visually for Beginners - YouTube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yIccRIEr2gQ
[3] Implementing The Gossip Model - Nostr https://nostr.com/nevent1qqswjxxm88p9vx5njfp2ldul43tg2h97fjfa034vak4y9e9mp5rl7sszyrrxqwc0rn87ccjansytw5ly7a6w4a73eunkjg33yk6l6nd89qqeu5974lj
[4] [PDF] The Promise, and Limitations, of Gossip Protocols https://research.cs.cornell.edu/Quicksilver/public_pdfs/2007PromiseAndLimitations.pdf
[5] Gossip based on reputation to solve for scale and moderation #75 https://github.com/nostr-protocol/nips/issues/75
[6] Gossip Model - mikedilger.com https://mikedilger.com/gossip-model/
[7] Why I'm betting on Nostr - Hacker News https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37351668
[8] What is Nostr? A simple explanation. - YouTube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lj0zzGpQ6mc
> Most relays use the gossip model
Relays are dumb, technically they don't follow the Outbox (Gossip) model, they (all) are used to achieve it.
If it was a typo and you mean "clients", unfortunately many still don't implement the Outbox model.
Depends on what app you're using
Add the spams name like 'reply girl' to your muted words list
I have zero spam doing this
Damus is the only app that’s ever worked well for me. Sadly the spam is basically random words and images from random accounts.
Damus is excellent
Damn. I'd say to optimize your relays the best you can.
I see you have the filter.nostr.wine relay; I'm surprised that paid relay hasn't done a better job as its name suggests
I just copied a long time user’s selections and things seem good.
I've moved to only use paid and WoT filtered relays, and that has solved almost all spam. Anything that remains is easily caught with reports as Sybil attacks have been mitigated.
This solution, however, has revealed some single points of failure in that many notes are now only recieved through one relay, or through a WoT relay that isn't based upon my contacts (follows).
My solution to that has been to have my personal relay pull my contacts and fetch what relays they are using to sync notes from their relays to my personal relay. So I shouldn't miss anything.
However, many do not have NIP-65 listed relays, and negentropy syncing support is still growing, of which syncing with other relays depends.
It doesn't solve the problem of viewing comments from people far outside my social graph, yet. However, ecash, lightning, LLMs could all also be used as an additional means to filter notes for comments, notes and etc.
All of that could be wrapped up in a tiny UI and easy to setup, however, much is still in development. So it may not help immediately, but I believe this will be a great solution in the long-term.
nobody will tell you this, but if you do switch up your relays, and get spam under control. your content wont be seen by anyone on IOS, primal. because those clients dont use outbox. so 70%+ of nostr, wont see your notes unless you tag them.
the spam is all coming from relay.primal.net, relay.damus.io and nos.lol (prob others too but those are the big 3 free relays.)
of course if your on damus or primal, well, youre gonna just want to enjoy the spam because you depend on their safety teams to block it.
it's not hard to see how it's going to just turn into yet another silo the way they are going
i'll stay outside the city limits of this fiasco thanks... we have homesteads and citadels out here
its been a silo for over a year now. ah well. we lost the fight.
nah, not until there's really big money creating their walled zoo
and even still, there's always going to be this continuing escalation of unpersoning out there that will motivate some to come find the citadels and homesteads
i think a lot of people are resigned to this idea that the ruling class has control of the human race forever but i refuse to accept that, i believe that as we grow our parallel, free system, we will be seeing a steady growth of this and in the real world physical places will start to appear where there is little strategic benefit and no available resources to reassert control of autonomous zones
really, nothing is going to stop the cataclysm that is coming, there is plenty of examples you can dig up in history and archaeology of these moments, hell, the fossilised bones and forests are pretty clear proof it happens... i've seen places where ancient forests were drowned in mud and all that is left now is rock pillars shaped like the old forest... there is no reason to believe the tyranny can last forever
also, yeah, the endless stream of tire-kickers whining about bitcoin content
and the morons in the in-group who think that trending and pagerank is gonna do anything to create a different product for people lol what losers
Open the wot filter setting in your clients.
In this order:
1) Use a client that fully support the Outbox model.
2) Limit the number of *read* relays to 2-4:
- A couple of relays with good spam protection (like nostr.wine)
- A couple of wot relays from someone who follow you (like wot.dtonon.com)
You can still write to big relays to broadcast your notes as much as possible.
3) Check if your clients can filter notifications by WoT or has any other anti spam filter.
It's not a perfect path, but overall it works.
People who join paid relays are incentivized not to spam it.
Easiest approach: Paid relays inherently tend to be much better on spam
I have had zero engagement on any post I've ever made on NOSTR, no reply, no like -- and half the time I post, I check to see if it's there and it didn't even post 🤣 NOSTR is still dog shit. Will my comment be seen by a human? at least on Twitter I can get a Chinese bot to like my post! 🤣
