I’m surprised by the Primal developments, and the responses on both sides. Frankly, would rather not participate in the drama at all for the sake of not keeping it going, but feels wrong to be quiet too. So.. a few thoughts…

First things first, I don’t get why ralf is blocked from trending. Or Onyx.🤷‍♂️I guess it doesn’t even matter what the reasons are, if it can be someone as decent as ralf, then it can be anyone. If it’s manual, then someone decides, not an algorithm. I think a better solution would be to have algorithms do the work, and users deciding which if any algo they wish to use.

My guess is that this is just a lot of work and perhaps Primal team has not had the time to create such powerful filtering systems yet. Maybe the decision to do it manually is a quick fix that “works” in their view. I could understand that. But, ultimately I think it should be up to the user.

Also, I don’t think there’s anything wrong with preventing certain npubs from trending - as long as it is done in a fair and algorithmic way, not a manual action.

I think the way Semisol has approached the entire thing has not been the most appropriate way of doing it. There’s a reason white hat hacking exists - where people are courteous and professional about their exploits. The initial exploits could have been handled better. We’re all in this together so why stir up drama?

The replies that say “start your own …. X” or “write your own client” don’t seem right to me. Imagine a situation where a client becomes dominant and super popular and you yourself are blocked from trending for whatever arbitrary reason with some manual action. We have X all over again then. Exception is when you break the app’s terms for posting something illegal perhaps. Most people are not going to have the technical skills to clone Primal or any other client. They will just have to leave and use another that may be less useful to them. I guess this is a good feature of nostr in a way, but feels wrong to just tell people to use something else. I prefer we have sympathy for users and empower them instead of telling them to buzz off.

Something being public and in the repo doesn’t make it not hidden imo. Just goes back to the previous point that people don’t know how to check those things and shouldn’t really be expected to. Let’s say a new client spins up and becomes super popular, am I supposed to just check their repo daily to see if I’m added to some punitive list? Now, if the client makes some sort of an announcement saying they are implementing a filtering policy that will impact npubs that do X Y Z bad thing, then it makes sense. They are letting people know they won’t tolerate things that are against their policy and they are in their full rights to do as they please.

Anyway, that is all. I guess the TLDR; is let’s put users in control and be transparent about what we do. We don’t have to do things this way and I know many won’t care, but it’s nice to have some additional transparency unlike the shadowy nature of some of the other social networks.