Nostr is a protocol, not a platform and as such needs to remain open and permission-less otherwise it is completely useless. This is the same way you can transmit controversial (and even illegal) messages over HTTPS and pay for the same using Bitcoin.

Any filtering and/or censorship has to be done at the relay/application level, allowing relay operators to decide which events they wish to store and relay, as well as users to choose what kind of content they get to see.

I am by no means a hardcore Libertarian or any of the -ist words that get thrown around so carelessly these days, but I do understand why we need an open and permission-less social media protocol.

The true test of such a protocol is if people you completely disagree with can use it too.

Giving an unfilterable platform to fascists and anyone on the populist front sounds like a nightmare.

"free speech" is more nuanced than "let everyone say what they want and how they want it".

There are considerations about cybermobing, discrimination, harassment, ...

Boiling it down to a "let everyone do whatever" is a imo terrible and horrific idea, only concoctable by people with no knowledge about human interactions, group dynamics.

Or those who where ever victims of harassment and co.

Yes, everyone should be able to, with in the bounds of law/ethics and human decency, speak their mind.

But your freedom ends where the freedom of others starts. (Very botched version of a German saying)

Giving a platform to anyone will attract those who feel the most opportunistic. This is immensely power that should and needs to be handled with care.

People love to bubble themselves in especially on platforms like nostr (which is just a bot-infested btc circle jerk). With no way of moderating bad ideas (Nazism, fascism, racism, ...) Nostr will attract exactly those and Libertarians with the social ineptitude of a todler.

(The greed infested libertarian mindset is horrible when applied to social networks. )

This network is held together by bots and the dangling of zaps infront of people who think licking the boot harder and deeper will make them financially free.

But what do I know.

That's a very low resolution analysis of what I said.

The reality is that free speech only needs to be a principal because of controversial speech.

People discuss controversial topics and get censored, then complain but ignore solutions like nostr where you can build and decide what kind of content you want to see.

Guy's original post was about exactly that. nostr does need to attract the controversial because that is the grey market for speech.

How does that track with my response?

Unironically yes. People post on X about deeply controversial topics and then piss and moan when they get censored, but always go back.

The biggest problem with Nostr right now is that we aren’t breaking any rules.

The value and differentiator for decentralized networks is the “grey market.” BitTorrent taught us valuable lessons, and the most important is that something like Nostr will likely only get a huge network after we find something that people want, but aren’t allowed to have/access for whatever reason.

Consider what you think it might be… 🤔

Do you have any suggestions? Also can't beat an AI in speed, this image was generated in about 10 seconds, 5 minutes prior to this post going live.