I def agree with you on that point: follow does not necessarily equal trust! It’s an important enough point that I’ve written it into the core of the DCoSL protocol:
https://github.com/wds4/DCoSL/blob/main/dips/coreProtocol/02.md
Oh and relays could use a system like this (with higher thresholds) to maintain their own automated mute lists.
If we manage to get this implemented quickly, then it will be a pretty efficient way to weed out bots quickly. Highly active users will see the bots and mute them, which means that casual / less active users might almost never even see any bots in the first place. Which might disincentivize (to an extent) the creation of the whole bot system in the first place.
Long term solution will require a general framework for the decentralized curation of knowledge, which is what I’m working on. (To that end, I’ll probably be issuing some bounties soon. Know any devs who want to stack a few sats? Send them my way! 😊)
Short term: if I ran one of the popular nostr clients here’s what I would do. It’s imperfect but quick, easy and probably pretty effective.
Assume that if Alice follows Bob then she probably kinda sorta trusts his judgment when it comes to muting scammers. (Not necessarily true, hence the “imperfect” qualifier. But probably good enough for a quick fix.)
Periodically comb through the mute lists of all your follows + their follows.
F1 = number of users one hop away, and F2 = number of users two hops away.
If Charlie shows up on someone’s mute list, then C1 = the number of times Charlie is muted by an F1, and C2 = number of times Charlie is muted by an F2.
In settings, have a button which when activated will mute anyone if either of the following conditions hold:
If C1 > 3 AND C1/F1 > 3%
or
If C2 > 5 AND C2/F2 > 5%
Something like that. Play with the numbers to find the right balance. Don’t want innocent people to get muted by accidental fat fingers. The reason for the percentages is that you want to make a system that works for everyone, whether you follow 10 ppl or 10,000. You could make the 3 and 5 adjustable parameters, although maybe that’s too much complexity for the user?
Honestly I don’t know why Twitter never did this.
Six years ago I took on stay-at-home dad duties with the condition that I would be able to work on a distributed re-imagining of the internet. I learned rust, sat in coffee shops, agonized over cryptography algorithms, wrote code, .... and had two more kids. Now the code gets dusted off only when some new technology again fails to address the critical problems of communication. But now there is Nostr and perhaps, just maybe, I don't have to be the one to write the next thing.
Instead I'll give it a try by posting some of my musings from the past decade or so of thinking about the attendant problems. Here is my first effort. https://habla.news/a/naddr1qqxnzd3c8ymnjwpexgcngdp3qgs82et8gqsfjcx8fl3h8e55879zr2ufdzyas6gjw6nqlp42m0y0j2srqsqqqa28z6sjlu
So has nostr renewed your faith that a distributed reimagining of the internet is achievable?
(I very much believe that it is, fwiw!)
Question for all the devs and designers out there: Any tools you’ve used to design your nostr apps and that you’d recommend? UX wireframe tools, prototyping, UI design and animation, etc?
Good afternoon, fellow nostriches!
(Is that a thing? GA and PV? 😂)
Today I’m working to make the world a better place, in my own small way, to the best of my ability.
And I love this community bc I see so many others here doing the exact same thing! 🙏🏼
How’s everyone’s day so far? Tell me what you’re up to!
Not long ago I registered the domain hasenpfeffr.com because … why not? 😂
If we can crowdsource simple lists, we can crowdsource the very tools and symbols that we use to communicate and interact.
My reasoning:
A graph is a versatile mathematical object that can be used to format and represent just about any type of data. Any individual graph can be specified in full using nothing more than two simple lists: one list for nodes and one list for edges. If we can figure a way to crowdsource a simple list in a genuinely decentralized fashion (and we'll need to discuss as a community what that means), then we can crowdsource a graph. And if we can crowdsource a graph, we can crowdsource just about any piece of data, including the symbols used in the representation of that data.
That’s my motivation for DCoSL: decentralized curation of simple lists.
I need help building! 🙏🏼
You’re def right about the need to commit. I’ve committed my time but gearing up to commit some sats: currently putting together a bounty so I can refactor my project as a webapp with (hopefully) an awesome UX.
Screenshots from Curated Lists, an app that’s part of the Pretty Good Apps desktop nostr client.
https://github.com/wds4/pretty-good/blob/main/appDescriptions/curatedLists/screenshots.md
I’m putting together a series of bounties to refactor Curated Lists as a webapp. Going to do it in bite-sized stages. Anybody know anybody with good design skills looking for some work?
What’s the best way to farm out a little nostr dev work?
I’m thinking nostrbounties.com but open to other suggestions.
Imagine having access to a list of trusted oracles for [that thing that doesn’t work without trusted oracles], CURATED by YOUR web of trust.
#Proofofsteak #Foodstr #Castiron #Rosemary https://nostr.build/av/3b467a249344da40c8ea0980632578347c59d19eabb472f706fd924265c22174.mov 
😋 🥩
Never been to Morocco but I hear it’s an amazing place 👍🏻
Latest creation currently on display at Bitcoin Park in Nashville.
Thanks to nostr:npub1c878wu04lfqcl5avfy3p5x83ndpvedaxv0dg7pxthakq3jqdyzcs2n8avm for all the support and the incredible LnBits platform! Lnbits made the Lightning Network Integration dead simple.
I am absolutely gonna play Galaga next time I’m in Nashville
Always a mistake to create something that’s centralized and figure, no worries, we’ll decentralize it later. It reminds me of Roger’s thought process: that he and Jihan could take control of BCH, turn it into PayPal so they could steer it properly, then magically decentralize it at some unspecified time in the future.
That was my understanding / interpretation of what they were trying to do, in any case. I could be remembering things incorrectly. But the lesson: always be super wary of any project that passes up an opportunity to decentralize today with the promise to do it tomorrow.
This is a great blog post by nostr:npub1jlrs53pkdfjnts29kveljul2sm0actt6n8dxrrzqcersttvcuv3qdjynqn about some of the things we hope to see in a decentralized web of trust (better curation of information) as well as some of the traps we hope to avoid (degradation of privacy from metadata).
All in all I think decentralized WoT will be great for privacy if for no other reason than that it will allow us to opt out of the existing panopticon of legacy centralized big tech platforms. Even normies will eventually opt out, once WoT provides capabilities they don’t currently enjoy. But it’s always good to do our best to anticipate and understand these types of problems before they happen, lest they catch too many people by surprise.