7 ms·

Nothing about the Nostr protocol struck me as particularly interesting. Spam control, moderation and anonymity are not really dealt with. Why the hype?

irusensei 3y ago
> anonymity are not really dealt with Why would you need to deal with anonymity?
- de_keyboard 3y ago
  Does Nostr have any mechanisms to ensure anonymity, or can the relay log everything?
  - mikem170 3y ago
    > Does Nostr have any mechanisms to ensure anonymity Your identity on the network is a public/private key pair. You don't have to associate your real name with your posts, if you don't want to. And you can have multiple key pair identities if you want. Posts are plain text by default, but encrypted private messages can also be exchanged. You can choose what relays to post to, and obfuscate your ip address with a vpn or tor if you desire. > can the relay log everything Yes, subject to the above mitigations.
newswasboring 3y ago
I guess because it's the only one on the market? At least afaik
ravenbitcoin 3y ago
I don't see much spam. It's far, far less than Twitter. I can mute people I don't want to see. And I can be anonymous if I want. What exactly did you mean?
- graypegg 3y ago
  Is it possible you don’t see much spam because it’s currently not big enough to be worth spamming?
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
  - hospitalJail 3y ago
    As much as I like the idea of anonymous posting, there are some serious issues with spam/astroturfing. I'm ready to join a social media website that requires a social security number, photo ID, and interview process. I've had enough of propagandists and marketers.
sigmoid10 3y ago
All these projects don't understand that it's not the principle of free communication or the idea of sharing content that made networks like twitter and facebook so successful. It was an army of engineers and designers working closely together with marketing people and even psychologists to maximise user engagement and retention. Heck, you could just endlessly recycle the same algorithmic content mixed with camouflaged marketing influencers sans any real stuff and people will suck it up like crazy (looking at you, tiktok). One of the key things nostr criticises (addictiveness) is what will keep it from succeeding on any broader scale.
- orbital-decay 3y ago
  What makes you think their goal is succeeding on the broader scale, though?
  - volkk 3y ago
    right. was going to ask the same thing. i'm okay with it being a relative niche. that is to say, writers, economists, artists, etc with a lean towards tech. i'm completely fine with Nostr not becoming the worldwide phenom so that it doesn't attract the spam and the types of people that comes along with popularity.
  - sigmoid10 3y ago
    From their website: >Nostr is a protocol, designed for simplicity, that aims to create a censorship-resistant global social network. So they basically want to create twitter without Musk (or anyone in charge for that matter). Nothing wrong with that goal, it's just highly unlikely to succeed given the fundamental shortcomings of this approach.
    - int_19h 3y ago
      "A global network" doesn't mean "the dominant global network", though. Mastodon is global, for example.
      - 3y ago
javier123454321 3y ago
It's simple, you can develop a client or relay without too much effort, and has an active dev community. It's also FUN. It keeps me going back on a way that Mastodon never did. Not to mention client interoperability is dead easy. It kinda just works which is really nice.
robcohen 3y ago
I feel the same way. It seems like it doesn’t even try to solve most of the hardest problems for decentralization. I too find it weird, but it is fun to play with.
dtdannen 3y ago
How did you use it? The default setting is anonymous unless you reveal who you are. After I muted a small number of people and used some paid relays I don’t see spam or bad content. Coolest feature is that you can switch clients while keeping the same relays and all your data stays with you. Plus a bunch of clients have this auto translate feature so people are talking to each other regardless of the language they speak. I started following some people in other languages - very unique social media experience.
- dizhn 3y ago
  You are already paying for paid relays ? What is the reasoning? Congrats on your first comment by the way.
  - ursuscamp 3y ago
    I used paid relays. The reasons are higher quality content. It works alright for spam prevention. Also, I use the nostr.wine filter relay, which is pretty neat. You can connect to it and it will pull notes from your web of contacts (your follows, plus their follows). Additionally, it will rebroadcast your notes to public relays. It's a pretty nice way to keep your feed quiet (not spammy), but also allow your notes to make it out to the broader public nostr sphere.
    - dizhn 3y ago
      I will have to look into this more. It sounds like it's not as simple as the project website makes it sound.
haarts 3y ago
There's little spam at the moment. There will be. But at that time the relays (pieces of server software that relay nostr messages) can step in and implement spam control via whatever they see fit. Perhaps some smart filtering, perhaps pay a few sats to have a message relayed or perhaps some real name policy. Clients can pick a (set of) relay(s) which fit their preference best. Or not, and accept the default. The protocol is surprisingly simple to read [1], many relays and clients exist already. I exchanged messages with a friend of mine who was using a very different client and it just worked! Personally I like the fact that you can 'like' posts by sending a couple of sats via Lightning. I think it is a great motivator to write thoughtful, quality content. Currently nostr is radical, weird and unpolished. The Amethyst client is slow at times. But the pace of development is incredible. [1] https://github.com/nostr-protocol/nips/blob/master/01.md https://github.com/nostr-protocol/nips/blob/master/01.md
- cube2222 3y ago
  Could you expand on how relays differ (mostly conceptually) from something like Mastodon instances? Adding because Nostr seems to be marketed as something more decentralized than that, and I'd like to get a deeper understanding.
  - RobotToaster 3y ago
    My understanding is the relays don't actually... relay, like mastodon instances do. With mastodon your client only talks to one "instance" to see all the "instances" that "instance" is federated with. With Nostr your client connects to every "relay" you want to see content from, there isn't really any communication between "relays".
  - masukomi 3y ago
    This is gossip protocol not a federated thing. assuming it's the same as Scuttlebutt (also gossip protocol) a relay is literally just a relay. There's no "home server". You don't have an account on anyone's machine. You just shove data out to "people" who are listening to you. In scuttlebutt the relays are configured so that anyone can ask it to "follow" them and then they send their data to it. Anyone who listens to that relay can get any data the relay has. in scuttlebutt the problem was that I never felt like i could trust a relay to exist for more than 6 months, so i just followed every one i could. No-one wants to set up a relay, and relays have to have a static domain / ip so that you know where to look for them. It's not like tor where you can just leave your computer on and that's good enough. I expect the same problems here.
rchaud 3y ago
> Why the hype? Jack Dorsey is a co-founder, that's it. I feel like "nostr.com" has been showing up on the HN front page, with no context, at least once every week.
- CharlesW 3y ago
  Someone's got professionals pumping it, for sure. Along with the recent context-free appearances on the front page, note that this is the 2nd post from submitter @throwaway689236.
- erskingardner 3y ago
  Jack Dorsey funded some of the early development through a grant. Nostr has no co-founders or CEO. It's a protocol, not a company.
- jonesjohns 3y ago
  Jack is not a cofounder. Nostr.com is owned by a random user (not sure who, but can probably figure it out). Nostr was created on 2020 by an anon developer named fiatjaf. Jack made grants to nostr devs in 2022 (among other FOSS projects) after he first discovered it. He has no part in the development of the protocol other than the grants, although he is an active user.
rektide 3y ago
Nostr is decentralized. I think a big part of the idea is that relays just dont carry spam/bad actors. The protocol doesn't, as of yet, have need to handle most of your "it doesn't handle complex social issues X Y or Z" nags because it so far handles these problems socially, not technically, and that's been working for now. Nostr is all based on anonymous cryptographic identifiers, so it seems like you have some special definition of anonymity that you are looking for, as it seems nothing if not anonymous. Having a stable identifier allows relays to know who to send versus who not to send, and allows connecting data together. Users are free to sock puppet up to their hearts content, if they wish to further diffuse traffic. The appeal? The appeal here is that this is an incredibly malleable & comprehensible low level tool for messaging. Competitors like AtProto or ActivityPub involve complex protocols to exchange/syndicate data around, as much as the payload of the messages themselves. They are high level visions for what a network is. By compare, Nostr's low level approach is organic & searching not a refined final product, but a thriving ecosystem of expanding ideas. Nostr has extreme elegance as a protocol by being focused primarily on messages themselves, which start as very simple & understandable self signing devices. The transport & exchange of messages is almost incidental, and indeed, Nostr over shoebox or carrier pigeon is possible. This allows a lot more flexibility with how the network can form distributed connections, allows great offline capabilities, allows creative relays & creative/selective distribution mechanisms to form. Nostr is an excellent base layer. The base specs are quite short & direct. It's a protocol one can happily implement in a weekend. Nostr has incredibly wild applications, because it is a simple extensible base. There's a wide variety of interesting capabilities that have already need accepted as Nostr Implementation Possibilities, NIPS, that grow & build on one another. Nostr base protocol is just a start, just the seed of an idea, one that's meant to be iterated on & expanded, and it's so easy & direct to do so. This is the biggest advantage by far; I cannot stress this enough. Not trying to do absolutely everything & making a modular simple protocol to start building & iterating from is all the wins, is the Bazaar to the ambitious Cathedrals. https://github.com/nostr-protocol/nips https://github.com/nostr-protocol/nips Nostr is by far the most malleable, most open set of possibilities, the most grow able, of the social networks we have. Everything else seems to have been designed to arrive somewhat fully formed, ready to go, but Nostr's strength is that it doesn't purport to know every use case & to have a total picture of what it is. It's a much simpler idea, with much more focus on finding out the uses.
jonesjohns 3y ago
Spam control = relay configuration Moderation = client side moderation features, most allow muting and blur images from unknown accounts prior to opening. If you don’t like the way a client moderates, move to another Anonymity = not sure how it’s not anonymous. There’s no sign up, no email, no password. It’s just keypairs being generated. Use a vpn.
drowsspa 3y ago
The responses are quite funny "yeah we don't need to have moderation or spam control as opposed to literally any other successful social network". I don't really get excited when that's the default response, because it means they don't get that that's basically the point of a social network. Coming up with a protocol is not that hard. The technical side is fun to work with, but I guess technologists don't realize that the human side is way harder to do.
sleepybrett 3y ago
When I see a platform that advertises as 'censorship-resistant' as it's top line I just figure it for libertarian bullshit.

irusensei 3y ago

> anonymity are not really dealt with Why would you need to deal with anonymity?

de_keyboard 3y ago
Does Nostr have any mechanisms to ensure anonymity, or can the relay log everything?
- mikem170 3y ago
  > Does Nostr have any mechanisms to ensure anonymity Your identity on the network is a public/private key pair. You don't have to associate your real name with your posts, if you don't want to. And you can have multiple key pair identities if you want. Posts are plain text by default, but encrypted private messages can also be exchanged. You can choose what relays to post to, and obfuscate your ip address with a vpn or tor if you desire. > can the relay log everything Yes, subject to the above mitigations.

newswasboring 3y ago

I guess because it's the only one on the market? At least afaik

ravenbitcoin 3y ago

I don't see much spam. It's far, far less than Twitter. I can mute people I don't want to see. And I can be anonymous if I want. What exactly did you mean?

graypegg 3y ago
Is it possible you don’t see much spam because it’s currently not big enough to be worth spamming?
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- hospitalJail 3y ago
  As much as I like the idea of anonymous posting, there are some serious issues with spam/astroturfing. I'm ready to join a social media website that requires a social security number, photo ID, and interview process. I've had enough of propagandists and marketers.

sigmoid10 3y ago

All these projects don't understand that it's not the principle of free communication or the idea of sharing content that made networks like twitter and facebook so successful. It was an army of engineers and designers working closely together with marketing people and even psychologists to maximise user engagement and retention. Heck, you could just endlessly recycle the same algorithmic content mixed with camouflaged marketing influencers sans any real stuff and people will suck it up like crazy (looking at you, tiktok). One of the key things nostr criticises (addictiveness) is what will keep it from succeeding on any broader scale.

orbital-decay 3y ago
What makes you think their goal is succeeding on the broader scale, though?
- volkk 3y ago
  right. was going to ask the same thing. i'm okay with it being a relative niche. that is to say, writers, economists, artists, etc with a lean towards tech. i'm completely fine with Nostr not becoming the worldwide phenom so that it doesn't attract the spam and the types of people that comes along with popularity.
- sigmoid10 3y ago
  From their website: >Nostr is a protocol, designed for simplicity, that aims to create a censorship-resistant global social network. So they basically want to create twitter without Musk (or anyone in charge for that matter). Nothing wrong with that goal, it's just highly unlikely to succeed given the fundamental shortcomings of this approach.
  - int_19h 3y ago
    "A global network" doesn't mean "the dominant global network", though. Mastodon is global, for example.
    - 3y ago

javier123454321 3y ago

It's simple, you can develop a client or relay without too much effort, and has an active dev community. It's also FUN. It keeps me going back on a way that Mastodon never did. Not to mention client interoperability is dead easy. It kinda just works which is really nice.

robcohen 3y ago

I feel the same way. It seems like it doesn’t even try to solve most of the hardest problems for decentralization. I too find it weird, but it is fun to play with.

dtdannen 3y ago

How did you use it? The default setting is anonymous unless you reveal who you are. After I muted a small number of people and used some paid relays I don’t see spam or bad content. Coolest feature is that you can switch clients while keeping the same relays and all your data stays with you. Plus a bunch of clients have this auto translate feature so people are talking to each other regardless of the language they speak. I started following some people in other languages - very unique social media experience.

dizhn 3y ago
You are already paying for paid relays ? What is the reasoning? Congrats on your first comment by the way.
- ursuscamp 3y ago
  I used paid relays. The reasons are higher quality content. It works alright for spam prevention. Also, I use the nostr.wine filter relay, which is pretty neat. You can connect to it and it will pull notes from your web of contacts (your follows, plus their follows). Additionally, it will rebroadcast your notes to public relays. It's a pretty nice way to keep your feed quiet (not spammy), but also allow your notes to make it out to the broader public nostr sphere.
  - dizhn 3y ago
    I will have to look into this more. It sounds like it's not as simple as the project website makes it sound.

haarts 3y ago

There's little spam at the moment. There will be. But at that time the relays (pieces of server software that relay nostr messages) can step in and implement spam control via whatever they see fit. Perhaps some smart filtering, perhaps pay a few sats to have a message relayed or perhaps some real name policy. Clients can pick a (set of) relay(s) which fit their preference best. Or not, and accept the default. The protocol is surprisingly simple to read [1], many relays and clients exist already. I exchanged messages with a friend of mine who was using a very different client and it just worked! Personally I like the fact that you can 'like' posts by sending a couple of sats via Lightning. I think it is a great motivator to write thoughtful, quality content. Currently nostr is radical, weird and unpolished. The Amethyst client is slow at times. But the pace of development is incredible. [1] https://github.com/nostr-protocol/nips/blob/master/01.md https://github.com/nostr-protocol/nips/blob/master/01.md

cube2222 3y ago
Could you expand on how relays differ (mostly conceptually) from something like Mastodon instances? Adding because Nostr seems to be marketed as something more decentralized than that, and I'd like to get a deeper understanding.
- RobotToaster 3y ago
  My understanding is the relays don't actually... relay, like mastodon instances do. With mastodon your client only talks to one "instance" to see all the "instances" that "instance" is federated with. With Nostr your client connects to every "relay" you want to see content from, there isn't really any communication between "relays".
- masukomi 3y ago
  This is gossip protocol not a federated thing. assuming it's the same as Scuttlebutt (also gossip protocol) a relay is literally just a relay. There's no "home server". You don't have an account on anyone's machine. You just shove data out to "people" who are listening to you. In scuttlebutt the relays are configured so that anyone can ask it to "follow" them and then they send their data to it. Anyone who listens to that relay can get any data the relay has. in scuttlebutt the problem was that I never felt like i could trust a relay to exist for more than 6 months, so i just followed every one i could. No-one wants to set up a relay, and relays have to have a static domain / ip so that you know where to look for them. It's not like tor where you can just leave your computer on and that's good enough. I expect the same problems here.

rchaud 3y ago

> Why the hype? Jack Dorsey is a co-founder, that's it. I feel like "nostr.com" has been showing up on the HN front page, with no context, at least once every week.

CharlesW 3y ago
Someone's got professionals pumping it, for sure. Along with the recent context-free appearances on the front page, note that this is the 2nd post from submitter @throwaway689236.
erskingardner 3y ago
Jack Dorsey funded some of the early development through a grant. Nostr has no co-founders or CEO. It's a protocol, not a company.
jonesjohns 3y ago
Jack is not a cofounder. Nostr.com is owned by a random user (not sure who, but can probably figure it out). Nostr was created on 2020 by an anon developer named fiatjaf. Jack made grants to nostr devs in 2022 (among other FOSS projects) after he first discovered it. He has no part in the development of the protocol other than the grants, although he is an active user.

rektide 3y ago

Nostr is decentralized. I think a big part of the idea is that relays just dont carry spam/bad actors. The protocol doesn't, as of yet, have need to handle most of your "it doesn't handle complex social issues X Y or Z" nags because it so far handles these problems socially, not technically, and that's been working for now. Nostr is all based on anonymous cryptographic identifiers, so it seems like you have some special definition of anonymity that you are looking for, as it seems nothing if not anonymous. Having a stable identifier allows relays to know who to send versus who not to send, and allows connecting data together. Users are free to sock puppet up to their hearts content, if they wish to further diffuse traffic. The appeal? The appeal here is that this is an incredibly malleable & comprehensible low level tool for messaging. Competitors like AtProto or ActivityPub involve complex protocols to exchange/syndicate data around, as much as the payload of the messages themselves. They are high level visions for what a network is. By compare, Nostr's low level approach is organic & searching not a refined final product, but a thriving ecosystem of expanding ideas. Nostr has extreme elegance as a protocol by being focused primarily on messages themselves, which start as very simple & understandable self signing devices. The transport & exchange of messages is almost incidental, and indeed, Nostr over shoebox or carrier pigeon is possible. This allows a lot more flexibility with how the network can form distributed connections, allows great offline capabilities, allows creative relays & creative/selective distribution mechanisms to form. Nostr is an excellent base layer. The base specs are quite short & direct. It's a protocol one can happily implement in a weekend. Nostr has incredibly wild applications, because it is a simple extensible base. There's a wide variety of interesting capabilities that have already need accepted as Nostr Implementation Possibilities, NIPS, that grow & build on one another. Nostr base protocol is just a start, just the seed of an idea, one that's meant to be iterated on & expanded, and it's so easy & direct to do so. This is the biggest advantage by far; I cannot stress this enough. Not trying to do absolutely everything & making a modular simple protocol to start building & iterating from is all the wins, is the Bazaar to the ambitious Cathedrals. https://github.com/nostr-protocol/nips https://github.com/nostr-protocol/nips Nostr is by far the most malleable, most open set of possibilities, the most grow able, of the social networks we have. Everything else seems to have been designed to arrive somewhat fully formed, ready to go, but Nostr's strength is that it doesn't purport to know every use case & to have a total picture of what it is. It's a much simpler idea, with much more focus on finding out the uses.

jonesjohns 3y ago

Spam control = relay configuration Moderation = client side moderation features, most allow muting and blur images from unknown accounts prior to opening. If you don’t like the way a client moderates, move to another Anonymity = not sure how it’s not anonymous. There’s no sign up, no email, no password. It’s just keypairs being generated. Use a vpn.

drowsspa 3y ago

The responses are quite funny "yeah we don't need to have moderation or spam control as opposed to literally any other successful social network". I don't really get excited when that's the default response, because it means they don't get that that's basically the point of a social network. Coming up with a protocol is not that hard. The technical side is fun to work with, but I guess technologists don't realize that the human side is way harder to do.

sleepybrett 3y ago

When I see a platform that advertises as 'censorship-resistant' as it's top line I just figure it for libertarian bullshit.