3 ms·

I tried nostr and I was impressed by how fast it is compared to the alternatives and by how seamless it is to connect to everyone. Unfortunately I'm not interes

I tried nostr and I was impressed by how fast it is compared to the alternatives and by how seamless it is to connect to everyone. Unfortunately I'm not interested by the current content and I'm not sure a social media without censorship is viable on large scale

solarkraft 3y ago
> I'm not sure a social media without censorship is viable on large scale Right, it absolutely isn't. Some form of censorship is vital. This claim becomes more agreeable when substituting "censorship" with the almost-synonymous word "moderation".
- rglullis 3y ago
  Nostr's idea of "moderation/censorship" is quite simple: you (or your relay admin) can drop whatever content you don't want to see or promote. It's no different than email servers, and (as a system) it works just fine even if you are surrounded by bad actors.
  - kmeisthax 3y ago
    Wait, this is just ActivityPub with extra steps. Why not just use Mastodon?
    - sharperguy 3y ago
      The main difference with Mastadon is tha with Mastadon you have a single node that you get your federated feed from, and that verifies your identity. Therefore if your node operator doesn't peer with some other node, you wouldn't automatically be able to communicate with users on that node. With nostr, your identity is just a pubkey, and you can publish to / read from several nodes simultaneously. So if some node refuses to puplish certain content, you can just get it from another node without having to create a whole new identity.
- bshacklett 3y ago
  This take is terrifying to me. Obviously we all have things that we don’t want to be exposed to, and probably many things that we don’t feel anyone should be exposed to, but who gets to make the decision of what is acceptable and what isn’t? Bias and financial interests in speech and content are more rampant, now, than they have ever been. I don’t trust anyone but myself to “save” me from seeing what I can only describe as “wrongthink”.
wolverine876 3y ago
I don't know Nostr, but why can't you moderate anonymous forums? HN is anonymous. Or is Nostr literally non-censorable, in that I can't get an undesireable message or user off my personal feed.
- acdha 3y ago
  Moderation is expensive, scaling with popularity and some really nasty points where you become popular enough to attract spammers, criminal activity, and mobs. HN survives because it doesn’t allow you to upload files, the 90s aesthetic keeps it a niche, and–most importantly–it’s the pet project of a very rich guy who is comfortable paying skilled people decent money to moderate it: https://www.newyorker.com/news/letter-from-silicon-valley/the-lonely-work-of-moderating-hacker-news https://www.newyorker.com/news/letter-from-silicon-valley/th... Despite that, usernames and their corresponding IPs get blocked routinely and we still see spam regularly even if only for a brief time. Any forum will have the same problem: get popular and whacking spammers becomes a full-time grind. Allow people to upload files and you’ll have the FBI asking why you’re facilitating transfer of pirated movies, CSAM, etc. Have the wrong people decide to use private messages and now the FBI is back asking if you knew they were planning terrorist attacks. None of those are completely impossible, of course, but they end up being expensive and burning out volunteers. Limiting anonymity helps, but only so much - it’s just an expensive space to be in.

solarkraft 3y ago

> I'm not sure a social media without censorship is viable on large scale Right, it absolutely isn't. Some form of censorship is vital. This claim becomes more agreeable when substituting "censorship" with the almost-synonymous word "moderation".

rglullis 3y ago
Nostr's idea of "moderation/censorship" is quite simple: you (or your relay admin) can drop whatever content you don't want to see or promote. It's no different than email servers, and (as a system) it works just fine even if you are surrounded by bad actors.
- kmeisthax 3y ago
  Wait, this is just ActivityPub with extra steps. Why not just use Mastodon?
  - sharperguy 3y ago
    The main difference with Mastadon is tha with Mastadon you have a single node that you get your federated feed from, and that verifies your identity. Therefore if your node operator doesn't peer with some other node, you wouldn't automatically be able to communicate with users on that node. With nostr, your identity is just a pubkey, and you can publish to / read from several nodes simultaneously. So if some node refuses to puplish certain content, you can just get it from another node without having to create a whole new identity.
bshacklett 3y ago
This take is terrifying to me. Obviously we all have things that we don’t want to be exposed to, and probably many things that we don’t feel anyone should be exposed to, but who gets to make the decision of what is acceptable and what isn’t? Bias and financial interests in speech and content are more rampant, now, than they have ever been. I don’t trust anyone but myself to “save” me from seeing what I can only describe as “wrongthink”.

wolverine876 3y ago

I don't know Nostr, but why can't you moderate anonymous forums? HN is anonymous. Or is Nostr literally non-censorable, in that I can't get an undesireable message or user off my personal feed.

acdha 3y ago
Moderation is expensive, scaling with popularity and some really nasty points where you become popular enough to attract spammers, criminal activity, and mobs. HN survives because it doesn’t allow you to upload files, the 90s aesthetic keeps it a niche, and–most importantly–it’s the pet project of a very rich guy who is comfortable paying skilled people decent money to moderate it: https://www.newyorker.com/news/letter-from-silicon-valley/the-lonely-work-of-moderating-hacker-news https://www.newyorker.com/news/letter-from-silicon-valley/th... Despite that, usernames and their corresponding IPs get blocked routinely and we still see spam regularly even if only for a brief time. Any forum will have the same problem: get popular and whacking spammers becomes a full-time grind. Allow people to upload files and you’ll have the FBI asking why you’re facilitating transfer of pirated movies, CSAM, etc. Have the wrong people decide to use private messages and now the FBI is back asking if you knew they were planning terrorist attacks. None of those are completely impossible, of course, but they end up being expensive and burning out volunteers. Limiting anonymity helps, but only so much - it’s just an expensive space to be in.