[HN Gopher] Nostr: Notes and Other Stuff Transmitted by Relays
___________________________________________________________________
Nostr: Notes and Other Stuff Transmitted by Relays
Author : pantalaimon
Score : 180 points
Date : 2023-01-26 01:15 UTC (21 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.nostr.net)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.nostr.net)
| zikduruqe wrote:
| I joined a Nostr relay the other night, and every time I posted a
| Lightning Node invoice for 100 sats, within minutes I got 2 cents
| in my wallet.
|
| So at least I made some money from this. :)
|
| I'm following the project/protocol, it seems interesting. Here
| are some NIPS https://github.com/nostr-protocol/nips
| dochtman wrote:
| In NIP-04 I noticed that DMs can be encrypted using AES-CBC.
| IIUC, this is not a very robust mode for using AES. Seems
| surprising for a greenfield project.
| snowstormsun wrote:
| What's wrong with CBC? I think the bigger problem is the
| symmetric keys are not using a key derivation function and
| are therefore not uniformly random: https://github.com/nostr-
| protocol/nips/issues/72
| mprime1 wrote:
| > What's wrong with CBC?
|
| It's not tamper proof, ie signed, unlike GCM
|
| > Some modern modes of operation combine confidentiality
| and authenticity in an efficient way, and are known as
| authenticated encryption modes
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Block_cipher_mode_of_operat
| i...
|
| I'd also add: CBC requires padding and GCM does not. Minor
| convenience.
| FreeTrade wrote:
| I'm working on software (member.cash) that bridges multiple
| decentralized social networks together and recently added support
| for Nostr.
|
| Compared to the others, Nostr is optimized for innovation - it is
| easy to build new features on top and we'll see a lot of growth
| and evolution because of that. I really like that about it.
|
| The problems I see with it right now are 1. Timestamps are easily
| forgeable 2. Difficult to control spam 3. Little incentive to run
| relays 4. Difficult to search the whole network
|
| There are ideas on how to solve all of the problems, like POW on
| messages, like super relays(basically a mempool), there's a NIP
| for timestamps.
|
| My guess is that it will evolve towards something that looks a
| lot like a blockchain. Decentralized Social is one of the few
| places where a blockchain actually makes sense. This will be
| interesting because the founding group is ideologically opposed
| to using a blockchain for anything but the holy BTC.
| digdugdirk wrote:
| Knowing nothing about this space, can you explain a bit more
| how/why Nostr is easy to build upon where others aren't?
| FreeTrade wrote:
| Other networks can be opinionated about which transactions
| are valid, whereas Nostr relays will forward any transactions
| right now.
| monk_cactus wrote:
| As far as I understand, a blockchain is only needed to achieve
| consensus on the network state. Why does social media require
| this?
| FreeTrade wrote:
| Somethings a blockchain gives you - timestamp + cost per
| transaction + completeness. Not required, but Nostr has to
| find an alternative solution to all these issues.
| monk_cactus wrote:
| Hmm yea ok.
|
| What do you mean by completeness?
|
| Timestamping seems like the most difficult of those to
| solve
| ASalazarMX wrote:
| Adding to the parent question, why do I need a wallet to join
| Nostr?
|
| I registered, and while the registration was delightfully
| painless, it autocreated a wallet for me at
| legend.lnbits.com.
| monk_cactus wrote:
| That's probably related to the client you used, it's not
| necessary for you to have a wallet. That being said, it's
| useful to have a lightning address because you can link
| that to your pubkey and people can send you sats if they
| like what you have to say
| ASalazarMX wrote:
| Oh. I assumed all clients would do that since Nostr.com
| did it when I registered there.
| friend_and_foe wrote:
| I'm seeing a lot of people not quite understanding what nostr is.
| I know it can be hard considering this is a crowd focused on
| products and frameworks and paradigms and what not.
|
| It's not a "twitter alternative", it's not "federated like
| mastodon", it's not even social networking. It's just a spec for
| a signed message format and a relay server, that's it. It's very,
| very simple, you generate a key, sign a message, send it to
| whichever relays you want, it serves them to requestors or not,
| depending on what it wants to do. That is literally all it is.
| ktpsns wrote:
| Funny how similar this sounds to wireguard, the trending yet
| simple open source VPN technology. Basically the messages are
| IP packets there ;-)
| m348e912 wrote:
| I saw Snowden tweeted about this. Anyone have a TLDR on what
| Nostr is exactly? And how it ties into Bitcoin (if at all)?
|
| Update: It seems to be partly a twitter alternative perhaps using
| lightning network in some way. I set up an account on
| astral.ninja, created keys, username, saw that there were relays
| that were defined already. I couldn't see any posts in my feed,
| and when I tried to make a post it just hung and never posted
| anything. Suffice to say my initial experience started off okay,
| then dissapointment.
| KoftaBob wrote:
| The best web clients so far are Snort and Iris, I'd try again
| with Snort and you should have a smoother experience.
|
| https://snort.social https://iris.to
| larrysalibra wrote:
| My favorite Nostr client (web or non-web) is Damus for iOS by
| jb55:
|
| https://damus.io
|
| It looks great, works well, the code well-written and super
| easy to hack on.
| rufusroflpunch wrote:
| Damus is great and my client of choice. However, the
| TestFlight beta might still be filled up. If it is, I would
| recommend pairing a web client with an extension like
| nos2x/alby (chrome/firefox) or nostore (Safari).
| bigmatto wrote:
| I've been using https://member.cash
|
| It seems to work a little differently to other clients by
| aggregating all the content on one relay first before sending
| it to the client, but I prefer this as it is faster and uses
| less bandwidth.
| irusensei wrote:
| It's not tied to bitcoin other than it was created by
| decentralization loving bitcoiners. It doesn't use blockchain
| or token bullshit as those people don't believe blockchain is a
| silver bullet for any problem. You might see lightning invoices
| posted by users but that's more of a client rendering the
| encoded data.
|
| Fiatjaf who often posts here also stated that he would like to
| nostr to be used by non bitcoiners and even people who are
| antagonistic to bitcoin.
| sph wrote:
| It does not tie into Bitcoin. It's just a very very simple
| protocol of clients sending and subscribing to pieces of data,
| and relays that dumbly (i.e. with little processing) send data
| across connected and subscribed clients.
|
| It's like a very minimal version of ActivityPub. It takes an
| hour to go through the whole spec and addenda.
|
| Then Jack Dorsey got interested, gave the project a big grant
| (in BTC), and a lot of crypto hype flew into it. But while it
| is a convenient excuse to say "crypto, therefore bad", the
| protocol is itself completely unrelated and IMO quite neat.
| There is a lot of potential for systems that anyone can
| comprehend in their totality in an afternoon.
| larrysalibra wrote:
| The relationship to bitcoin besides being created by
| bitcoiners is that it uses Schnorr Signatures for the
| secp256k1 curve - the same curve as bitcoin.
|
| https://bips.xyz/340
|
| A Nostr account is identified by a public key, you follow
| accounts by following public keys and the ability to post as
| an account is controlled by the corresponding private key.
| yonz wrote:
| Is there any place to find Public keys to follow?
| rufusroflpunch wrote:
| https://www.nostr.directory
|
| This tool lets you broadcast your pub key on twitter
| using a specified format, and the app will add you to the
| directory, and you can use it to find others that have
| also done that.
|
| Also, if you go to https://snort.social/new, you can
| enter your twitter handle, and it will find everyone from
| you're twitter follows that you're not already following
| and let you sign up to follow them all.
| louloulou wrote:
| Does this mean I could use a bitcoin hardware wallet to
| store my nostr keys and sign my posts?
| snowstormsun wrote:
| Does somebody know whether the same or something similar could be
| achieved by using the "Network News Transfer Protocol" (nntp),
| without designing a whole new protocol?
| thinkmassive wrote:
| From the Wikipedia page:
|
| > NNTP is an application protocol used for transporting Usenet
| news articles (netnews) between news servers, and for
| reading/posting articles by the end user client applications.
|
| nostr relays are not supposed to connect with other relays (I
| think to avoid the inevitable concentration of centralized
| hubs), which is a small but very significant difference
| fiatjaf wrote:
| What would we gain by doing that?
| Karrot_Kream wrote:
| Access to the existing NNTP infrastructure. It's not worth it
| IMO, the state of NNTP servers is quite bad.
| snowstormsun wrote:
| Perhaps you could avoid some pitfalls, which only become
| obvious when the practical application of the protocol is
| scaled. I have not dived deep into either nntp or nostr, but
| existing standards might offer useful considerations that
| could be reused. For example, it seems like nntp exchanges
| first a list of articles and clients only download the ones
| they don't have already. Does nostr do something similar?
| Like being able to get a list of event ids with minimal
| metadata and clients can selectively request the whole event
| data afterwards. As events might contain bigger text blobs,
| that could be important for performance or for adding
| placeholders to the UI. In general, it seems to me that nostr
| and nostr clients might need to come up with good strategies
| for caching and bandwith optimizations, considering the
| decentralized design. But please correct me if I am wrong.
| larrysalibra wrote:
| The best introduction to Nostr is on the Nostr protocol github:
|
| https://github.com/nostr-protocol/nostr#very-short-summary-o...
|
| >Everybody runs a client. It can be a native client, a web
| client, etc. To publish something, you write a post, sign it with
| your key and send it to multiple relays (servers hosted by
| someone else, or yourself). To get updates from other people, you
| ask multiple relays if they know anything about these other
| people. Anyone can run a relay. A relay is very simple and dumb.
| It does nothing besides accepting posts from some people and
| forwarding to others. Relays don't have to be trusted. Signatures
| are verified on the client side.
|
| The FAQ on the same page also answers questions about why Nostr
| instead of other options like Mastodon, Secure Scuttlebutt, etc.
|
| There's also a recently launched podcast that talks to some
| developers building on the protocol:
|
| https://nostrovia.org
| gigatexal wrote:
| I don't understand Nostr's comments on trying to be deplatform-
| proof. On Mastodon, for example, if you get kicked off a node
| just spin up your own node. If nobody wants to hear you spewing
| your stuff then you'll soon be screaming into the void but what
| you post will still be viewable on the web and to those that
| subscribe to you. So I don't get what Nostr is trying to do.
| larrysalibra wrote:
| If you get kicked off a mastodon server, you lose your
| followers and posts unless you're able to move your account
| before you're kicked off - which requires the cooperation of
| the server that wants to kick you off.
|
| > If nobody wants to hear you spewing your stuff then you'll
| soon be screaming into the void but what you post will still be
| viewable on the web and to those that subscribe to you.
|
| People who are de-platformed are almost always people who
| others WANT to hear. Think of all the famous people
| deplatformed from big tech social media...10s of millions of
| followers each. It wasn't that "no one" wanted to hear them,
| but that the people that controlled the platform didn't want
| others to be able to hear them.
|
| > So I don't get what Nostr is trying to do.
|
| It took me a while to get my head around it as well. The intro
| and faq on the github repo really helped me.
|
| https://github.com/nostr-protocol/nostr
| gigatexal wrote:
| > People who are de-platformed are almost always people who
| others WANT to hear. Think of all the famous people
| deplatformed from big tech social media...10s of millions of
| followers each. It wasn't that "no one" wanted to hear them,
| but that the people that controlled the platform didn't want
| others to be able to hear them.
|
| They have platforms they could go to. Parler, Rumble, Truth
| Social, their own blogs/websites, running a Polermo or
| Mastodon instance.
|
| Twitter was a giant public pool. For the most part everyone
| was chill. And then the trolls arrived and started shitting
| and peeing in the pool. Swimming in that pool (the
| algorithmic timeline and such) became horrible.
|
| My idea that it was less about the "powers that be"
| deplatforming people and more not owning the platform you
| post on. I love the federated social movement and the push
| for people whom I agree with and disagree with to own their
| platforms I am just saying that the "wo is me, my megaphone
| was taken away from me and now I have no way to access the
| hordes of other trolls that think and spew the hate that I
| do" is a false narrative because nothing was stopping them
| from creating their own platforms with off-the-shelf tools or
| spinning up websites like the Drudge Report or blogs or going
| to the other places where they like the alt-right or other
| fringe folks.
| pessimizer wrote:
| > Twitter was a giant public pool. For the most part
| everyone was chill. And then the trolls arrived and started
| shitting and peeing in the pool.
|
| Have you ever looked at the replies to a Trump tweet, an
| Ilhan Omar tweet, a J.K. Rowling tweet, or a Briahna Joy
| Gray tweet? The degree of bullying, invective, and threats
| coming from people who support _deplatforming_ is intense.
| gigatexal wrote:
| But are they wrong?
|
| Anti-Trump responses make sense. He's the most polarizing
| US President in recent history and almost everything he's
| done has been bad for the US (ok of course this is
| arguable but hold on while I make my point). Him leaving
| the platform was good for Twitter and for democracy. If
| he comes back as a candidate then he'll likely come back
| to Twitter, his account has already been reinstated.
|
| Omar, if she breaks Twitter rules, can, and should, have
| her personal account suspended. As a sitting
| congresswoman she is entitled to her official handle.
| Unlikely to get deplatformed, so not an issue.
|
| J.K. Rowling's takes on the transgender community is not
| even something I want to touch. It's too toxic and
| complicated to do so. That being said if -- see a pattern
| here? -- she runs afoul of the Twitter rules (whatever
| they may be) her personal account can be suspended or
| banned.
|
| Briahna Joy Gray -- of course there are extremists on the
| left -- but if they don't oh I dunno -- incite a violent
| riot to overturn an election -- then I doubt she'll be
| deplatformed, though if she calls for violence or ...
| which would run afoul of rules ... see I am starting to
| see how the pool analogy really does work.
|
| I know my stance on censorship is not a popular one. I
| have struggled with it myself. But I think it is self-
| consistent and I stand by it: let the wierdos, racists,
| nazis, hate filled folks scream into the void of their
| own making on servers they own to others that subscribe
| to their bullshit. As for me and the rest of the
| civilized world we'll continue to swim in clear, shit and
| pee-free water. ;-)
| cactusplant7374 wrote:
| Federated is okay as long as it's not used to organize
| violent acts. Sunshine isn't always the best medicine.
| snapcaster wrote:
| Centralized social media has inspired and organized
| countless violent acts. Malaysia and India with Whatsapp
| is probably the most shocking. I don't see the connection
| between Federation/Centralization/etc. and violence. Can
| you explain your reasoning?
| pessimizer wrote:
| Monopolies in media make government censorship easier.
| They also make intentional government incitement to
| nationalist violence easier, but that's not the violence
| that people who think they're well-represented by the
| government worry about.
| cactusplant7374 wrote:
| Centralized can be removed so that violent people can't
| organize. It's impossible to do that when those
| individuals own the servers or have a decentralized
| network.
| cactusplant7374 wrote:
| > People who are de-platformed are almost always people who
| others WANT to hear.
|
| A tiny minority. The majority listens to public health (in
| the case of Covid) and doesn't want to read conspiracy
| theories or research analysis by someone unqualified.
| pessimizer wrote:
| This is obviously false. Some people will eventually have
| to learn to cope with the fact that Trump won an election,
| which means that their received wisdom is not a consensual
| truth.
|
| edit: Additionally, the reasoning is fallacious - all
| people are minorities in many ways, so a few dozen tiny
| minorities can add up to an entire population. You may not
| disagree with the government about covid (although the
| government has disagreed with itself about covid), but you
| might disagree with the government about something else.
|
| You're making the case that all social media should simply
| agree with the government line (because the people who
| disagree are minorities.) That's a dangerous case to make
| if you ever want to replace a government democratically.
| gigatexal wrote:
| This. This is so well said. It's what I was trying to say
| but got ended up being more trolly than I had hoped.
| nunobrito wrote:
| Qualified voices were either censored on social media or
| ignored by political powers in regards to COVID.
|
| In Portugal, the group of medical experts assembled by the
| government was ignored after they opposed the political
| decision for injecting children: https://www.publico.pt/202
| 1/07/20/sociedade/noticia/comissao...
|
| It is wrong to dismiss the opinion of experts on this topic
| just because it goes against what mainstream media and
| political groups decide to impose.
| cactusplant7374 wrote:
| They opposed it because they said there wasn't enough
| information. That is the excuse for doing nothing -- an
| argument repeated ad nauseam during the pandemic.
|
| Certainly there is an argument that children will be
| harmed if we do nothing. It's a difficult decision
| because children a small number if children die from
| Covid, but it's still not zero. The best way forward is
| to proceed with caution.
| nunobrito wrote:
| They clearly stated their opposition to injecting an
| experimental substance on children.
|
| After two years before the injections existed exactly 3
| cases of COVID-diagnosed deaths across a population of
| +700 thousand children in Portugal. Now the number of
| children with heart problems related to the injections is
| visible on news at plain sight.
|
| The experts were ignored. Those supporting the experts on
| social media got banned or shadowbanned. This is not
| science, unless you consider medieval practices to be
| science.
| gigatexal wrote:
| Nah fam. Trump got kicked off of twitter and the world was
| better for it. Same with Nick Fuentes. The list goes on.
| Ajedi32 wrote:
| > It wasn't that "no one" wanted to hear them, but that the
| people that controlled the platform didn't want others to be
| able to hear them.
|
| This is an important point. Free speech is really as much
| about the rights of the listener as the rights of the
| speaker, if not more so.
|
| I think this is a good way of framing the censorship debate,
| because while it may be easy for some to dismiss the rights
| of a few dozen famous people that they hate, it's way harder
| to argue that the millions of people who follow those
| celebrities _shouldn 't be allowed to hear_ what they have to
| say, even if they want to.
|
| (To be clear, I'm making a generalized moral argument here,
| not a legal one, so let's skip the whole "but it's a private
| platform" debate this time.)
| acdha wrote:
| > it's way harder to argue that the millions of people who
| follow those celebrities shouldn't be allowed to hear what
| they have to say, even if they want to.
|
| Nobody is making that argument. The actual argument is that
| a private company should not be compelled to provide free
| hosting for them. They can and have used other hosting
| services but many of their followers apparently prefer not
| to use those alternatives.
| pessimizer wrote:
| > Nobody is making that argument.
|
| This is untrue.
|
| Not only are people making that argument explicitly, but
| there have been any number of orchestrated attacks on
| private companies in order to force them to remove
| content. And if they refuse, attacks on their vendors and
| distributors (such as app stores), including by the
| federal government and congresspeople openly _demanding_
| that they be banned, surrounded with completely unveiled
| threats of investigation and new legislation.
|
| > They can and have used other hosting services but many
| of their followers apparently prefer not to use those
| alternatives.
|
| Those alternatives are under constant attack by people
| making that argument that "nobody is making." The ones
| that have secured revenue or financing that is difficult
| to attack (i.e. Substack, Rumble) are thriving.
| acdha wrote:
| If you read more carefully, consider the distinction
| between a mainstream platform being asked to remove
| people who violated their terms of service and saying
| that those people should not be allowed to use platforms
| which cater to extremists. The former is what actually
| happens for otherwise legal content -- and the reason is
| obvious once you think about it: private companies can't
| be forced to provide services for anything other than
| legally protected categories, but they are sensitive to
| what advertisers want and what will attract the type of
| users they're looking for. Twitter was previously trying
| to be more mainstream, which is why extremists trying to
| recruit wanted to be there instead of alternatives like
| Parler or Truth Social which only had people who were
| already converted.
| rchaud wrote:
| If the rights of the listener have been infringed, why
| wouldn't the listener simply go to where they can continue
| listening? Nobody's holding a gun to their head.
| rchaud wrote:
| > People who are de-platformed are almost always people who
| others WANT to hear.
|
| I think if that were true a certain social network would have
| at least 70m more American users.
| acdha wrote:
| > It wasn't that "no one" wanted to hear them, but that the
| people that controlled the platform didn't want others to be
| able to hear them.
|
| More accurately, it was because they repeatedly broke the
| terms of service and the companies were no longer willing to
| use their resources to provide free amplification for them.
| They had legal agreements with the platform and despite many
| warnings and leeway which isn't extended to most people,
| chose to break the contracts.
| aliqot wrote:
| oh stop, this aint the time.
| acdha wrote:
| It is, though, because if you don't understand or are
| unwilling to honestly describe what really happened you
| won't be able to come up with a viable response.
| sph wrote:
| You have one Mastodon server you can post to (for that
| account).
|
| You can post on as many NOSTR relays as you want. Get banned on
| one, you are still publishing on the others.
|
| You can also, along with your messages, suggest to
| "subscribers" your preferred relays, so people that really want
| to follow you as you get banned all over the net always know
| the best place to reach you. This process of course would be
| automated by the clients.
| gigatexal wrote:
| Run. Your. Own. Mastodon host. Problem solved. Linnode has
| one click rollouts.
| googlryas wrote:
| How about when whoever you provisioned your tld or up in
| your mastodon I'd decides you've been a bad boy and can't
| have them any more?
| rchaud wrote:
| Start over? Nothing lasts forever. No one said the life
| of a free speech warrior would be an easy one.
| googlryas wrote:
| That philosophy could be used to justify any problem with
| anything. Just use Twitter then.
|
| The point is you don't have that issue with nostr
| acdha wrote:
| You have proof of continued identity with nostr thanks to
| the keys but you still have the challenges around linking
| keys to people which were a major struggle for GPG. The
| solutions for that tend to involve social media or DNS
| (checking a personal domain).
|
| This seems like a good area to improve since things like
| code signing could also benefit. One of the big problems
| I see is bootstrapping your network initially and also
| solving the lost phone problem without setting up a
| system which phishers and spammers would have a field day
| with.
| Cameri wrote:
| Mastodon does not solve the problem stated above. In Nostr
| you don't have to be jumping from instance to instance and
| losing all your stuff every time in the process.
|
| Mastodon is clearly inferior to Nostr when it comes to
| having a decentralized identity.
| sph wrote:
| I was explaining how Nostr works, not how to avoid getting
| banned from Mastodon.
|
| The point is that you have only one Mastodon API endpoint
| vs potentially infinite Nostr relays for each account you
| own.
| legutierr wrote:
| The issue with Mastodon is that your network ID is tied to the
| domain of the server you are connecting to. If you get kicked
| off of that server you can move to another one, but you
| effectively have to create a new account. You loose all your
| followers, etc.
|
| Nostr fixes those problems. You can never lose your ID because
| it's derived from your public key. You can be blocked from a
| relay, but it doesn't matter because you can just switch to
| another one, and you are always connecting to multiple at the
| same time anyway. Following is managed on the client side, so
| it cannot be manipulated or disrupted.
| BudweiserZero wrote:
| > If you get kicked off of that server you can move to
| another one, but you effectively have to create a new
| account. You loose all your followers, etc
|
| Sure that's not a feature?
| gigatexal wrote:
| Hah for me it is.
|
| The Alex Jones's and Trumps and Fuentes's and Kayne's
| spewing their bile into a vacuum or even an isolated room
| into themselves (much like what Truth Social or Parler is)
| is a feature. They get to spew hate and dumb ideas and the
| rest of the civilized world need not hear or read it. Best
| of both worlds.
| gigatexal wrote:
| Run your own server of mastodon. Boom done
|
| Edit: Then this Nostr will gain the same rep as Polerma as a
| haven for right wing wierdos for better or worse. Or maybe it
| will take off and who knows.
| googlryas wrote:
| Only in the same sense that the web is associated with
| right wing weirdos.
|
| There is no algorithm or feed pushing content on you , so
| those people are by default completely invisible to you.
| mattdesl wrote:
| People don't like running their own server. In public key
| infra like nostr and farcaster, you get the non-custodial
| ownership of your account without the technical and cost
| barriers involved in running a server.
| wcerfgba wrote:
| Is there a threat model? This does not seem to provide any
| metadata anonymity: if you ask a relay for someone's pubs, they
| know you're the person asking for it. Perhaps this could be
| layered with onion routing through relays to sole that though. At
| which point this feels like cryptographically-addressed NNTP,
| which is neato!
| nine_k wrote:
| The biggest problem I see here is forwarding someone else's
| unknown _and_ unencrypted content.
|
| Imagine you're running a relay on your machine, and somebody
| posts some CSAM, or stolen CC data, or hate speech, etc through
| your relay.
|
| Unlike an email client, your relay actually makes that message
| available to anyone.
|
| Unlike an email relay, you are not forwarding the message to
| someone else like a dumb pipe; there's no final destination.
|
| Unlike a torrent / DHT node, you do not know beforehand what you
| are going to make available.
|
| Unlike a Tor exit node, you do not deal in encrypted fragments
| which you don't store locally.
|
| Unlike an IPFS node, you do not store fragments of files while
| not even having a full set of such fragments for a given file.
|
| Even though the message is signed, you can't reasonably prove
| that you do not possess the private key used to sign it, or have
| not possessed.
|
| So, if you are an anti-censorship activist, and your machine gets
| searched (which may be even easier to do in the case of a VPS),
| you, the runner of the relay, may have some pretty unpleasant
| time. Even if you manage to convince everyone that you only
| forward these messages and do not inspect or endorse them, and
| the authorities will not even fine you, it will cost you time and
| trouble.
|
| Worse, it becomes easy to send something incriminating from a
| throwaway or stolen client _through_ your relay, and report you
| to the police. This can of course be done with email or any IM,
| but these will immediately show you what you 've got, so you can
| e.g. immediately delete it. They do not allow perfect strangers
| quietly put random stuff onto your disk.
|
| _Of course_ the point of the protocol is to resist censorship,
| so any content deemed criminal by someone cannot be entirely
| blocked. But the publishers and the receivers of such content
| make their choice, while those running a relay seem to remain
| unprotected from from consequences of that choice which they did
| not make.
| sph wrote:
| > Imagine you're running a relay on your machine, and somebody
| posts some CSAM, or stolen CC data, or hate speech, etc through
| your relay.
|
| Relays can be authenticated. If you don't want your relay to
| accept data from anyone, don't leave it open. Same with any
| other Internet protocol.
|
| Also, per the spec or convention, relays SHALL NOT talk to each
| other. Each relay is a separate island, but the protocol
| permits and recommends clients to publish on multiple relays.
| This is the basis of their censorship-resistance.
|
| See also my other comment:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34530876
| vorpalhex wrote:
| > Also, per the spec or convention, relays SHALL NOT talk to
| each other.
|
| That has no bearing on an attacker.
| notpushkin wrote:
| > relays SHALL NOT talk to each other
|
| I don't get it. What's the point then?
| last_responder wrote:
| At that point it is an endpoint not a relay.
| eduction wrote:
| The whole reason I was excited about Nostr was the censorship
| resistance but if the relays choose who gets to authenticate
| you're back to square one (well, whichever square Mastodon
| is).
|
| Also, it seems naive to think that a ban on blocklists in the
| spec will keep real free humans from doing exactly as they've
| done on email, Mastodon etc and share block lists.
| Cameri wrote:
| The AUTH Nostr Implementation Possibility is not mandatory.
| You can choose to use it or not, it's not all or nothing.
| Every single NIP except for NIP-01 is optional.
| aliqot wrote:
| I wonder what the XMPP camp is up to these days
| MattJ100 wrote:
| I sense there was probably some irony in your post.
| Nevertheless, I'll bite :)
|
| The "XMPP camp" is doing well and very busy:
| https://xmpp.org/newsletter/
|
| We're lacking a nostr bridge if anyone wants to work on
| that...
| Ajedi32 wrote:
| I've only read a little about Nostr, but I think the
| difference is that with Nostr you own your own identity, so
| if a relay bans you you can just switch to a different
| relay and continue as you were with no significant
| disruption.
|
| You're probably right about shared blacklists eventually
| becoming a thing though.
| Cameri wrote:
| The spec doesn't say relays SHALL NOT talk to each other. YOU
| made that up. It says they don't talk to each other but it is
| not prevented.
|
| You can mirror one relay to another easily:
|
| echo '["REQ", "mirror" ,{}]' | websocat wss://source | jq
| -del '.[1]' | websocat wss://dest
| sph wrote:
| > It says they don't talk to each other but it is not
| prevented
|
| No protocol can prevent a piece of software from doing
| whatever they want.
|
| The "shall not" is not absolute: the spec assumes and
| expects relays not to talk to each other. Nothing prevents
| you from creating a relay that connects to another relay,
| of course, but that would not be in the _spirit_ of what
| Nostr is trying to achieve.
| drexlspivey wrote:
| What a bunch of nonsense
| Semaphor wrote:
| What is? How would this scenario be prevented?
| nine_k wrote:
| I'd appreciate a bit more detailed answer.
|
| If the problem that Nostr solves is, say, posting NYT
| headlines, pub crawl reports, or cute cat pictures, it's
| fine, but most centralized tools are also fine.
|
| If the problem which Nostr is trying to solve is being
| censorship-resistant and allow for dissemination of
| information which is actively being suppressed, relay safety
| considerations become important. Less safety means fewer
| relays, and a need of a personal connection / trust to be
| admitted.
| larrysalibra wrote:
| > If the problem which Nostr is trying to solve is being
| censorship-resistant and allow for dissemination of
| information which is actively being suppressed, relay
| safety considerations become important. Less safety means
| fewer relays, and a need of a personal connection / trust
| to be admitted.
|
| Because almost all of Nostr logic is in the clients, you
| can always run your own relay or pay someone to run it.
| There will always be someone shady that will run a relay
| for you if you pay enough for it. And people that follow
| you will still be able to see your posts.
|
| I agree that the current state where there are hundreds of
| open relays and people people posting to 20 of them at a
| time isn't likely to be what the network looks like in the
| future. But that's fine - it's good enough for now.
| nine_k wrote:
| That's actually a great idea: run enough relays yourself,
| so you can somehow conceal your identity, and somehow
| protect yourself from things like losing your (DNS)
| domain.
|
| It's a bit like posting to your blog anonymously, and
| having a bunch of mirrors.
| BudweiserZero wrote:
| > If the problem that Nostr solves is, say, posting NYT
| headlines, pub crawl reports, or cute cat pictures, it's
| fine, but most centralized tools are also fine.
|
| This sentiment is what's missing in the decentralized
| space. There are so many centralized spaces that you can
| use to communicate, and that censorship-resistant is a non-
| feature.
| drexlspivey wrote:
| You are going to post illegal stuff (signed by you) then
| somehow convince someone to raid my server in the hopes of
| that illegal thing being on my hard disk. Relays don't have
| to store any message on disk, they relay stuff real time
| over websockets. Even if you store messages you can
| trivially wipe them every 24h?
|
| Then you are going to convince a judge that the thing on my
| disk belongs to me, because judges are apparently
| braindead.
|
| If this is the protocol's glaring vulnerability then every
| server in the world has this vulnerability.
| Semaphor wrote:
| But your server was distributing the illegal thing. It
| doesn't matter, that it might not be there anymore, here
| in Germany there is a decent chance of getting a police
| visit and possibly getting your hardware impounded.
|
| This is also the case for tor exit nodes, which is why
| those here are all hosted by organizations with lawyers.
|
| As you distribute the content here, unlike with tor, you
| would essentially act as a user generated content
| provider and would have to take steps to prevent the
| abuse from occurring again... probably after an involved
| court case.
|
| This is not like "every server" because not every server
| distributes what anyone publishes to it.
|
| Though a lot of that might not be an issue in
| jurisdictions with saner laws, I don't know specifics.
| nine_k wrote:
| > _signed by you_
|
| Signed by a private key which has no connection to my
| legal identity, and which can be generated in a split
| second. Signatures give strong pseudonymity.
|
| > _Relays don't have to store any message on disk_
|
| This is a good idea, as long as messages are relatively
| few, which may be hundreds of thousands if they are
| short. There's no promise of availability, so an
| infrequent reboot is free to erase them.
|
| > _Then you are going to convince a judge that the thing
| on my disk belongs to me_
|
| I'm afraid it can be the other way around, if the
| material is sensitive enough. You'd have to explain to
| the judge how it ended up on your computer.
|
| > _every server in the world has this vulnerability_
|
| No, only a server that allows users to upload UGC without
| requiring enough background information to let the law
| enforcement find out their real identities if need be.
| Should be an adequate explanation to the judge in a
| civilized country where governmental censorship is not a
| thing.
| drexlspivey wrote:
| > No, only a server that allows users to upload UGC
| without requiring enough background information to let
| the law enforcement find out their real identities if
| need be. Should be an adequate explanation to the judge
| in a civilized country where governmental censorship is
| not a thing.
|
| So just to be super clear, you don't upload images on a
| relay, nostr messages are just signed json blobs i.e
| text. If you want to post an image you just post a link
| to it and the image is hosted elsewhere.
|
| If there is such a thing as an illegal text string that
| is illegal to have on your hard drive then I can do the
| same attack on any webserver by having the illegal string
| in my user agent and it's going to be saved to the hard
| disk in the logfile.
|
| Then according to your plan I can raid the server with
| the illegal string and put the server owner to jail. Does
| that make sense to you?
| wkat4242 wrote:
| What about base64 encoded images? Nntp doesn't support
| binaries but it's sure distributing a hell of a lot of
| them these days.
| twobitshifter wrote:
| The protocol notes that the relay has a choice to accept
| content, for example a large video. If you were running a relay
| you might want scanners for spam and illegal content running
| out front before relaying any content.
| jb55 wrote:
| It's only recommended that you store json and text on relays.
| It's a text protocol, not a protocol for storing large binary
| data. Note sizes are restricted as well on most relays.
| giantrobot wrote:
| Usenet is fundamentally text-only. In fact messages need to
| be 7-bit safe. It's still been a place to distribute binary
| content for decades.
|
| If I can store multiple messages on a relay I can
| distribute arbitrary files. So being text-only doesn't
| really limit anything.
| nunobrito wrote:
| > Even though the message is signed, you can't reasonably prove
| that you do not possess the private key used to sign it, or
| have not possessed.
|
| That is an assumption that you made and strikes as FUD. An
| equally valid assumption is that nobody can reasonably prove
| that the person has the private key used for signing the files.
| Assuming the stated nature of relays and their intended
| purpose, there is more ground to assume that a relay is a
| service provider without reasonable way to inspect the contents
| of encrypted data.
| nine_k wrote:
| > _without reasonable way to inspect the contents of
| encrypted data._
|
| This would be entirely correct were the data encrypted %)
|
| The data are signed, but otherwise plaintext.
|
| For reference, kids in the US got arrested for possessing
| nude pictures of _themselves_ on their phones [1], because
| mere possession of a nude picture of an underage person is
| restricted by law. Talk about who are you going to convince
| that some shady stuff just happened to pass your server.
|
| [1]: https://www.cnet.com/culture/teen-arrested-for-having-
| nude-p...
| nunobrito wrote:
| OK. If data is unencrypted inside the machine then indeed
| that is a problem.
| leishman wrote:
| I think this is a very overblown concern that will not be a big
| issue in practice... at least not for a number of years.
| wkat4242 wrote:
| Famous last words...
|
| I wouldn't want to run the risk of being the first one it
| does happen to.
|
| I think something like ipfs offers better resistance to such
| attacks for node owners. I wonder how the two compare because
| I don't know either in detail.
|
| But sharing unencrypted content from others could be an issue
| for many reasons. Copyright too.
|
| Especially because this protocol is aimed at content blocked
| or censored from other platforms, as others have pointed out.
|
| Sure, you can block others from using your relay but then
| what's the point? Just host your stuff on your self hosted
| web blog.
| Cameri wrote:
| Nostr isn't aimed at content blocked or censored.
|
| Relays also don't host media, it's meant for text-based
| comms.
| giantrobot wrote:
| Well HN is text-based as well yet...
|
| iVBORw0KGgoAAAANSUhEUgAAAAEAAAABAQMAAAAl21bKAAAAA1BMVEWbu
| eItP/xuAAAACklEQVQI12NgAAAAAgAB4iG8MwAAAABJRU5ErkJggg==
| Cameri wrote:
| "That doesn't look like anything to me"
| biosboiii wrote:
| Mastodon already has "censorship" options, and still people
| use it big time to distribute CP.
| https://www.secjuice.com/mastodon-child-porn-pedophiles/
|
| If I were to run such a node in Germany, and someone would
| use it to distribute CP with it, I face from 1 to 10 years in
| prison.
|
| Yeah, no thanks.
| jchw wrote:
| This article quietly equates "CSAM" with lolicon and
| shotacon content, terms colloquially used to refer to
| drawings and other creative expressions, which is very
| clearly what they're avoiding mentioning. Of course, most
| people aware of fediverse politics already know about Pawoo
| and there is no good reason to speak about it in hushed
| tones, other than cowardice. Also, using the term "CSAM" to
| describe lolicon and shotacon is just intentional factual
| inaccuracy: the point of the term CSAM to specifically
| exclude content that doesn't directly involve the harm of a
| child; that's what "abuse material" is meant to refer. That
| does not change the legal reality or moral ramifications of
| the content, but it's bad to start out with the terminology
| so wrong because it paints the entire remainder of the
| discussion. Yes, it's complicated and uncomfortable, but
| let's not mince words.
|
| When you run a Mastodon instance though, you don't actually
| need distribute this content at all. In fact, you probably
| would at least ban proxying media for communities like
| Pawoo, and honestly, probably, any NSFW-oriented instance
| if you want to be safe.
|
| I hate to break anyone's innocence, but this stuff is
| literally _everywhere_ on Twitter, and a lot of the rest of
| the Internet, too. Is it legal? Depends on your
| jurisdiction. Is it moral? -\\_(tsu)_ /-. Only one thing's
| for sure: it's on your Internet, along with plenty of other
| things that you can also find on Mastodon somewhere. Such
| is the reality of federation and scale of the Internet. The
| stuff that goes through email relays unencrypted is not so
| different, other than the fact that it doesn't get
| broadcasted, and that it's probably worse in many cases.
|
| If some instance was broadcasting outright CSAM on
| Mastodon, it would no doubt become quickly blacklisted by
| basically everyone and then probably also shut down off the
| clearnet.
| madeofpalk wrote:
| For what it's worth, the US has "section 230" that absolves
| services providers of liability for content their users post.
| Georgelemental wrote:
| Section 230 doesn't apply to CSAM, since SESTA/FOSTA
| kenmorechalfant wrote:
| If your software encrypts user data with a user owned key
| that you never touch, i.e. everything is encrypted at rest,
| can you still be liable if it's later proven to be CSAM?
| panarky wrote:
| If you have knowledge of CSAM or reasonably expect CSAM
| exists in the traffic you're forwarding, you have
| liability.
| Karunamon wrote:
| Not much. While this may keep you out of jail, it will not
| prevent you from being raided at four in the morning and
| having your pets shot and all your computers seized for
| months.
| aliqot wrote:
| Won't prevent your pipes and hosts from extorting or
| struggling you either.
| larrysalibra wrote:
| All this stuff might true, but from both a user and a developer
| perspective it actually works today and has a vibrant community
| of motivated, talented and interesting people building on it
| AND using it.
|
| There are ways to address all of these problems if and when
| they occur.
|
| I think one of Nostr's biggest contributions is its culture of
| pragmatism and speed. Do something simple, quickly that works
| instead of sitting around worrying about every edge case (which
| is a what a lot of "decentralized" projects do). If you have no
| apps and no one using them, none of the problems you mention
| exist. If you come up with something ridiculously complicated
| (think some recent w3c proposals), you've built a massive
| barrier to contributors and to developer and user adoption.
| nine_k wrote:
| I see now. The censorship against which Nostr offers some
| resistance is things like being banned from Twitter, or being
| expelled by disgruntled moderators from a subreddit, or maybe
| even fired by your domain name registrar..
|
| It's not the kind of censorship resistance which opposition
| in country with an oppressive regime might need, and in
| general not a solution against censorship by state-level
| actors.
|
| Well, fair. Also, fun and lightweight, no browser needed.
| rcoder wrote:
| One other critical bit of "censorship" and "oppression"
| that Nostr very much wants to route around is any
| restrictions on use of Lightning et. al. cryptocurrency
| payments directly in Nostr clients, without any
| intermediaries or custodians in the way. (This fear of
| "economic censorship" seems to be a common boogieman in
| cryptocurrency circles, from what I can tell. Certainly a
| bigger fear than state-level actors coming after you for
| your Nostr notes or toots or whatever.)
|
| Whether you think that's a good or necessary thing probably
| tracks very closely with your beliefs about whether money
| and its expenditure is protected speech. Obviously that's
| something about which the highest courts and legislative
| bodies in the USA already have complex and sometimes-
| contradictory views, so I certainly won't claim there's a
| single correct answer...even if my personal beliefs fall
| very much on the "money is a modern social fiction in no
| way connected to fundamental human rights" side of the
| spectrum.
| Cameri wrote:
| Software protocols aren't going to prevent the government
| from using physical force to will you into obedience.
|
| Not sure what you expect?
| rollcat wrote:
| This sounds a lot like building a car by attaching an engine
| and a steering wheel to a frame, and worrying about
| addressing problems (such as seats, gear switching,
| seatbelts, airbags, doors, windshield, ...) only as they
| occur.
|
| Which I guess is kinda fine if you're building slow go-karts
| to do friendly races with your neighbor in their backyard -
| but instead you're already letting those out on the open
| roads on day 1.
| nunobrito wrote:
| You've just described 100 years of car evolution.
|
| Similar to software architecture, you do start by defining
| the preferred characteristics and then working your way to
| the other parts.
| rollcat wrote:
| > You've just described 100 years of car evolution.
|
| On purpose. You can't build a car today that ignores
| these learnings, and safely deploy it on the open roads;
| just like you can't build what's effectively an open
| relay like it's 1997 and expect to stay safe against the
| threats outlined by nine_k.
| Cameri wrote:
| You can build software on protocols like this.
|
| Your analogy fails at the mere fact that no physical harm
| can result from Nostr not solving this one thing you
| think is 100% necessary.
|
| The fact that Nostr is up and running and working is the
| undeniable fact that you don't NEED to solve every single
| problem known to humankind before you write some lines of
| code.
| rollcat wrote:
| > You can build software on protocols like this.
|
| I've never denied this. You can also DIY a go-kart and
| drive it on an open road.
|
| > Your analogy fails at the mere fact that no physical
| harm can result from Nostr not solving this one thing you
| think is 100% necessary.
|
| Notice how you've specifically used the term "physical
| harm" to differentiate from other forms of harm. Harm is
| harm.
|
| > The fact that Nostr is up and running and working is
| the undeniable fact that you don't NEED to solve every
| single problem known to humankind before you write some
| lines of code.
|
| ...Where did I try to deny this? My analogy is very
| specific in that you _can_ do all of these things, and
| with enough luck, nothing bad will happen.
|
| The problem with luck is that it doesn't scale well,
| _especially_ on the open road. I mean, Internet.
| humans2 wrote:
| [dead]
| Turing_Machine wrote:
| > The biggest problem I see here is forwarding someone else's
| unknown and unencrypted content.
|
| Like email.
|
| > Unlike an email client, your relay actually makes that
| message available to anyone.
|
| On the contrary. Public mailing lists work exactly like this.
| You send a "subscribe" message (or enter your email address and
| click on a "subscribe" button, or whatever), and the server
| starts forwarding all the messages to you.
| vorpalhex wrote:
| Those have both been major problems for email. Enough that
| email has had multiple attempts at becoming encrypted, and
| mailing lists are very defunct for any sizeable group.
| Turing_Machine wrote:
| > Enough that email has had multiple attempts at becoming
| encrypted
|
| But all those attempts have failed. One presumes that this
| is because people like email the way it is... simple to
| use.
|
| > mailing lists are very defunct for any sizeable group.
|
| Hmm... I still subscribe to at least half a dozen mailing
| lists, some of which have hundreds or thousands of members.
| BudweiserZero wrote:
| This all depends who colonizes the space first. I have a rule,
| don't hang out in bad neighborhoods, this extends to social
| media, decentralized or not.
|
| For example; certain nodes on Secure Scuttlebutt have been
| known to push porn, and this gets replicated onto your store.
| That node was traced, and blocked by many on the sphere.
|
| The majority on ssb were against that.
|
| Now, a social network populated with crypto bros? Nah... pass.
| rufusroflpunch wrote:
| I am thoroughly addicted to nostr. I've been building a browser
| extension for Safari for it, and I feel like I'm part of
| something amazing being built.
| say_it_as_it_is wrote:
| Moderation is an essential part of community management, even in
| darknets. Trust in what is said and what is promised as part of a
| transaction is what attracts and retains members of the
| community. Just because you can create a censorship resistant
| network doesn't mean you should.
| irusensei wrote:
| Nostr is a protocol. Are there moderation functionalities in
| RSS, SMTP or HTTP? Do matrix and XMPP protocols have some
| central authority overseeing what server a talks to server b?
| It's up to the relays implement their own moderation features
| and clients filter what they don't want to see.
| pornel wrote:
| I don't think these protocols are quite comparable to a
| Twitter-like "town square" model, so they don't have the same
| problems. But where they overlap, they do some "censorship":
| SMTP will delete spam, XMPP servers will kick out spammers
| and harassers.
|
| The problem with Twitter is that unlike RSS, it shows content
| from people you did not subscribe to (e.g. you get replies,
| you see strangers' replies to your friend's posts). The
| content is public, so unlike e-mail, receiving abuse is not
| just your private problem, but a problem for the network's
| image and reputation.
|
| But in either case, when normal users (not righteous keyboard
| warriors) find some content to be horrible, they don't want
| to see it. If they keep being bombarded with unwanted
| content, they leave. For Mastodon/Twitter/Gab that may be
| "political" content, but the problem in general is similar to
| spam.
| Cameri wrote:
| You only get the content you subscribe to in Nostr.
|
| There's no algorithm that will curate your feed for you, it's
| up to you to choose who you follow.
|
| Don't like what someone is posting? Unsubscribe.
| fiatjaf wrote:
| Nostr relays can and should moderate content. You can craft
| your own set of relays that do not tolerate bad things and use
| just these.
| Ambolia wrote:
| Individual relays could implement censorship, and you could
| choose who censors your information.
| Barrin92 wrote:
| After reading the page for a bit I don't really understand the
| fundamental difference to other decentralized systems except for
| the global public key based identity.
|
| Nostr's relays are simply servers that push and receive
| structured data. So it's a sort of an email or http like protocol
| that's by default cryptographically signed? I don't really see
| the magic that makes it censorship resistant or particularly
| decentralized. The same networking and economic laws that
| consolidate internet traffic or mastodon servers are at work here
| too. Relays get popular, produce a lot of traffic, this spawns
| "nostr as a service" for economic reasons, and that's about it.
|
| If people want to ban you they'll just blacklist your public key
| across popular instances just like someone on the fediverse does,
| companies won't host your stuff, and so on. If anything tying
| everything to a single global identity makes it more trivial to
| blacklist anyone.
| milansuk wrote:
| Does Nostr have a Wikipedia page? I'm wondering how old is it,
| the people behind it, some stories?
| friend_and_foe wrote:
| Not that old, I believe the initial spec was put together last
| year? Written by a developer named fiatjaf who is also a
| bitcoin contributor.
| leishman wrote:
| We're building a Nostr relay in Elixir if anyone is interested:
|
| https://github.com/RiverFinancial/nostrex
| lormayna wrote:
| Nostr is very interesting, for some aspects it looks like a
| decentralized NNTP.
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