[HN Gopher] Flare, a video sharing site built on Nostr
___________________________________________________________________
Flare, a video sharing site built on Nostr
Author : janandonly
Score : 142 points
Date : 2023-12-21 09:28 UTC (13 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (njump.me)
(TXT) w3m dump (njump.me)
| irusensei wrote:
| Makes me wonder if LBRY went with Lightning instead of creating a
| shitcoin token they would probably still be around today and
| maybe even integrating with Nostr.
| sph wrote:
| My quasi-skeptic approach to cryptocurrency:
|
| - Build it without crypto
|
| - If you build it with crypto, base it off Bitcoin.
|
| Anything else might as well be a product based on a pump-and-
| dump shitcoin. _There is only one cryptocurrency, and Satoshi
| is its prophet._
| once_inc wrote:
| Agreed, though Satoshi isn't a prophet or messiah. Just a
| pseudonym.
| OsrsNeedsf2P wrote:
| LBRY is doing just fine* with Odyssey.com
|
| * as fine as an alt-YouTube ever does
| kornelijus wrote:
| It's https://odysee.com by the way, did make me think they
| closed down for a sec.
| the_gastropod wrote:
| > BUT unlike YouTube, we can't strike, shadow-ban, or demonetize
| you just because we disagree
|
| Ah, right. _Too much_ content moderation is the biggest problem
| with YouTube. /s
| cybrox wrote:
| Just because it's not THE biggest problem doesn't mean that it
| isn't A problem.
|
| More specifically not YouTubes moderation itself but the way in
| which its systems can be abused.
| the_gastropod wrote:
| Right. But "lol, we'll just get rid of moderation, bro" is an
| incredibly naive and dangerous non-solution.
|
| I think it frustrates many stereotypical "tech bro" types
| that there exist problems that are difficult or impossible
| for technology to solve. Content moderation is a messy
| business. But it's necessary business.
| rglullis wrote:
| Getting rid of _centralized_ moderation and _unilateral
| censorship_ is not the same as "getting rid of moderation,
| bro".
| itsoktocry wrote:
| > _Too much content moderation is the biggest problem with
| YouTube._
|
| But controlling what _you_ see is easy! Just don 't watch it.
| As opposed to controlling what you _can 't_, which you are at
| the mercy of YouTube to provide.
|
| Or is it that you want to control what _other_ people see?
| the_gastropod wrote:
| Yes. Most reasonable people don't want anyone sharing CSAM,
| for example.
| skinkestek wrote:
| Agree that there are things we don't want to exist, but by
| your logic internet should have been forbidden a long time
| ago.
|
| This can be said for so many situations:
|
| Most people does not want cars to crash into Christmas
| fairs either.
|
| But the solution is not to ban cars.
|
| Most people does not want kids to be bullied at school.
|
| But the solution is not to ban schools.
|
| Etc.
|
| You can say we have laws about cars. Yes, but those laws
| aren't enforced by Ford or Volkswagen. Edit: or by Shell or
| Exxon for that matter.
|
| There will be laws about content on internet even if Google
| can't willy nilly remove the channel of Warthog Defense
| because it hurt some russians feelings.
| the_gastropod wrote:
| > Most people does not want cars to crash into Christmas
| fairs either. But the solution is not to ban cars. Mist
| people does not want kids to be bullied at school. But
| the solution is not to ban schools.
|
| Right! And the solution also isn't "fuck it. Too
| complicated to do perfectly. No discipline in schools /
| no traffic laws".
| skinkestek wrote:
| No, but the solution is hopefully much closer to
| traditional western style punishment of switchboard
| operators who listen in or interfere and far far away
| from Stasi style mandatory snitching?
| segfaltnh wrote:
| Exactly right. I don't understand why people miss this
| detail. Maybe Google does have too much power over how
| content is served, but this isn't a fix, at all.
| rglullis wrote:
| Decentralization does not mean anarchy. The discipline
| and the laws come from the bottom up. Also, they are
| usually better than the ones imposed by a central planner
| because they can be developed faster and within the
| context of the social norms and culture of the people who
| are subject to it.
| the_gastropod wrote:
| Decentralization doesn't mean much of anything on its
| own. There are "decentralized" setups that do moderation
| fairly well (e.g., Mastodon or most oldschool web forums,
| where there's ultimately _someone_ accountable). _This_
| (Nostr), specifically [1], makes fun of such setups.
|
| To moderate any system, there must be affordances for
| moderation and someone(s) accountable to the users of the
| system. As far as I can tell, like most blockchain
| projects, the Nostr project has effectively stripped
| (nearly) all affordances for doing moderation. Given that
| the Nostr audience seems to overlap considerably with
| crypto enthusiasts, I think their stance is basically the
| same: no moderation, no "censorship", etc. Given that
| there's literally child porn stored on the Bitcoin
| blockchain right now, I don't think your argument holds
| that "decentralization" can just Jeff Goldblum it and
| "find a way" without explicit affordances /
| accountability.
|
| [1] https://nostr.com/comparisons/mastodon
| rglullis wrote:
| Nostr makes fun of the idea that you can have
| _centralized_ moderation and moves it explicitly to the
| relays. It is up to the relay owner to determine what is
| allowed or not.
| the_gastropod wrote:
| Which practically means unanimous agreement is needed
| among all relays in order to moderate anything. I also
| don't see what incentive / accountability relays face to
| remove content. So... I don't see that strategy being
| particularly effective. But hey! If more than a couple
| dozen people wind up actually using the thing, guess
| we'll find out!
| rglullis wrote:
| > Which practically means unanimous agreement is needed
| among all relays in order to moderate anything.
|
| No, it means that the people will tend to congregate
| around the relays that work according to what they
| expect/want to see.
|
| You are thinking from the assumption that things are only
| acceptable if _total compliance_ is enforced. Even on the
| highly-controlled and regulated Internet there is still
| abhorrent content out there, why would you expect that
| from the alternative?
|
| The interesting question is: do you think that the
| majority of people don't see this side of the internet
| because of how effective the centralized control and
| policing is, or just because the majority of people _are
| not interested in seeing this content in the first
| place_?
| the_gastropod wrote:
| > The interesting question is: do you think that the
| majority of people don't see this side of the internet
| because of how effective the centralized control and
| policing is, or just because the majority of people are
| not interested in seeing this content in the first place?
|
| Both! Most people don't want to see beheading videos and
| would be very upset if one came across their Youtube
| recommendations. Fortunately, YouTube's "CENSORSHIP" is
| pretty good at not showing such videos (even though
| they're completely legal content!)
|
| However, there is a significant long tail pool of people
| who are _totally_ into watching such abhorrent content
| (e.g., 8channers), and could easily cause a deeply
| offensive content to find itself in the unmoderated
| "Democratically trending" video feed, as it's
| demonstrated in the Flare example walkthrough.
|
| Maybe that's your point? Platforms like these will
| necessarily be used pretty much exclusively by people who
| like or will tolerate seeing extremely offensive content
| because everyone else will be put off by the occasional
| display of horribleness.
|
| Libertarian "DON'T CENSOR ME, BRO" havens like 8chan,
| kiwifarms, daily stormer, etc. already exist. They're not
| particularly popular, when compared to the likes of
| Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, etc. But they're certainly
| popular enough to draw millions of users. And every one
| of them would be delighted if they could post their
| inflammatory nonsense on Facebook or YouTube to reach a
| wider audience. And Facebook and YouTube _have_ wider
| audiences because they moderate content.
|
| In a previous life I worked building popular social media
| apps that included user-generated content. And I saw
| first-hand how horrific content moderation is. The shit
| people post to social media sites is as vile as it is
| vast. I'm certain most "anti-censorship" people's
| opinions would be changed if they'd watched an actual
| content moderator do their job for 30 minutes.
| skinkestek wrote:
| Why compare against neo nazi and shock websites?
|
| Why expect everything to end in "trending" feed?
|
| Telegram has solved this problem a loooong time ago.
|
| Those who want beheading and castration videos subscribe
| to russian and arab channels.
|
| Those that doesn't goes elsewhere.
|
| And if one of them shows up in the comments of a sane
| channel we report them and they are gone.
| rglullis wrote:
| The point that I am trying to make and I am not sure you
| are getting: if we take the decentralized system as the
| Internet and the different social Networks as "relays
| with autonomy over their own content", isn't that already
| an example that that each subnetwork gets to enforce the
| policies that their own communities value?
|
| The problem I am taking with your view is that shows a
| not-so-subtle hint of totalitarianism. It tries to use
| the abuses caused by people with freedom to justify that
| we all should lose our liberties (or accept that global
| subjugation to a common set of rules as inevitable.
|
| Yeah, _currently_ all platforms that promote
| "censorship-resistance" are predominantly used by those
| who got affected by large -scale censorship. Yeah, _most_
| of these people are doing or saying despicable things.
| But that should not be an argument to make the case that
| centralized platforms and worldwide gatekeepers are the
| best solution.
|
| To repeat: you keep arguing like the enthusiasts of
| decentralized platforms are "anti-censorship", when in
| fact the fight is about claiming back some sense of
| autonomy and agency to let people be able to do the
| moderation/curation themselves (or to someone closer to
| them who understands their values and social context
| better)
| the_gastropod wrote:
| > The point that I am trying to make and I am not sure
| you are getting: if we take the decentralized system as
| the Internet and the different social Networks as "relays
| with autonomy over their own content", isn't that already
| an example that that each subnetwork gets to enforce the
| policies that their own communities value?
|
| Yes. I agree that this model can, and does, work.
| Mastodon and old school web forums were the examples I
| gave upthread where they do work. And I believe these
| work because forum owners / mastodon server owners have
| the capability and necessary incentives to moderate
| content posted on their subnetworks. As I understand
| Nostr's design (relays / clients), and its explicit
| citation that Mastodon's model is bad because "3rd party
| (server hosts) can censor you", I do not believe your
| success model is applicable. Nostr relays lack the
| incentive and accountability needed to moderate content
| much the same way Bitcoin miners do.
|
| > The problem I am taking with your view is that shows a
| not-so-subtle hint of totalitarianism. It tries to use
| the abuses caused by people with freedom to justify that
| we all should lose our liberties (or accept that global
| subjugation to a common set of rules as inevitable.
|
| Holy slippery slope, batman! Global Totalitarianism!
| Believe it or not, there exists a middle ground between
| total "LIBERY!" freedom! Moderate yourselves, nerds! and
| endorsing a Global Cabal of Media Reviewers.
|
| What I completely reject is that the primary problem with
| YouTube, Facebook, and the like is that they're
| arbitrarily censoring "views they don't like". The
| handful of examples of this I've ever seen have been
| comically obvious censorable material, or actual very
| difficult decisions that it's completely reasonable to
| understand why the decision was made. I have many other
| concerns about these mega-tech companies that I find
| infinitely more troubling than their current content
| moderation practices. At the end of the day, these
| companies are _accountable_. If nothing else, you have
| the option to leave! See Twitter. Embracing
| decentralization for the sake of decentralization only
| complicates this accountability, potentially to the point
| where no-one has any appreciable accountability (a la
| Bitcoin, again).
|
| What I also reject is the implication that this is a
| simple problem. The Paradox of tolerance is a thing, and
| it's just plain complicated. And not something
| decentralization--or any other technology--can solve.
|
| > To repeat: you keep arguing like the enthusiasts of
| decentralized platforms are "anti-censorship", when in
| fact the fight is about claiming back some sense of
| autonomy and agency to let people be able to do the
| moderation/curation themselves (or to someone closer to
| them who understands their values and social context
| better)
|
| I think you and I actually have a lot in common in that
| respect. I'm a big Mastodon fan, run my own #HOMELAB to
| reclaim ownership of my data, do the whole POSSE thing,
| etc. I'm all about all of this stuff. What I reject is
| this perverse idea that the biggest problem with big tech
| is that they're just haphazardly censoring ideas they
| don't like (it's always conservative ideas). It's little
| more than a conspiracy theory that's led to virtually
| every social media platform today happily platforming
| actual Nazis (because of the free speech, you know?) and
| forbidding such taboo things as sex workers, critics of
| the CEO, etc. These are decisions. And platforms like
| Flame exist for basically one reason: to further
| propagate the conspiracy that big tech (like the
| mainstream media, colleges & universities, etc.) are just
| completely and irrationally biased against poor old
| conservatives who just want to, like, share their
| opinions, man.
| rglullis wrote:
| The (main) criticism of the Mastodon model is that your
| _identity_ is still centralized. The federated model is
| fine, but the whole thing still depends on domain names
| which can be seized.
|
| And this issue is not just about moderation. Let's say
| that you have been a model citizen on a server, but one
| of the moderators woke up in a bad mood, found something
| they don't like about you and kicks you out. Now you are
| locked out of your account and can not even migrate it
| away. FYI: not an hypothetical, this happened with some
| of my friends who were working with crypto.
|
| > the biggest problem with big tech is that they're just
| haphazardly censoring ideas they don't like
|
| To me, the problem is that they are _too big_ , plain and
| simple. Too big, too powerful and too far removed from
| their actual customers to even care about the individual
| customer or anything that slightly deviates from the
| norm. I don't like them much like I don't like the EU-
| style of bureaucratic government.
|
| What (I hope) nostr is trying to build is something where
| the centralization is _outright impossible_ first, _then_
| come out with the mechanisms to tackle content curation
| /moderation.
| f1refly wrote:
| Good thing we tend to put people who share CSAM in jail,
| preventing them from doing so in the future, solving this
| problem for the rest of us.
| Avshalom wrote:
| You can also control what people can't see on nostr, by
| simply rejecting/deleting any messages from relays or ids you
| don't like. This isn't a big problem for something like plain
| text because it's cheap to run a relay that only stores text
| but if you're letting people upload/download video... That
| gets expensive fast.
| l33tman wrote:
| Just vaguely reminds me of:
| https://www.techdirt.com/2022/11/02/hey-elon-let-me-help-you...
| bagels wrote:
| How is the infrastructure and bandwidth paid for?
| jasode wrote:
| _> How is the infrastructure and bandwidth paid for?_
|
| For bandwidth intensive usage such as video, it will probably
| be "paid relays" instead of free ones. Click on url in the _"
| Popular paid relays"_ paragraph to see examples:
|
| https://nostr.how/en/relays
|
| Nostr is popular with the cryptocurrency community so the
| payment mechanics seem to favor Bitcoin and/or Bitcoin
| Lightning.
| thisgoesnowhere wrote:
| It's really not popular at all and it's growing linearly in
| terms of users (death sentence for a social) yet completely
| flat (suspiciously flat in my opinion) in terms of adoption.
|
| https://stats.nostr.band/
| kevindamm wrote:
| Paid relays look like they cost on average 5000 lightning,
| which is estimated at $65 USD currently, and that's a one time
| fee (until they get recurring payments set up, I'm guessing
| most relays will convert to that).. but flare in their FAQ
| recommends getting 8-10 relays.
| itslennysfault wrote:
| The "notes" (non-video content) are hosted on relays like
| everything in Nostr.
|
| The media is hosted on regular web servers and it says you can
| host it anywhere. It seems like most of the videos are hosted
| here: https://nostr.build/
|
| Which is a paid service backed by AWS S3
| eviks wrote:
| Congrats on launch!
|
| Login button: 3 times I see the word "Nsec" without any
| explanation, that would lose a lot of youtubers from
| transitioning
|
| But a bigger issue is that googling about nsec tells me it's a
| very bad practice: "Some argue that the user should never enter
| their nsec into an input field at the risk of being compromised
| by the service. Given the nature of nostr, users cannot recover
| from a leaked private key and must take greater precaution than
| they would with a username/password combination."
| https://nostrdesign.org/docs/how-to/sign-in-sign-up/
|
| (also pip for some reason stops playing when I switch to another
| page on the site)
| pavlov wrote:
| _> "Given the nature of nostr, users cannot recover from a
| leaked private key and must take greater precaution than they
| would with a username /password combination."_
|
| This is a complete dealbreaker for any end-user product. I
| don't understand why crypto/blockchain fans still think it can
| work.
| Retr0id wrote:
| I'm not sure why you're getting downvoted here. In _any_
| other context, "paste in the private key that your identity
| is irrevocably bound to" would get you laughed out of the
| room. It seems to be the default nostr UX nonetheless, and
| that's worthy of note.
|
| I am aware of efforts to improve on this though, for example
| https://snort.social/e/note1crl44xk24yc2ym5xlyyfjdeumxueyguz.
| .. - essentially the equivalent of a custodial wallet, if I'm
| understanding correctly.
| jgilias wrote:
| He's getting downvoted because that's a solved problem in
| the wider crypto-space. To log in you sign a message using
| your hardware wallet.
|
| Nostr hasn't grown up to that yet, and pointing out that
| pasting private keys is a bad idea is fair game.
|
| But implying that public private key cryptography can't be
| used to log into web apps is just silly given that value
| worth billions is being moved around daily using such web
| apps.
| halfmatthalfcat wrote:
| There's a reason why social logins, magic links and SMS
| login codes are so ubiquitous now - end users want 0
| friction getting into their accounts. This _increases_
| friction beyond what is currently common practice. No,
| the public doesn 't want nor care about using a key to
| log in.
| wholinator2 wrote:
| Although i have heard of SQRL [1] which purports to be a
| frictionless way of securely logging in with public
| private key encryption. I've never seen it discussed here
| though so I'm unsure if there's significant downside
|
| [1]: https://www.grc.com/sqrl/sqrl.htm
| Retr0id wrote:
| This sounds a lot like passkeys
| https://developers.google.com/identity/passkeys - I'd be
| interested to see a more thorough comparison of the two.
|
| Both of these do a challenge-response style
| authentication with a particular website, and wouldn't
| really work as part of a decentralized system.
|
| You could use the same signing key ordinarily used to
| sign authentication challenges to sign nostr notes, but
| then you're back to square 1 really.
|
| Edit: slightly better passkey info here https://developer
| s.yubico.com/Passkeys/How_passkeys_work.htm...
| Ajedi32 wrote:
| SQRL is indeed pretty similar to passkeys. It was just
| invented before passkeys (before WebAuthn even) and
| designed to work without requiring any new web standards
| or changes to the existing web browsers at the time.
|
| That greater compatibility came with some UX trade-offs
| though. Now that passkeys exist and are widely supported
| by web browsers there's really no need for SQRL anymore;
| passkeys are a far more polished version of the same
| concept.
| vezycash wrote:
| >end users want 0 friction getting into their accounts.
|
| Why not offer both, the easy one for normal users and an
| option to use the more secure option.
| krapp wrote:
| Why not have the secure option also be easy so normal
| users will use it?
| Thorrez wrote:
| Does public key necessarily have to be high friction?
|
| Couldn't there be a few-step UI similar to "Sign in with
| Google/Facebook/etc"?
| rglullis wrote:
| For People who are already familiar with metamask, "Sign
| in with Ethereum" is so easy that makes people wish it
| was universal. It is even easy to generate new identities
| on demand: generate a new address/public key is literally
| a one-button operation.
|
| The only thing that bugs me about is that is actually all
| your identities are still tied to same master passphrase,
| so if that gets compromised all of your identities get
| revealed.
| jgilias wrote:
| You should try logging into a "web3" app to see what I'm
| talking about. No need to buy crypto or anything, of
| course. Just for the science.
|
| A short guide, assuming a mobile device:
|
| 1. Install MetaMask, next, next, finish to create a
| wallet.
|
| 2. Open app.uniswap.org on your favorite browser. See if
| you can figure out how to 'connect'.
|
| You can of course use the MetaMask built-in browser, but
| that'd be cheating.
| J_Shelby_J wrote:
| I've actually seen this used for non-crypto sites. I
| think... it was fetlife?
|
| If you already have MetaMask/Phantom extensions installed
| it's easier than email verification.
| vnuge wrote:
| I am glad Zach posted here also, I think nostr devs need
| some reality pull from "non-crypto normies". To be clear
| it is (hopefully) becoming more common practice to use a
| nip-07 web-extension for signing (hardware or software)
| or other methods such as NIP-46. To be clear though, a
| user on nostr will HAVE to interact with cryptography in
| some way as every message on the network is signed.
|
| Im working on https://github.com/VnUgE/NVault as an
| option for more paranoid users that want a self hosted
| networked approach. But there are others listed here
| https://github.com/nostr-protocol/nips/blob/master/07.md
|
| Finally, I wholly dislike the practice of offering an
| option of entering an nsec. Use a signing extension!
| rijoja wrote:
| ah physical key has the same properties and end-users seems
| to have been accepting that just fine for hundreds of years
| hu3 wrote:
| I can easily change my house keys. Even when someone makes
| a copy of it.
| jddj wrote:
| Plus, by design it's easy to prove that you have a
| private key without having to stick it in somebody else's
| lock.
| stetrain wrote:
| I hate when I lose my house key and just have to leave it
| and go buy a new house somewhere else.
| plagiarist wrote:
| Nobody with my house key can impersonate me in my house
| from anywhere in the world without me knowing. The signed
| and notarized documents involved give me a legal avenue to
| remove anyone who obtains a key, instead of just abandoning
| the house and the equity to identity thieves.
| breakfastduck wrote:
| literally not at all similar to a house key
| itslennysfault wrote:
| It is correct that it is bad practice to paste an nsec, but a
| lot of nostr services allow it. The login DOES support "login
| with extension" which is far preferred and much safer. Your
| private key is stored in a browser plugin and is not
| transmitted.
|
| Experienced Nostr users will understand this, but I totally
| agree with your point about making it easier for non-nostr
| users. Also, they should (at least) strongly encourage people
| to use a browser extension / wallet instead of pasting their
| nsec, and provide a guide on how to do that and why.
| prmoustache wrote:
| So how will you cope with DMCA takedown requests and what will
| you do when all major medias companies will sue your ass?
|
| You may try to pretend it is not your content and explain how the
| protocol works and all that but as long as you will host a
| frontend and own the domain name you will be considered the one
| to sue.
| skinkestek wrote:
| How does Bitcoin cope with the fact that the DVD key (and
| probably a few other interesting things) are stored on the
| blockchain?
| sph wrote:
| Do you mean 09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0 ?
| rascul wrote:
| Also on Wikipedia
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AACS_encryption_key_controver
| s...
| quickthrower2 wrote:
| It copes by whoever did that being anonymous. The same method
| as any other unsolved "crime". In terms of network
| persistence of the data, it would be a gargantuan and
| fruitless effort to go after every bitcoin node operator on
| the planet in every jurisdiction they operate in. So Bitcoin
| copes by its very evasive design.
| RF_Savage wrote:
| Yep. Same problems as torrent trackers and search engines. Even
| only having magnet links did not save site operators.
| sph wrote:
| Torrent search engines still exist, DMCA notwithstanding.
| prmoustache wrote:
| However I doubt they are hosted at Vercel in the USA.
|
| And that is without even mentionning child porn.
| acdha wrote:
| Yes, but people aren't building dependencies on them. If
| you're unable to use hosting in the top countries, that's
| going to complicate any attempt to build an actual business
| or get people to use a community project.
| konart wrote:
| But the beauty here is that you don't have to run a
| business or host a community project.
|
| You can have a local client that connects to N relays and
| supports a few NIPs.
|
| And if one of the relays goes down for whatever reason -
| you will still be able to get updates from the others.
| Including information about new relays.
| acdha wrote:
| Yes, that's the dream but it hasn't worked out for most
| usage because few people are going to spend their time
| and money hosting other people's content. If you want it
| to stay up or have dependable service, you almost always
| have to pay for hosting.
| mab122 wrote:
| I love that nostr identity is not tied to an instance (unlike
| activitypub/mastondon/fediverse)! However ignoring some (IMO)
| fundamental problems (because they are not problems until you hit
| scale) like hosting, somewhat moderation and letting that be
| solved "layer above" is a mistake (IMO) it will probably create
| non standardized APIs for paying for hosting or sth.
|
| As for community it is heavily based on bitcoin/lightning
| enthusiasts and a lot of content revolving just around that -
| probably won't attract people outside the circle/general public
| (which may not be the goal or preferable outcome!)
| Retr0id wrote:
| I think Bluesky/atproto has a reasonable compromise in this
| department. At any single point in time your identity is bound
| to a specific instance, but that binding is mutable.
| irusensei wrote:
| You might be surprised on how relatively popular it is among
| some Japanese users. They have their own clients and relays and
| most of them are not even into Bitcoin.
| urtrs wrote:
| When you hover the video it takes too long for the controls to
| appear.
| 0ckpuppet wrote:
| so basically a democratized youtube?
| _heimdall wrote:
| I think a federated YouTube would be more accurate
| ingen0s wrote:
| Beautiful! Nice work! Super applause!
| vivzkestrel wrote:
| decentralized anything never works at scale, this is what all the
| techie founders never grasp. what happens if someone uploads a
| child porn video or cartel beheading video on your website?
| because of your algorithm ll stack things by watch time it ll get
| to the front page in no time. What measures/controls do you have
| because your site explicitly says "we can't strike, shadow-ban,
| or demonetize you just because we disagree"
| Humbly7628 wrote:
| >decentralized anything never works at scale
|
| Ever heard of blockchain ? And don't tell me its a very precise
| case, blockchains are used for a lot of things
| steelbrain wrote:
| > blockchains are used for a lot of things
|
| Yeah? Like what?
| idkwhoiam wrote:
| Some examples: Cryptokitties, payments on dark net, crypto
| scam ICOs
| NicoJuicy wrote:
| I think it's also used for cold storage.
|
| Only if they have basic it skills though
| segfaltnh wrote:
| Yes, and they scale poorly. See the part where people fill
| warehouses with GPUs causing global shortages and lopsided
| power demands.
| viraptor wrote:
| The ethereum merge happened over a year ago and it's not
| the only PoS network now. Feel free to complain about BTC,
| but for blockchain in general it doesn't make sense.
| acdha wrote:
| PoS addresses only part of the inefficient architecture.
| You're no longer needing hundreds of power plants to
| operate a niche financial service, but you still have the
| storage needed to store every transaction (which is also
| a huge privacy risk) and the incredibly low transaction
| rate. These systems are hugely expensive to operate
| relative to their almost non-existent real-world usage.
| askonomm wrote:
| As evidenced by how Fediverse works (Mastodon for example); The
| networks actively ban bad acting networks, have very active set
| of moderators on each network, etc. How is this any different
| from centralized thing?
| the_gastropod wrote:
| The Nostr website basically makes fun of this aspect of
| Mastodon.
|
| https://nostr.com/comparisons/mastodon
| askonomm wrote:
| Oh, well, I should've read the fine print. My bad.
| _heimdall wrote:
| This is the kicker people reaching for federation miss.
| Federation just means you may have more moderators running
| around moderating more copies of all the same data.
|
| Federation has a few pros for sure, but avoiding moderation
| isn't one of them. If anything its harder to know who is
| doing the moderating and where to look if you think things
| may be quietly being banned or buried.
| belorn wrote:
| The major difference is that people can choose a different
| network if they are unhappy with the moderation from any
| specific network.
|
| A channel on youtube can't just decide that they are unhappy
| with the moderation by youtube and replace them with an other
| moderation team. They can leave youtube, but then they also
| loose access to existing subscribers on the site.
|
| Youtube users can also not decided they are unhappy with the
| moderation of youtube and whitelist videos or channels that
| youtube have blocked. They can leave youtube, but then the
| channels also need to leave or the user will loose access to
| videos.
|
| The distinction between centralized power and decentralized
| power is how much power each actor has in the system. In a
| decentralized system the user control who they want to see,
| the content creator control who can access their content, and
| the network control what content the network will advertise
| to users. In a centralized system the network control
| everything, and neither the user or content creator can
| overrule the network.
| dev_hugepages wrote:
| Nothing in the decentralized design prevents an host from
| blocking one video. By "we can't strike, shadow-ban, or
| demonetize you just because we disagree", he simply meant that
| the net prevents that. Like tor, a relay cannot be held liable
| for content on the tor network.
| vivzkestrel wrote:
| so you want an 8 yr old child who mistakenly might have
| opened the home page of this website to go and manually block
| the video so that he cant see the video after he saw it?
| askonomm wrote:
| Host, not user. The host blocks it. Host has moderators the
| same way as Twitter does.
| quickthrower2 wrote:
| Er... how long since the last exit node SWAT raid?
| acdha wrote:
| You hope they cannot be held liable. That doesn't mean that
| you can't be raided, or have to defend yourself against
| charges of illicit content being found in a computer you use,
| or accusations that you're knowingly supporting crimes. A lot
| of that is going to depend on the service and how much
| visibility you have into user activity - a caching storage
| node is going to be riskier than forwarding encrypted
| packets, for example.
|
| Here's an example of some privacy activists:
|
| https://news.sophos.com/en-us/2016/04/07/couple-hosting-
| tor-...
|
| Maybe you're super ideologically committed to providing a
| privacy service and willing to take the risk, but you still
| want to soberly consider those risks and think about the
| impact if it's harder to defend yourself than you thought.
| It's not a casual decision.
| viraptor wrote:
| Just because it's not bannable doesn't mean you can't stop
| advertising it on the front page. Same way mastodon instances
| are moderated even though you can't stop people from creating
| instances with their own content. (It's not ideal, but neither
| is centralised moderation)
| quickthrower2 wrote:
| From what I understand of nostr, if there is CP or hate speech
| etc. the relays would be incentivised to remove it in the same
| way say a collection of PHPBB forums would be if someone
| uploaded it there. Not sure on the legalities though, in terms
| of if the relays are liable. Not sure if all relays would
| support video. So to be guaranteed to keep your video you would
| need ti self host. Which is technical and/or a monthly cost if
| someone makes it convenient.
|
| I don't think Nostr is like blockchain where you cant remove or
| mutate data. Although a spammer might make it hard.
| acdha wrote:
| Relay liability is going to depend on knowledge. What's going
| to happen in practice is that someone at, say, the FBI gets a
| lead that something prohibited is being accessed in some
| group and they're going to look for evidence. If your IP
| serves them anything dodgy, they're not going to roll the
| SWAT team (probably) but they're going to see if they can
| find evidence that you are an active participant before they
| contact you or your hosting company.
|
| What's going to happen after that is going to depend on what
| they've found and how innocent/unaware you look, and your
| reaction. They don't raid Dropbox's hosting center because
| it's unlikely that a large business is a secret criminal
| front operation and they have an established practice of
| sending warrants and getting information or takedowns but if
| you're a single person or small business there's more room
| for doubt and they might be more aggressive. If you do look
| like an innocent whose service is being abused by criminals,
| I'd expect the initial impact to be only blocking that
| material / user and turning over all of the information that
| you have about their activity. If that keeps happening, or
| you tell them that you don't keep logs, etc. that might
| change to them thinking you're actually trying to help their
| targets, and the next time it happens might be less
| charitable.
|
| Anyone operating a relay should think about how that'd look
| sad what the damage could be: don't run it on hardware you
| couldn't afford to lose if it's seized as evidence, your
| business partners and people you live with need to know &
| accept the risk, and you want to think carefully about the
| personal impacts of any investigation. For example, if you
| work at a school or church running a Tor exit node is
| probably a bad idea because even an investigation finding
| nothing could have significant damage to your reputation
| since there's always that "what if he just hid it well?"
| question which can't be un-raised.
| jgilias wrote:
| I just used something called "the internet" to read your
| message. As opposed to one of those corporate owned networks
| for computer-like devices from the eighties.
| NicoJuicy wrote:
| And with which ISP did you reach that "internet"?
| jgilias wrote:
| One belonging to a bazillion different entities globally.
| One of a handful I can choose from locally.
| gunapologist99 wrote:
| wait, AOL isn't the Internet?
| guerrilla wrote:
| Except BitTorrent which been going strong for 20 years now...
| vivzkestrel wrote:
| and do you know what most people use bit torrent for ? "think
| , mark think..."
| rambambram wrote:
| > decentralized anything never works at scale
|
| I'm pretty impressed by this thing called 'the internet'.
| kevindamm wrote:
| While your point is valid, I think the "propagate all ledger
| entries to all nodes" kind of decentralized is different than
| the "route around broken nodes" kind of decentralized. I'm
| guessing GP meant the former not the latter.
| acdha wrote:
| The internet isn't decentralized the same way: you have
| single authorities managing routes, DNS, etc. and -
| critically - unlike blockchains you aren't trying to have a
| single global consensus across the entire system. If my ISP
| updates my IP, nobody else needs to see and process a
| transaction, there's no quorum, etc. That trustless design is
| what makes blockchains so expensive to use.
| ehhthing wrote:
| The internet isn't really decentralized and realistically it
| cannot be.
|
| Submarine cables are owned by companies, T1 ISPs provide the
| majority of routing and you really cannot prevent any of
| this.
|
| Centralized control is somewhat required because submarine
| cables cost money and transit costs money and small companies
| simply do not have the capital to do that.
| tambourine_man wrote:
| The problem with decentralized is more of UX and latency than
| moderation, IMO.
|
| Just look at Mastodon. The issue is not the crazy content you
| get from time to time. What's annoying is waiting for media to
| appear on your timeline and explaining newcomers that they must
| choose a server and the double @@ thing.
|
| The second is a one-time thing at signup and perhaps
| surpassable. The first is a deal breaker. Anyone used to
| Instagram and TikTok's timeline would just dismiss it as broken
| on the spot.
| worthless-trash wrote:
| Here i was thinking TikTok was broken by not doing it.
| acdha wrote:
| I think of those as priorities for when you need to start
| focusing on each one. Latency is a huge deal for starting to
| use a service, moderation affects what happens after people
| do start adoption. You have to get big enough to attract
| spammers, organized trolls, etc.
| jrmg wrote:
| _waiting for media to appear on your timeline_
|
| What do you mean by this?
| ThrowawayTestr wrote:
| Loading a picture from one small instance to another takes
| tens of seconds, practically dial up speeds.
| tambourine_man wrote:
| I wish it was tens of seconds only. Most of the time, I
| get tired of waiting and open the browser version where,
| for some reason, it loads.
| subpixel wrote:
| The replies to your comment point out what is technically
| feasible but not how it could actually work at any scale.
|
| Part of the "job" that software like FB and YT and Gmail for
| that matter perform for users is to make so-called graphic
| content a non-issue.
| krapp wrote:
| Let's be fair, though - most people using a censorship-
| resistant decentralized video platform are explicitly doing
| so to share and access "graphic content." Or at the very
| least consciously don't mind encountering such content on
| free speech absolutist principles alone.
| greentea23 wrote:
| Email is decentralized. The client provides the spam protection
| and moderation.
| mattstir wrote:
| Email is a fantastic example of something that's technically
| capable of being decentralized but in practice has something
| like 70%+ of all traffic handled by three major companies
| (Google, Microsoft, and Apple). No one can stop you from
| making your own email client and using it, but your emails
| will most certainly get black holed and discarded as spam by
| most major services much more frequently.
| greentea23 wrote:
| Well it's still decentralized and scales in that there is
| significant competition participating in an open protocol.
| Even though most use the big 3, many smaller players have
| enough legitimacy to be whitelisted by gmail, e.g. fastmail
| and protonmail. But for fully custom, sure gmail is
| annoyingly aggressive these days, but it's not a black
| hole, the emails still send and more importantly receive.
| Does anyone other than spammers send cold email? I usually
| am receiving or replying. When I do send cold, it's to
| someone who is expecting it so they will check their spam
| or already have me in their contact list so it doesn't go
| to spam. It's not for everyone or for all situations, but
| fwiw I've found it very useful to exercise the fully
| distributed nature of email for personal and professional
| reasons, so I would still defend it as a fair example of a
| distributed protocol that scales :).
| matei88 wrote:
| ever heard of something called DNS?
| dogman144 wrote:
| Bitcoin, a decentralized something, is the 10th largest global
| market cap asset - $855b. Gold is#1 at $13T. Mortgage backed
| securities are $11t, for reference.
|
| That to me is working at scale, and all the "what ifs" you're
| referencing have happened to Bitcoin, but it is still around
| since 2009.
|
| Edit, as someone else commented - we are also all talking via
| the internet, at its core a decentralized technology of
| combined infrastructure, routing protocols, and DNS tracking.
| The presence or involvement of centralized entities doesn't
| count against that fact.
| dbbk wrote:
| I'm sorry but this is just a galactically bad idea.
| Zm44 wrote:
| Thanks for your feedback bro, means a lot.
| edent wrote:
| WTF is a "34235 client"?
|
| But, regardless, how's this better than PeerTube?
| Retr0id wrote:
| I think that's a typo for "any of the 34235 clients", where
| 34235 is a stand-in for "large number" (there are lots of nostr
| clients).
|
| Nostr is interesting because it's not actually P2P, just
| decentralised - whether that's a good thing is open to
| question.
| Zm44 wrote:
| In this case 34235 client refers to `kind 34235` events. In
| nostr, different event types are distinguished by kind
| numbers, so clients can be built and filter for events of a
| certain type. For example, the content shown on a
| twitter/microblogging client, should not be the same as the
| content shown on a YouTube like client.
| edent wrote:
| That's _super_ usable!
| zaik wrote:
| It's better if you think Nostr is superior to ActivityPub.
| smcleod wrote:
| The sites design is very aesthetically pleasing, well done on
| that front.
|
| Something that put me off a bit was immediately seeing bitcoin
| influencer content after loading the page.
| jgilias wrote:
| That's just the nature of Nostr at the moment. It's very
| Bitcoin adjacent. There's significant overlap between Nostr and
| Bitcoin developers. Also, Bitcoin (through Lightning) is the
| currency used on Nostr for anything and everything.
|
| I can totally see how that's off putting for normal people
| though.
| alkonaut wrote:
| It's so off putting I wouldn't touch it with a ten foot pole.
| I wouldn't even curiously browse a landing page of an
| otherwise interesting project beyond the point I notice that
| something is mildly "cryptocurrency-adjacent", or it becomes
| obvious that it has involvement from devs who also enjoy
| working on blockchains. Thanks for the heads up.
| wlll wrote:
| Same sentiment here. Something to compete with YouTube
| would be great but I'm not going anywhere near anything
| crypto related, the whole ecosystem stinks to me.
| jgilias wrote:
| It shouldn't really be much of a surprise though that
| people hacking on decentralized value transfer where
| identity is asserted using asymmetric key cryptography were
| the ones coming up with the idea to use a similar approach
| for information transfer.
| cesarvarela wrote:
| Can I ask why?
|
| Beyond the "crypto grift," a blockchain-based social
| network might offer some benefits:
|
| - permissionless - (no moderation)
|
| - means for auto solvency - (we are not the product)
|
| - interoperability - (multiple clients, forks, etc.)
|
| - privacy
| emmo wrote:
| You can't brush off the "crypto grift" though. That's the
| sticking point, and it's a very big one.
| bogwog wrote:
| That's the reason I personally avoid Nostr. I know it's unfair
| because Nostr itself is actually a cool protocol that has
| nothing to do with bitcoin, but the stench of that is hard to
| wash off. I wouldn't want to build something that becomes
| associated with bitcoin just because of the name of the
| protocol.
|
| It's like whenever there was a reddit/twitter/etc alternative
| some years ago following outrage, it'd get flooded with some of
| the worst people on the internet. Voat comes to mind as a
| pretty competent reddit clone that had potential, until it got
| overrun with nazis/racists and other kinds of losers. I was
| very close to releasing an app for that one, but abandoned it
| once it became clear the direction the userbase was going.
| deified wrote:
| Yeah. I love these new approaches to social networking and
| especially decentralized ones, but after joining Nostr and
| experiencing it for a while I got so tired of all the crypto
| talk. I'm pro crypto, I just don't want to only read about
| crypto
| treyd wrote:
| That's a huge indicator to me that Fedi is wayyy ahead any
| of the other "alt social media" projects. That normal, non-
| technical people use it to talk about normal real-life
| things in their day wayy more than they use it to just talk
| about how much they like Fedi / the thing / related thing.
| At least Bluesky as reached that bar too, but Nostr and
| none of the other crypto-y social media have.
| conzept wrote:
| Cool! Could you please allow for searching by URL parameter. Then
| I can link it from the video section on topics at
| https://conze.pt Thanks!
| DeathArrow wrote:
| How do you plan to attract users? Users come for content and
| creators come for users.
| rekoil wrote:
| Heads up, I have "block newly registered domains" configured in
| my NextDNS site, so I can't resolve flare.pub.
|
| For the future, might be good to register the domain a little
| while before the launch to avoid this.
| eurekin wrote:
| How long should the domain be up not to be considered new?
| rekoil wrote:
| 90 days.
| corobo wrote:
| Have you tried disabling that option? It should fix the
| problem!
|
| :P
| rekoil wrote:
| I know how to get access to the site, but blocking newly
| registered domains is a good security practice as it defeats
| a lot of scams.
| KomoD wrote:
| > For the future, might be good to register the domain a little
| while before the launch to avoid this.
|
| Or you can just disable it, they don't need to delay launch
| just because some guy has his DNS configured that way
| rekoil wrote:
| I'm just saying that if you want to reach a maximal audience
| it helps if your domain is older than 90 days as it isn't
| considered "new" then by some DNS providers.
| Redster wrote:
| Wasn't aware this is a thing. Thanks for the tip.
| littlestymaar wrote:
| I didn't know what nostr was, so I clicked the link[1] and I
| found this gem:
|
| > Because Nostr accounts are based on public-key cryptography
| it's easy to verify messages were really sent by the user in
| question.
|
| If you think asymmetric encryption makes anything _easy_ , you're
| missing the point.
|
| If you have a reliable way to know other peoples public keys, and
| there's a way to repudiate them, asymmetric encryption can make
| things _somewhat_ secure (that is, until private keys get stolen
| and after the theft has been detected), but that 's a very big
| "if", and getting a decent UX generally involves some kind of
| centralization, be it keybase or Certificate Authorities.
|
| [1]: https://nostr.com/
| throwway1922 wrote:
| Can some one explain how to create an user account? WTF is nsec?
| once_inc wrote:
| Nostr is a protocol for the decentralized sharing of Notes and
| Other Stuff (Through Relays). Nostr uses private keys for
| accounts, and nsec is such a key.
| irusensei wrote:
| A private key. Kinda like GPG.
| Zm44 wrote:
| You can get started on nostr here: https://nosta.me/
| Loughla wrote:
| Fascinating to me that religious weird conspiracy posts are
| almost immediately the largest portion of videos.
| irusensei wrote:
| There are no algos. You are supposed to curate your feed.
| Global is there just for convenience. Mute that npub and you
| won't see any of this again.
| Loughla wrote:
| Sure, but that's a different thing than what I said.
|
| It doesn't matter that there's no algorithm. It is just
| interesting to me that outlandish Christian conspiracies
| about the end of the world/angels/etc. are almost immediately
| being uploaded to a brand-new platform.
|
| That has nothing to do with how content is delivered?
| KomoD wrote:
| I don't even know how to sign up... lol
|
| there's an "nsec" field which i have no clue what it is
|
| there's a "connect with nsec" button which again, i don't know
| what it is.
|
| and then there's "login with extension" button which does
| nothing.
| Zm44 wrote:
| Yeah, you're probably better off getting setup with a nostr
| account on https://primal.net/home or Damus. You'd need a nostr
| extension for the extension button to work
| vnuge wrote:
| For you and others following. Common in early nostr apps. The
| web-extension spec is defined in https://github.com/nostr-
| protocol/nips/blob/master/07.md. Most apps check for
| window.nostr, then fail silently when it's missing or blocked.
| There are also some popular extensions in that list.
| itslennysfault wrote:
| Yeah, onboarding could use some love. This happens a lot with
| Nostr projects. It's built by Nostr nerds for Nostr nerds and
| to them "nsec" is super obvious. They really should NOT
| ENCOURAGE PASTING NSEC as it is not secure and explain how to
| generate an nsec and how to use a browser extension / wallet to
| log in.
| izacus wrote:
| > Like YouTube, Flare lets you upload, view, comment, and like
| videos from your favorite creators. BUT unlike YouTube, we can't
| strike, shadow-ban, or demonetize you just because we disagree
|
| Oh, this will become another lair of hate speech, conspiracy
| theories and all kinds of content noone will want to touch with a
| stick, eh?
| dancemethis wrote:
| Friendly reminder that "Nostr", just like all things with a
| missing vowel like this, is spelled "Nostrrrrrrrr" with the 'r'
| imitating an old vehicle's motor for a few seconds.
|
| It's the way the users of this pattern want and like it.
| sph wrote:
| Maybe they'll do like the bird site: Nostr -> Noster -> Z
| LeonM wrote:
| The operating costs of a video platform are huge, who pays for
| all of this?
| irusensei wrote:
| The uploader through lightning invoices.
| bagels wrote:
| How is it not DOA? Youtube pays the uploaders for their
| content.
| kevincox wrote:
| This could really use RSS feeds for channels and playlists so
| that I can follow publishers that I find. Right now there is so
| little interesting channels that I will never remember to check
| back. If I could subscribe via RSS I wouldn't miss a video.
| rfwhyte wrote:
| Cool, you built your own YouTube with hookers and coke and...
| bitcoin. Lots and lots of bitcoin. Cause lord knows there's
| literally (checks notes) _dozens_ of people out there clamoring
| for an "Anti-censorship" streaming platform where they can watch
| spammy bitcoin videos.
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