smallworlnd on Nostr: Nothing dodgy about it. Gossip is just another way of saying P2P communication ...

Nothing dodgy about it. Gossip is just another way of saying P2P communication between nodes about what they see of other publicly visible nodes and channels. It's crucial for the network to function where each node needs the most up-to-date info on channel sizes, fees, node up/down, channel active/inactive, in order to make payments happen. Nodes generally do not keep older public graph data because it's not as useful for the purpose of payments, but it's useful for tracking the evolution of the network, among other things, so some node runners are interested in maintaining snapshots of the network.

Each node also automatically and privately gathers information about where liquidity is just from trying to make payments. Nodes use that data to inform their own payment attempts in order to find the path most likely to succeed.