aaron on Nostr: What if we didn't think of it as "my relays"? This is the ubiquitous thinking so far, ...
What if we didn't think of it as "my relays"? This is the ubiquitous thinking so far, but I'm beginning to think it's wrong.
I'm working from a key premise that if relays don't effectively become like brands to users then nostr is not going to work at scale and in the long term.
Clients will dominate what users experience in terms of content. (They already are today and this is worrisome.)
When you think about ultimate scale, there will be way fewer clients in use than relays and without users being in a brand-type relationship with relays, you will have centralization for all intents and purposes.
Clients will dictate content and users will know no better.
The idea of "my relay" seems problematic in this context.
Because I, as a user, can't keep track of all users and "their" relay, I now have to relegate this power to clients. I have to stay in this "Twitter"/centralized mindset: I am "on a social network" and I have some follows - now client, go figure this out for me and, in the end, give me this Twitter experience.
This is what clients are doing today - Damus, snort, etc. Not good. At scale, they'll be just like Twitter.
*Instead* if we think about today's browsers - we demand that they give us navigation ability. Browsers fade into the background and what we are really after is this or that branded service or web page. This is good. This is power in the users hands. This is not AOL. This is decentrailization.
We need nostr clients that are browsers like this. What do they browse? They browse relays. Users of these browsers can navigate readily from relay to relay. Form a brand relationship to relays.
Now I will check out what is going on at nostr.twitter.com. Then I will go check out nostr.parler.com. Etc. If you have this then you have the censorship problems we've seen solved (we don't need Carmen Sandiego clients that try to stealthy find our censored follows). Your follows list(s) can go with you but you do not need to abdegate clever stuff to your client that hides it all from you and asks you to trust it.
I'm working from a key premise that if relays don't effectively become like brands to users then nostr is not going to work at scale and in the long term.
Clients will dominate what users experience in terms of content. (They already are today and this is worrisome.)
When you think about ultimate scale, there will be way fewer clients in use than relays and without users being in a brand-type relationship with relays, you will have centralization for all intents and purposes.
Clients will dictate content and users will know no better.
The idea of "my relay" seems problematic in this context.
Because I, as a user, can't keep track of all users and "their" relay, I now have to relegate this power to clients. I have to stay in this "Twitter"/centralized mindset: I am "on a social network" and I have some follows - now client, go figure this out for me and, in the end, give me this Twitter experience.
This is what clients are doing today - Damus, snort, etc. Not good. At scale, they'll be just like Twitter.
*Instead* if we think about today's browsers - we demand that they give us navigation ability. Browsers fade into the background and what we are really after is this or that branded service or web page. This is good. This is power in the users hands. This is not AOL. This is decentrailization.
We need nostr clients that are browsers like this. What do they browse? They browse relays. Users of these browsers can navigate readily from relay to relay. Form a brand relationship to relays.
Now I will check out what is going on at nostr.twitter.com. Then I will go check out nostr.parler.com. Etc. If you have this then you have the censorship problems we've seen solved (we don't need Carmen Sandiego clients that try to stealthy find our censored follows). Your follows list(s) can go with you but you do not need to abdegate clever stuff to your client that hides it all from you and asks you to trust it.