waxwing on Nostr: Good point to compare with a platform. What I'm really saying is just that: yes, a ...
Good point to compare with a platform. What I'm really saying is just that: yes, a set of (changing occasionally) relays is clearly superior in cens. res. over a single corporate platform, but it's not really enough; say there are 4 really popular relays, a censor attacking them is enough to make nostr not work very well. Even maybe 10 instead of 4, you could imagine it being effective. *Killing* a protocol like nostr, totally, is not viable - it's for sure decentralized enough to stay alive. But I'm saying that in practice it can be heavily damaged if relays are all clearnet and/or the operators are threatenable.
(And it's worse, arguably: if you can convince several "main" relay operators to block an account or message, you might be able to convince basically all of them, under some variant of public pressure. Only a fully anonymous operator is immune to that pressure. But I admit that at this point, I'm setting the bar a bit too high!)
Published at
2025-04-24 14:30:51Event JSON
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"content": "Good point to compare with a platform. What I'm really saying is just that: yes, a set of (changing occasionally) relays is clearly superior in cens. res. over a single corporate platform, but it's not really enough; say there are 4 really popular relays, a censor attacking them is enough to make nostr not work very well. Even maybe 10 instead of 4, you could imagine it being effective. *Killing* a protocol like nostr, totally, is not viable - it's for sure decentralized enough to stay alive. But I'm saying that in practice it can be heavily damaged if relays are all clearnet and/or the operators are threatenable.\n\n(And it's worse, arguably: if you can convince several \"main\" relay operators to block an account or message, you might be able to convince basically all of them, under some variant of public pressure. Only a fully anonymous operator is immune to that pressure. But I admit that at this point, I'm setting the bar a bit too high!)",
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