Pretty well established case law at this point. If it weren’t, you’d see Tor relay operators, small ISPs, etc being hauled into court constantly.

• https://www.eff.org/issues/cda230
• https://community.torproject.org/relay/community-resources/eff-tor-legal-faq/

There are no protections for me if I unknowingly let some stranger use me as a host or router for CP or some pedo shit. It’s not a risk I’m willing to take. There need to be legal protections in place, like there are for ISPs.

There are, at least in the US. That’s why running a Tor node is legal and so is a coffee-shop sharing their wifi to customers. They are not legally liable for actions of users, they are just routers.

Each network has its own way of addressing this with pros and cons. Personally, idc, I don’t mind being a “router” in exchange for other computers “routing” to me. I don’t mind the idea of sharing my internet connection via wifi with my neighborhood, it should be a resource for all.

The cost of having open communication networks or free speech or privacy or any liberties is that people may use those liberties to do bad things, but I’d rather live in a world where we have liberties that sometimes get abused than in a world without liberties where those who control things get basically unlimited abuse of the same liberties we are not afforded.

Also it’s worth mentioning the “how to distribute content among peers” problem has mostly been solved and has for over a decade, just that nobody has built out the UX for it for a YouTube clone. Torrents exist, #freenet and #hyphanet exist, #ipfs exists, these are all excellent platforms for storing and distributing content without relying on expensive, centralized hosting. Instead, users share the burden of hosting. There’s a whole category of software that solves this problem in different ways (P2P). Unfortunately, every new generation of developers seems to want to re-invent the wheel instead of using time-tested tech that already exists but just needs a UX refresh or maybe some protocol improvements.

If you have a tube site and it says “to skip ads, install IPFS”, everybody would be using IPFS.

Nostr has. Over the last two months alone, their users have “zapped” (tipped/donated) other users around 950K (nearly 1 mil!) USD worth via lightning and that number continues to grow. And it doesn’t just make it easy to pay content creators, but to also put a portion of your “zaps” towards the relay you use or development of the software if you want. If you have a nostr account, you can easily tie it to a lightning address to send/receive tips, nostr doesn’t take a fee. Relays can also portion out a bit of their zaps for the people who publish the most engaging content on their relay. The possibilities are quite extensive. And because it’s over lightning, zaps happen instantly and for pennies or less in fees. Though, you can use nostr without zaps at all.

For those unfamiliar with nostr, it’s a decentralized social media software much like ActivityPub/mastodon, the main use right now is as a twitter/instagram clone but there’s also a reddit-style section being built up as well. Moderation abilities from the perspective of the instance/relay are identical. But one bonus if that if your relay goes down, you don’t lose your identity, since your identity and relay are separate. And if you change apps or relays (you are typically connected to multiple relays), all your content moves with you seamlessly. And the payment/zap infrastructure is all decentralized, relays don’t ever custody or manage the payments. If you tip a content creator, it goes directly from you to them. The lightning network has basically limitless transaction capacity. If you have cash app, it supports lightning, so you can already send zaps (you will need different apps to receive zaps though because cash app doesn’t support the LNURL standard). Strike natively supports it. And because it’s lightning, it works in every country automatically.

Long-term, if I am a content creator, which “fedi”-type system is going to be attractive to me? One where users can send me tips and mircopayments or one where they can’t? This is why I think nostr is going to win out long-term over AP/Mastodon. Mastodon could add this kind of functionality but I don’t get the impression they’re open to it. People may not want to commit to yet another $5/month subscription to a YouTuber’s patreon or nebula or whatever, but they are happy to tip 1-10c after watching a video. So there’s a psychological beauty to micropayments as well. As some random person I have made like 7c on tips this month, but I’ve also given out plenty to other people.

Source about nostr fees: https://lemmy.ml/post/17824358

Y’all should know about BOINC. It’s one of the world’s largest distributed computing networks used for “volunteer computing” where people donate computing time to scientific research. It’s federated/permissionless/open and anybody can create a BOINC project. [email protected]

Also check out #DeSci, lots of people working on interesting incentive mechanisms to fix scientific publishing. There’s a whole bunch of projects listed here http://desci.world/

Nostr vs Mastodon on Privacy & Autonomy:

• Relay/instance admins can choose which content goes through their relay on either platform
• On nostr, your DMs are encrypted. In Mastodon, the admin of the sender and receiver can read them, as can anybody else who breaks into their server
• On nostr, a relay admin can control what goes through their relay, but they can’t stop you from following/DMing/being followed by whoever you want since you are typically connected to multiple relays at once. As long as one relay allows it, signal flows. Nostr provides the best of both worlds: moderated “public squares” according to your moderation preferences, autonomy to follow/dm/be followed by anybody you want (assuming that individual user hasn’t blocked you).
• On mastodon, your identity is tied to your instance. If your instance goes down, you lose your follow/followee list, DMs, etc. On Nostr, it’s not, so this doesn’t happen. Mastodon provides some functionality to migrate identity between instances but it’s clunky and generally requires to have some form of advanced notice.
• Both have all the same functions as twitter: tweet, reply, re-tweet, DM, like, etc.

Why I think nostr will win https://lemmy.ml/post/11570081

Nostr vs Mastodon on Privacy & Autonomy:

• Relay/instance admins can choose which content goes through their relay on either platform
• On nostr, your DMs are encrypted. In Mastodon, the admin of the sender and receiver can read them, as can anybody else who breaks into their server
• On nostr, a relay admin can control what goes through their relay, but they can’t stop you from following/DMing/being followed by whoever you want since you are typically connected to multiple relays at once. As long as one relay allows it, signal flows. Nostr provides the best of both worlds: moderated “public squares” according to your moderation preferences, autonomy to follow/dm/be followed by anybody you want (assuming that individual user hasn’t blocked you).
• On mastodon, your identity is tied to your instance. If your instance goes down, you lose your follow/followee list, DMs, etc. On Nostr, it’s not, so this doesn’t happen. Mastodon provides some functionality to migrate identity between instances but it’s clunky and generally requires to have some form of advanced notice.
• Both have all the same functions as twitter: tweet, reply, re-tweet, DM, like, etc.

Why I think nostr will win https://lemmy.ml/post/11570081

It’s just as scalable as fedi, I’d say it’s even more scalable since relays don’t need to communicate with each other, which reduces the cost to run a relay. The average user experience is basically identical. They download an app, it connects to a set of default relays (or they can choose some manually if they want), they tweet.

Because you can choose which relays to connect to and you typically connect to multiple relays. This is all seamless. On Mastodon/fedi, an instance controls your entire view of the fediverse unless you make a separate account elsewhere and check it separately. You can’t follow or be followed by users or instances they block even if you want to. They also control your identity, since it’s tied to a relay/instance. If your relay shuts down or your account gets banned, you have to make a new account elsewhere, re-follow everybody, get everybody to re-follow you, etc. It’s a mess.

On nostr, instance/relay admins only control that goes through their specific relay. Relay admins can, of course, share common blocklists if they want for anti-spam or anti-abuse purposes. If you want to follow somebody blocked by a relay, you are connected to other relays and the signal can flow through there. You don’t need to check multiple relays separately. If your relay closes, you don’t lose your account/identity.

A relay admin controls what goes through their relay. A user controls who they follow and who follows them. If you want, you can just auto-ignore all DMs directed to you by people who aren’t in your follow list. Also remember that your DMs have to come through a relay, presumably you are connected to relays you trust the moderation policy of, so toxic users can’t use those relays to DM you.

Read the first bullet point:

• Relay/instance admins can choose which content goes through their relay on either platform

Nostr vs Mastodon on Privacy & Autonomy:

• Relay/instance admins can choose which content goes through their relay on either platform
• On nostr, your DMs are encrypted. In Mastodon, the admin of the sender and receiver can read them, as can anybody else who breaks into their server
• On nostr, a relay admin can control what goes through their relay, but they can’t stop you from following/DMing/being followed by whoever you want since you are typically connected to multiple relays at once. As long as one relay allows it, signal flows. Nostr provides the best of both worlds: moderated “public squares” according to your moderation preferences, autonomy to follow/dm/be followed by anybody you want (assuming that individual user hasn’t blocked you).
• On mastodon, your identity is tied to your instance. If your instance goes down, you lose your follow/followee list, DMs, etc. On Nostr, it’s not, so this doesn’t happen. Mastodon provides some functionality to migrate identity between instances but it’s clunky and generally requires to have some form of advanced notice.
• Both have all the same functions as twitter: tweet, reply, re-tweet, DM, like, etc.

Why I think nostr will win https://lemmy.ml/post/11570081

Nostr is the way. I think it’s going to end up with way more adoption than mastodon or bluesky. I wrote a post comparing nostr vs mastodon (fedi) if anyone is curious. https://lemmy.ml/post/11570081

It’s baked in pretty deep to the protocol and to the concept of instances. This would be like making an e-mail address that’s portable between e-mail servers. Maybe AP can pull this off, but it’s going to be quite a change.

Relays store:

• Content posted by users connected to their relay
• Content posted by users of other relays that their relay is connected to

“Accounts” are private/public keypairs. You don’t have a username/password at a specific instance, you have a public/private keypair you can use to authenticate your identity. It’s like your name vs an e-mail address/username. An e-mail address is an account you have at a specific entity, this is like an activitypub username [email protected]. Your name isn’t tied to a specific instance or even a single government database (since you can be identified by name in databases of multiple governments), it’s just your identity. Your key in nostr works just like an identity or name in that sense.

But then what is a relay? See if a relay doesn’t hold an account and cannot ban/moderate directly content they serve then what’s exactly happening?

A relay is like an instance in AP. It hosts content and relays content from other relays according to its own moderation policies. The difference in nostr is that most users are usually connected to multiple relays, whereas an AP a user is connected to one ‘instance’ and their instance connects to other instances.

I also wonder if it’s a bit of a legal minefield. See I’m running mbin here. I get content from many other mbin/kbin/lemmy instances. Usually they have pretty good moderation and content is removed on my instance too. But, if someone raises a legal complaint with me directly, I’m required to act on that and moderate on my own instance. Which I can do. It seems like you’re suggesting that’s not directly possible with nostr?

This works identically in nostr. You as a relay admin can block/delete content on your relay and set whatever moderation policies you like. You can also de-federate from other relays if they have poor moderation.

Interesting hadn’t heard about this thanks for the link!

Except that ActivityPub and Nostr’s moderation functionality is basically identical. Relay/instance operators can block users, filter content, set their own moderation policies, and defederate from other instances with weak moderation policies. The difference is that if your instance admin blocks you from following somebody you want to on AP, you need to make a new account at a new instance and check that account seperately. If your instance admin does that in nostr, it’s just a matter of adding another relay to your list and now you can keep following/being followed by/DMing that person. It’s the best of both worlds: relays can set their own moderation policies and cultivate a certain vibe, users and their identities are not locked in to the moderation policies of the instance(s) they are connected to.

Protocol wise, you can absolutely use a portable identity with ActivityPub. Every user has a key pair that us used to sign and verify their posts, and there’s no reason why you wouldn’t be able to use the same key for multiple servers. Nobody actually implements a scheme like that but you could use keys instead of ActivityPub usernames to label accounts, if you wanted to. You could even use multiple servers the same way nostr uses multiple relays!

You can do this, but your account is still tied to the instance. If somebody sends a DM or tweet to [email protected] but lemmy.ml no longer exists, all the public keys in the world don’t solve that problem. In nostr, tweets and DMs are directed at a key, not at a user at a particular relay.

Nostr does all that too.