Obviously relays and and apps can get shut down..
The difference in shutting down Telegram vs. Nostr (the actual protocol) is that you shut down a centralized unit and users can't do shit with their data posted there after shutdown compared to shutting down Amethyst, people just login somewhere else with their key pair and it's all back.
The protocol lives and new simple self hosted protocol using apps can be built.
I say this meaning well. If we can visualize how the state(s) may crack down on the protocol, we can build more resilient systems that withstand any pressure.
Just because you can count it doesn't mean you can stop it. Take gossip for example, how do you shut it down? It's not on an app store not on a DNS.
Even DNS based WebApps can be run from their built html.
Also the relays that you can count on nostr.watch aren't the only relays.
They can make the experience worse, yes. But they can never kill the protocol for those who need it.
Yeah it will survive, no doubt about that, but surviving and thriving are different things. We don’t want to simply survive, we want to thrive no matter the levels of global pressure. Right now I can’t see how we’d do that.
Hosting companies will take down relays if threatened. You don’t need to kill the protocol to scatter all the users.
Government tried to kill torrents and IPTV for years, they failed, Nostr is akin to these protocols, sure you can stop one here and there but in the end it’s like weed, it will inevitably regrow.
Nostr is not perfect, nothing is, but it’s a 1000 times more censorship resistant than telegram.
I don’t think so
When you kill telegram you take all the data down, DMs and so on.
Take a Nostr app down and I’ll use another one.
I have my Relay at home, this one is not getting down anytime soon
Barring the fact that it's really hard to know what even is a relay, you can connect to a relay with their ips or dare I say Tor urls?
You are right, but the spread across different countries would require coordination between governments.
I take Nostr down, who should I arrest?
They do this already and I hear there’s more coordination laws that were just passed
Where do I erase all the hard drives keeping notes?
Nostr is a protocol and basically just set of rules around which people build different apps. No one can stop nostr but you are right about apps and relays. In future I am sure we're gonna see many such cases.
If I run a relay which propagates illegal content and the government decides to fuck me - I am fucked. Before locking me up they might try to put a pressure on me to reveal the IP of the users who distribute illegal content and if I am unable or unwilling to do so - I am fucked.
From the users perspective the only way to use nostr absolutely privately and anonymously is though tor as all relays are aware of users IP addresses.
But the thing is - anyone can run relay and the most important thing is to decentralize relays as much as possible so that there is really no "one head to cut off". And I am sure they will try to intimidate replay owners buy fucking up some people as an example eventually.
Ya we need everyone to run a relay probably for best chances
You don’t need to arrest everyone, just a handful of prominent operators. The rest scatter. See coinjoin
The first step is to not deny the problem but to acknowledge the problem. That's what too many people in this community can't handle. Because... BULLISH!!! 🤪
Id rather assume it can all be taken down than naively ignore it. Then fortify
This is true inside one jurisdiction
Let’s see how the Nostr blob adapt to censorship. It will be a lot more interesting than the telegram story
Best case is it happens, and we persist regardless - great marketing. Not sure if nostr will do well just yet, but I hope devs are considering all possible scenarios.
Id flowchart all scenarios and think of ways to safeguard against all - until the protocol is untouchable
I’d love to see the word salad justification for targeting the creators of open source apps built for peace, cooperation, self sustainability, and community
I think that's the better phrasing you were trying to aim at. Not that nostr can be shut down, or that it can be prevented from thriving, but heavily suppressed to thrive.
With that in mind, I think the goal here then is to keep on working and trying to make more useful products that deliver more value then current ones in the marke, and new values. Hard? Definitely. Possible? Definitely. When? Hopefully sooner rather than later with an exponential rate.
Nazi terrorists 🤣
Nazi terrorist pedophiles
I could have added some context :) but fired off right away
The Bitcoin and payment integration will play a role, if we come up with ecash private payment to incentivise Relay provider, this will also strengthen the network dramatically.
This is something traditional media do not have.
Bitcoin is Nostr heartbeat, if the former fail then Nostr will fail too
The solution to everything on Nostr is that we are a team of activists who will fight and never give up.
Not everything is a technical solution.
That would be really hard, it would hard to thrive with government actors breathing down your necks, It's not that hard to survive though, it takes an immense amount of wealth, coordination and knowledge to keep up the censor on something that is this decentralized.
Maybe we don't need to pack a punch? Maybe we just need to tire them out?
Anyways my two sats. Agree with your sentiments on fortifying ofcourse.
I'm more worried about things that are already centralized and in govt control. Like github. What
@Colby Serpa is building is extremely important.
I hope you’re right.
TRANSLATION:
Rational freedom fighters and protectors of innocence
😂 I’m just using the words they’ll use - we all know what they’ll say
😉 indeed my friend… they always accuse their opposition of what they are guilty of
Yea coinjoin got crushed and community couldn't come up with better coinjoin
Yep. When the state cracks down people run for the hills. Sooner or later all of the hills will contain cooperating states and there’s nowhere to run
Yea only best privacy tech will work that time
I'd just go to microsoft and let them censor/shutdown github.
Still don't understand how pople don't see this obvious attack vector.
Supposedly we have GitHub alternatives now. But shutting down a repo wouldn’t kill a project as maintainers have it on localhost
Sure. But imagine the chaos. Obtainium, zapp store, install scripts (you know, wget xy | bash) for tooling, documentation/wiki ...
we should be prepared
Can’t hurt
In the same way our governments stopped the pirate bay? 😉
Decentralization means resilience and low cost of switching providers. You can deploy an infinity of Relays and web clients on an infinity of domains
Torrents are p2p and we don’t have this. More centralized than we’d like to think
They've done that this year against Monero. It survived.
You can threaten popular apps like Primal and so on to introduce backdoors, you can threaten popular nodes to censor texts.
What you can't do is stop them. Someone, somewhere will host a node with the forbidden texts and our apps will still be able to reach them.
It won't be shutdown, albeit you are right they will try their best to break it.
But people can choose to run relays in the same way they can choose to seed torrents for others to use, so why not?
Like I said in other comments, nostr will survive because people can always run their relays and post from local even, but that’s not a thriving environment.
Are there any similar protocols/networks that can thrive under very adversarial conditions that are live today and can be used as inspiration?
Agree. Every relay operator is accountable for her relay. Just like Torrents uploading.
it will have no reach though. Anyone can upload a censored youtube video to a differnt platform or webpage or server or torrent site too. Has not made censorship go away or ineffective,
veilid?
agree. they did this with youtube-dl on github.
