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Why ActivityPub over Nostr? - function only (feddit.online)
submitted 7 months ago by to c/fediverse@lemmy.world
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I have seen some critical views on Nostr as a part of decentralized network discussions, but most seem to be focused on culture not function.

What are the functional / protocol differences that make you prefer ActivityPub over Nostr?

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[–] -1 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago) (2 children)

So there are no moderation tools / whitelist/blacklists?

This is a good thing: bitchasses need to learn words are harmless & they can ignore them like humanity has done for millennia. It's not built into the servers. Client-side tooling would handle it, so it's entirely at the discretion of the user, which seems better to me.

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  • [–] 7 points 7 months ago (1 child)

    It's not about that even if you reduce it to purely that. Without moderation every platform becomes infested by spammers, trolls, astroturfers. Topical communities lose focus and communities become little more than hashtags.

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  • [–] -1 points 7 months ago (2 children)

    Yup, better. Moderation should be opt-in & is better handled at the client: the user could opt-in to a "moderation community" that publishes tags their client would follow. Such curation for anyone who wants that is a better idea. Far better than moderators we don't get to choose.

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  • [–] 2 points 7 months ago* (1 child)

    Yup, better.

    Why is that better?

    Moderation should be opt-in & is better handled at the client: the user could opt-in to a “moderation community” that publishes tags their client would follow.

    Debateable given that any community anywhere online still needs to remove CSAM and gore and other things.

    And what do you mean by "tags" here? Just hashtags or something else? Because a hashtag under a no-moderation concept could still be hijacked.

    Far better than moderators we don’t get to choose.

    Well I suggest you go there then, because the fediverse will never be what you want it to be.

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  • [–] 2 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago) (1 child)

    Why is that better?

    User control & flexibility > illegitimate authority. Also, I remember an earlier, untamed, unrulier, more subversive internet than this corporate-friendly crap: it was funner.

    any community anywhere online still needs to remove CSAM and gore and other things.

    Legal compliance is different from legally unnecessary moderation.

    Because a hashtag under a no-moderation concept could still be hijacked.

    Not really: Nostr content is cryptographically signed. User's client subscribes to some content curators who post as signed events their tags for other events. The client processes these tagging events to filter according to the user's preferences.

    Some proposals already exist:

    the fediverse will never be what you want it to be

    Not the topic of discussion, which is function & protocol.

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  • [–] 3 points 7 months ago (1 child)

    Legal compliance is different from legally unnecessary moderation.

    Right, so there would still need to be moderators. And if they can remove that, they can remove anything.

    Not the topic of discussion, which is function & protocol.

    Right, but you're just gunna have an unpleasant time here if you loath all moderation. It's that simple.

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  • [–] 1 point 7 months ago* (1 child)

    And if they can remove that, they can remove anything.

    That's why there's no limit on the number of relays (events usually publish to multiple) or subscriptions to them (clients usually subscribe to multiple).

    unpleasant time here if you loath all moderation

    Still off topic, and the moderators here aren't reddit moderator scum so far. The modlog offers decent transparency.

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  • [–] 2 points 7 months ago (1 child)

    That’s why there’s no limit on the number of relays (events usually publish to multiple) or subscriptions to them (clients usually subscribe to multiple).

    I'm lost. If a mod removes child porn on NOSTR, it removes it for everyone, right?

    Still off topic, and the moderators here aren’t reddit moderator scum so far.

    Well, sure, but you can still be moderated.

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  • [–] 1 point 7 months ago (1 child)

    I’m lost. If a mod removes child porn on NOSTR, it removes it for everyone, right?

    No moderators. A relay operator can remove it from their relay. There's any number of relays. It's roughly like usenet with respect to server-side content removal.

    Strange to ask me when authoritative information is public online. Seems you don't know much about nostr.

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  • [–] 2 points 7 months ago (1 child)

    So the child porn still remains present, effectively.

    So Ada described Nostr like this:

    "Nostr uses relays. In some ways, a relay is like an instance on the fediverse. Where they differ though, is that a) relays don’t talk to each other and b) users can sign up to many different relays and pull/push content to all of them.

    So in practice, in order to see a wide amount of content, you need to end up connecting to multiple relays. And even though a relay does have some moderation capabilities to block content, unless every relay you use blocks the content from the bigoted account, you’ll see it.

    If you signed up only to a single relay, and that relay had good moderation, then in theory, your Nostr experience wouldn’t be terrible, but a single niche relay like that will mean you see basically no content. And as soon as you connect to a larger public relay to get more content, you lose all of the moderation advantages offered by your first instance. Which means in practice, there is no incentive to run a well moderated instance.

    And so all of the moderation ends up on the end user, who has to manually block accounts only after they appear and dump their load of hate (at which point, the bigot will just spin up another account). Some people prefer that experience, but when you’re the regular target of hate, that approach just doesn’t work for many folk."

    This is accurate?

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  • [–] 1 point 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago) (1 child)

    So the child porn still remains present, effectively.

    Compulsory legal compliance still exists: it's the free, open internet. Did you know laws existed before, too?

    Ada

    Don't know about that. I think the brief descriptions on websites like nostr.com did a good enough job: there's not much to get.

    It's a protocol, not a platform. There's no global moderation/censorship just like there isn't on the whole internet. Relay operators have full discretion over the content available on their relays: if they want to do more than the bare minimum, they can. Clients are free to subscribe to other relays or multiple. It's technically free association rather than anti-moderation.

    A user can choose to see only the content of followed users: that should eliminate most unwanted content. Apart from that, there's no perfect moderation solution even on centralized platforms, so there isn't here.

    Client-side filtering remains the best approach for those who care. It doesn't have to be manual as I mentioned before.

    I recall earlier days of the internet when no one gave a fuck about this, and internet rage was just entertaining, easily ignored nonsense. Then it became eternal September, and tightass n00bs started acting like moderating the entire internet & foisting their dumbass expectations on everyone made perfect sense without ever having to learn the zen of not giving a fuck. That was the start of when it all turned to shit.

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  • [–] 2 points 7 months ago (2 children)

    I think you will find that most forums before Digg and Reddit did have rules. There is some revisionism from muh free speech types that seek to redefine them as free speech zones, when many were not.

    Moreover, many clients and apps that were had much smaller userbases.

    The point about the CP here is that you are saying that it would remain technically on the systems you are referring to.

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  • [–] [S] 2 points 7 months ago (1 child)

    My understanding is that the content is essentially self-hosted, so content removed from relays still exists on the posting user's client and can be accessed directly, just like a website sending out RSS. So saying it "still exist on the network" is technically true, but only in the same way that you would say that about say bittorrent or the open web. What people host/post is present raw, what is amplified/"curated"/relayed is filtered. Client settings/config sets default and custom user content interaction, like a browser which can have adblock or not.

    In principle, this seems like a decent solution, but I can see why different users prefer different protocols, differing to moderation takes a burden off of the user to vet inbound content. The same can be achieved via relays but the culture of "curation" seems weaker because the pressure from the userbase is lower to optimize it, as users are not solely reliant on any one relays. An odd network effect, but a truly invested curation/admin team could just as easily build a well "curated" relay as a well moderated instance.

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  • [–] 1 point 7 months ago

    My understanding is that the content is essentially self-hosted, so content removed from relays still exists on the posting user’s client

    The relays are the hosts, not the clients. The only data the user carries is their unique public-cryptographic key to identify themselves & sign their messages. It's independent of client or relay, so they can use any at will.

    Curation/moderation doesn't require relays. It can be done via the proposals/features mentioned before, which is distributed independent of relay.

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  • [–] 1 point 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago) (1 child)

    most forums before Digg and Reddit did have rules

    Usenet certainly didn't, nor does the web in the grand scale. Enforcement was weak.

    would remain technically on the systems you are referring to

    Nope, it would have to be removed just like always. True of new systems, too.

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  • [–] 1 point 7 months ago (1 child)

    Usenet certainly didn’t, nor does the web in the grand scale.

    Many communities that lack rules then and now are spam-infested slopholes.

    Nope, it would have to be removed just like always.

    So would it be mass-removed entirely to the point where no-one could see it no matter what their user settings are?

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  • [–] 1 point 7 months ago

    So in your world, I could spam the network with CSAM, gore, rape, and everything else and it would be up to a small group of people to filter that out for the rest so they can subscribe to what that small group thinks is appropriate?

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  • [–] [S] 2 points 7 months ago*

    Client-side curation sounds like whitelisting effectively, if you follow only the curated feed and the curated feed resigns all events posted by selected keys, that's a whitelist and seems like a decent solution for casual users so long as they can find trusted curators and clients that enable them to be easily discovered and subscribed to. What client is best for this currently?

    On the flipside, if those "curators" were able to export and import lists of keys to automatically exclude from feeds, that would be very useful for the curators who have to manually or automatically sort events and new users to build their feeds. Is that feature currently available? Eliminating known bot accounts from feeds seems like minimum viable feature set for new curators in the current state of play.

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