New censorship-resistant social media solution now available!

[NSABB]

Awesome update even for dumb jockbro fags like me haha thanks alpha!

[ErosWired]

npub for me is: npub1rd7rq8w5anw0jknvnsy8ldwg92qyxk6te4vqfjfxz9v3pjtfh8cqln5629

[rawTOP]

20 hours ago, ErosWired said:

npub for me is: npub1rd7rq8w5anw0jknvnsy8ldwg92qyxk6te4vqfjfxz9v3pjtfh8cqln5629

I managed to find and follow you on one of the three accounts I tried. I’ll set you up for the s3x relay in the morning. 

The “father of Nostr” is starting to push the use of nprofile over npub for profile discovery. npub can’t tell what relays you’re on, nprofile can. When that happens people will be much easier to find on Nostr. 

[rawTOP]

On 4/29/2023 at 9:23 PM, ErosWired said:

npub for me is: npub1rd7rq8w5anw0jknvnsy8ldwg92qyxk6te4vqfjfxz9v3pjtfh8cqln5629

You're all set up. Do the following to make use of being set up…

• Find your relay list - it should have a section where you can add additional relays.
• Add "wss://relay.s3x.social"
• Add "wss://purplepag.es"
• Now click the "Save Relays Publicly" button (or its equivalent on your client).
• Wait until you see an indication that those two relays are working (in most clients an icon will turn green)
• Find where you can edit your profile
• Find the field that say something about "NIP-05" or "Nostr address" and enter ErosWired@breeding.zone
• Hit the "Save" button.

Do that an you'll be the first official Breeding Zone user on Nostr!

You don't seem to be following anyone. Nostr is really boring when that's the case. Here are some suggestions…

Me: npub1x30jemy23qme0rkc8jkhk72tvzch35emeh6pw968449w4hywys8qg6t4kx
s3x_SOCIAL: npub1k27tyhsg9hqqy2zm7lgxk9n3kafsy8e7x6du6hnes8q65mr2aslqn3vmmj
The only guy I've found so far who has posted a dick pic: npub1l5r3wl0xza7hsvm3fyghsxv2lzsngjvxkzsdtswafrvqz2s00a0sdu0ydr

And take a look at who I follow to see if any of those interest you (though honestly I haven't really gotten into posts for my site-based accounts), and I haven't found much of any gay porn on Nostr (but that will change).

What we really need is people posting stuff…

[ErosWired]

I think I’ve followed the instructions correctly, but using the Iris.to client on both desktop and iOS app, there doesn’t seem to be a way to enter the public key for someone to follow. If you can see a post by someone in the global view, you can select to follow them, but viewing the global view with the two relays you’ve indicated above active doesn’t display any content to follow. I’m sure I’m missing something.

[rawTOP]

31 minutes ago, ErosWired said:

I think I’ve followed the instructions correctly, but using the Iris.to client on both desktop and iOS app, there doesn’t seem to be a way to enter the public key for someone to follow. If you can see a post by someone in the global view, you can select to follow them, but viewing the global view with the two relays you’ve indicated above active doesn’t display any content to follow. I’m sure I’m missing something.

You do have your NIP-05 set up correctly.

Notice the green text. Iris is pretty aggressive about caching NIP-05 addresses, so it may take a while for you to see it on your profile.

I did forget a step in the list above. You need to click "Save Relays Publicly" after adding the relays. I'm not seeing any relays listed in your profile data, so doesn't seem you've done that step.

It's easy to find people by npub in Iris - just paste the npub into the search bar at the top of the page. I think Iris is pretty good at being able to find people by their NIP-05 addresses as well (except when it's a site being searched for).

[PozTalkAuthor]

I am clearly interested and curious to follow the development of all this stuff. 

But, my doubt is: what about the risk of serious legal issues? 

I mean: I personally wouldn't like to see adult contents involving minors, murders or so on; I would never like to find myself in trouble after having encountered some illegal content by accident, in a platform with no censorship! 

Sorry, I'm just wondering about it, in order to think about this for the better. 

Of course I'd join possible groups talking about what I'm interested in! 

[ErosWired]

22 minutes ago, rawTOP said:

It's easy to find people by npub in Iris - just paste the npub into the search bar at the top of the page. I think Iris is pretty good at being able to find people by their NIP-05 addresses as well (except when it's a site being searched for).

That did it.

[rawTOP]

5 minutes ago, PozTalkAuthor said:

I am clearly interested and curious to follow the development of all this stuff. 

But, my doubt is: what about the risk of serious legal issues? 

I mean: I personally wouldn't like to see adult contents involving minors, murders or so on; I would never like to find myself in trouble after having encountered some illegal content by accident, in a platform with no censorship! 

Sorry, I'm just wondering about it, in order to think about this for the better. 

Of course I'd join possible groups talking about what I'm interested in! 

Good question… I've been thinking a lot about censorship vs content moderation recently… Let me reframe your question…

For starters governments absolutely do censor what's on the relays in their countries. I can't have anything related to prostitution on my relay because my relay is in the US. That's censorship. Anyone who pulls content from my relay is being censored - not so much by me as by the US government. So censorship absolutely exists on Nostr. Which is why they say it's only censorship-resistant.

But whether you see something or not is also about "content moderation"… A lot of people see all content moderation as censorship. But censorship is something that's a top-down exercise of power - some person, organization, or government is limiting what you can do or see in a way that's not OK with you. But people sometimes agree to limitations without any coercion. That's not censorship because no one is forcing anyone else to do something.

As I mentioned above I've been working on how to implement content moderation in Nostr. My first proposal had mixed reviews, so I spent the weekend rethinking things. The goal is bottom-up content moderation that's censorship-free (because no one is forcing anyone to do anything). You can read more about my approach here.

There absolutely is, and absolutely will continue to be content moderation on Nostr. It will just be more organic. If I get my way you'll be able to choose who moderates your feed.

In the meantime most of the client apps work on the principle that you don't see anything unless it was posted by someone you follow, or someone followed by people you follow (xN). Assuming you don't follow people who are into illegal stuff, you shouldn't see anything illegal. But content moderation and filtering will improve drastically in the coming months…

[PozTalkAuthor]

I'll check it in deep, as a computer professional I am very interested in what concerns people's safety. 

Sex, with all its related matters, has to be funny, nothing forced! 

I know many people feel "victim of censorship" when their content is moderated, but, there is so much confusion on it, despite more than 20 years of Internet! 

If you maintain a site it's publicly accessible but it's like when you rent a house: if the owner decides you can't install aircondition there, you can't. And he might be free to decide it! 

If politicians decide that aircons are illegal... That's other matter and it involves the world! 

[ErosWired]

2 hours ago, PozTalkAuthor said:

I mean: I personally wouldn't like to see adult contents involving minors, murders or so on; I would never like to find myself in trouble after having encountered some illegal content by accident, in a platform with no censorship! 

It seems to me that using one of these clients is like riding a train and looking out the windows as it passes through various towns. What you see through the window isn’t associated with the train in any way except by the fact that the train is scheduled to pass that way.

Imagine that the government has determined that it’s unlawful to watch a mime perform (arguably a reasonable regulation), but the train routinely passes through Clowntown, where mimes sometimes secretly learn their dubious craft. Looking out the train window, you happen to catch sight of a mime leaning against an invisible wall. You’ve seen the performance whether you wanted to or emphatically didn’t. Is it your fault such that you could be blamed for it? Is it the train’s fault for not automatically dropping all the widow blinds when passing through Clowntown, or for passing through Clowntown at all? Why? The mime isn’t supposed to be there, he just is. The responsibility would seem to fall upon Clowntown for permitting such abominations to take place in public view where they can be seen. The solution is not to prohibit rail traffic through town, nor to mandate that all trains go through town blind, nor to send officers aboard the train to arrest anyone looking out the windows.

When I succeeded in following relay.s3x.social and got a content feed, the very first post I saw was an image of two nude women together. Some would consider that a poke in the eye, but it illustrates the fact that the client is simply displaying content (as the train window) as it passes among the relays (towns on the route). One imagines that as this system becomes more robust and refined, it will be possible to tailor one’s selection of content relays to display only those whose parameters permit content of certain types, i.e., gay-only images. While content exclusion on a given relay might seem like censorship, in the aggregate of all possible relays, the possibility exists for any choice of expression to be represented, and thus to be selected for view. It is this granular quality that will make censorship-resistance durable overall, because diversity of expression will be able to exist without being forced onto the unwilling.

[ErosWired]

Question re: Images. You’ve explained that relays don’t themselves host media content, and that uploads will have to be supported by media servers from which content is then displayed via link (as I understand it). Checking the source URL of an image attached to a post reveals a reference to ‘imageproxy’, so I assume that’s what’s happening there. If I were to initiate a post dialogue, however, it provides the option to attach an image to the post (paperclip icon) and allows selection from the native file system. I have not attempted to actually do so, but what, if anything, would this do? I’m not connected to any external media servers, and I’m not providing a link URL. Where would such an upload upload to? Is the image coded into binary data and saved within the post body? Or does it establish some kind of linkage between the native computer holding the image and the outside world?

Sorry if these are questions with basic and obvious answers. I don’t actually use any other social media besides BZ and hookup apps, so I’m coming at this without a lot of preconceptions.

[rawTOP]

26 minutes ago, ErosWired said:

Question re: Images. You’ve explained that relays don’t themselves host media content, and that uploads will have to be supported by media servers from which content is then displayed via link (as I understand it). Checking the source URL of an image attached to a post reveals a reference to ‘imageproxy’, so I assume that’s what’s happening there. If I were to initiate a post dialogue, however, it provides the option to attach an image to the post (paperclip icon) and allows selection from the native file system. I have not attempted to actually do so, but what, if anything, would this do? I’m not connected to any external media servers, and I’m not providing a link URL. Where would such an upload upload to? Is the image coded into binary data and saved within the post body? Or does it establish some kind of linkage between the native computer holding the image and the outside world?

Sorry if these are questions with basic and obvious answers. I don’t actually use any other social media besides BZ and hookup apps, so I’m coming at this without a lot of preconceptions.

You'll see file attach icons in all the major client apps. When you use that it sends your pic or video off to an image server which returns a URL that gets embedded in the post. So it's as seamless as using Twitter. It's just not hosted by the same service that does the user interface.

I believe Iris only uses Nostr.build for images, while Snort lets you pick your image service and has like 4 or 5 to choose from.

When I joined back in February things were more primitive and the client apps hotlinked everything - so YOU loaded all the images directly from the media server. That was a big privacy problem since it meant all those servers had information on you (your IP, browser and device type, what file you were loading, etc.) So the client apps put image proxies in place. Basically the server for the client app goes out and gets the image for you and you get the image from them. So no additional servers have info on you.

Thing is, the proxying costs money. Iris is developed by this shy guy Martti who doesn't have a lot of money - he seems to do it because he enjoys it, but he's mentioned that he doesn't know how much longer it will be economically feasible for him to do what he's doing. He cuts costs by only proxying stuff from servers other than Nostr.build. Snort proxies everything but they compress the hell out of it and can make images look like crap.

BTW, if Martti stops developing/hosting Iris, Iris is open source with a very generous MIT license. So people can pick it up where he left off and keep going with it - so it's not the end of the world.

Now - in terms of where it's safe to upload images… You can upload SFW image anywhere. That's completely fine. The worst that will happen is the media server could go out of business at some point and you'd have a missing pics on your old posts. Nostr.build (which is what Iris uses and is an option in Snort) allows x-rated content for now. I had a conversation with the guy behind Nostr.build and explained the legalities of his business. He ignored EVERYTHING I told him. I told him he loses Section 230 protections if he moderates all the content on his site (rather than just responding to reports of problems), but he continues to moderate every image. I told him he's in for a world of hurt if he allows adult content and doesn't verify that there is consent and people are of legal age - but he doesn't do those checks and allows adult. He also seems to think that he can just tell if someone is underage. SMH… I've warned him. So bottom line if you upload adult content to Nostr.build it will be tagged as adult and the day may come when he just deletes all the adult stuff. But for now, it's an OK interim solution as you play around and get to know the platform and wait for me to have better options.

[ErosWired]

Just a thought, as a person with an Information Science background, looking at your NIP-68/69 draft vocabulary for reporting codes - it strikes me that your NS range is a bit vague.

These are for reporting posts containing elements of nudity and sex in which there is no intention to arouse. NS-ero, Erotica, however, by definition, attaches to content whose purpose is to arouse. That's what erotica is for, whether it's sexual or merely sensual. What differentiates it from base pornography is a higher mental element, but its purpose is arousal of both the higher and the base. Therefore, the choice of this as a reporting category becomes subjective on the basis of the sophistication of the viewer. It is possible, at a level of convergence, for one man's erotica to be another man's porn, and vice versa.

NS-nud likewise becomes a matter of perception in context and interpretation. A user from a culture that finds any display of the naked body unacceptable for religious or other reasons may have, in effect, no concept of 'casual nudity', and therefore what might be reportable in a liberal Western context as casual nudity would get reported as pornography or simply illegal (IL) if it happens to be so in that jurisdiction (to which, see below). Is the fact that the nudity is 'casual' what is reportable, or is it that the nudity is unnecessary, egregious, too explicit, or obscene (you have no code for obscenity anywhere in your array) even though arousal is not intended? Are there better terms?

NS-sex (non-arousing) seems overbroad. "Sex" covers a hell of a lot of ground, including the act and biological mechanisms of reproduction, birth control and abortion, reproductive health, gender and its implications, and a dizzying spectrum of visual imagery that could be interpreted as sexual or sexualized in nature. It might be helpful to spend a little time imagining hypothetically what users would conceivably be reporting in this sphere to help determine how best to provide an infrastructure to accommodate their reporting.

Regarding IL - Illegal as a catchall, this opens the question as to what this actually means in a decentralized context, given that legality is a function of jurisdiction, and users of a given relay may be reporting from jurisdictions outside the jurisdiction that governs the relay. For instance, a relay may be gay-friendly, but receive reports from a user in Uganda, tagging posts as IL because where he is, they are. Does IL as an open category encompass Sharia Law? Putin's latest edict? It seems as potentially fraught as attempting to implement a label of BD-bad - Bad. How useful is IL going to be, as an umbrella category, in a practical sense?

Just some thoughts - people with a library degree tend to be splitters rather than lumpers.

 

Edited May 3, 2023 by ErosWired

[rawTOP]

@ErosWired - you're thinking the way I did early on in the process. Take a look at an early version of the vocabulary…

https://github.com/nostr-protocol/nips/issues/315#issuecomment-1507231220

The issue is right now there's just a free-form text field to report things. It's completely useless. BUT you have to keep things really simple for the end-user - so you can't go all the way in the other direction and overwhelm them with options and nuance.

If you look at the big picture of 68 and 69 you'll see (semi-)professional moderators can be far more detailed in their reports. There's `degree` which let them rank things within a category defined by the vocabulary. They just need tools that will let them submit with that much detail. The end-user apps will never do that because they need to be simple.

In terms of erotica intended to arouse? Some is and some isn't. There's erotica on FB & Insta - I didn't want to lump that in with "pornography". That means in practice we may see people differentiating between softcore porn (meant to arouse) and forms of erotica like burlesque (not meant to arouse).

Again with IL - can't have too many categories to maintain a good UX. More regional issues are handled by the `X-MOD` vocabulary. There's no way in hell I could spell all of those out.

And as far as "in the eye of the beholder" issues - that's OK. Remember that ultimately these reports will be used by people who think like the moderator (since you pick your own moderators). Relays will just pay attention to the illegal stuff (IL) and categories of interest to their user base.

In terms of how I'll use all of that here… I'll let people give their opinions. Then I'll focus on what established members with a good reputation think, average that and if there's not too much variation issue a moderation report that reflects the thinking of our site's community of users.