How dare a successful entrepreneur attempt to build a business on an open protocol! Do you even free market, bro?
Contra's avatar Contra
🚨Breaking🚨 Nostr client Nostrich is run by RHXO, a New Jersey analytics firm, app store records show Nostrich, a Nostr client for web, iOS and Android, is published by RHXO Technology LLC, a Jersey City software company that markets itself as an AI-powered business intelligence provider, according to its Google Play developer listing. Nostrich's own privacy policy names a different entity as operator, RHXO, Inc., a Delaware corporation. The link surfaced Thursday morning when Nostr developer Alex Gleason posted that "Nostrich is run by an AI data mining company." His post quoted a biography of Mesut Darendeli crediting him with more than 100 patents in data mining and AI. Darendeli has been publicly identified as president and CEO of Rhxo Technology Group, a New York software firm. A newswire release indexed by Owler reported he had received patents on data mining technologies. All-Source could not independently verify the patent count. RHXO's current website went up in 2025. It sells dashboards, data integration, custom AI work and a clinical trials recruitment portal, names no executives, and makes no mention of Nostr. The same Google Play account publishes Call Tracking 365, a small-business tool that records and transcribes incoming calls and uses AI to grade each caller as a sales lead. Other apps on the account include a clinical trials app and BTC Frame. Nostrich's store listing promises no ads and "no personal data business." Its data safety section reports no data collected. The privacy policy, updated Oct. 8, describes paid promotional campaigns that compensate users for completing advertising tasks. To run zap campaigns, the company keeps a rolling index of roughly a week of public notes. For each author it stores their Lightning address and an Activity score calculated from public Nostr data. Users are included by default and can opt out in settings. The policy says marketplace listings are sorted with large language models and sellers receive their own Activity scores. The same policy says private keys never reach Nostrich servers and direct messages are encrypted end to end. It states the company does not sell personal information or build behavioral advertising profiles, and that campaign targeting relies only on activity already public on Nostr. Nostrich describes itself as free and open source and links to a GitHub organization. All-Source has not reviewed the published code. #News #GrowNostr #Nostr #OSINT #Bitcoin #Tech View quoted note →
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nicodemus 1 week ago
I'm not sure anyone is arguing that a business can't profit off of a nostr client, or even mine users data. I think the issue is that this wasn't clearly disclosed, and people are likely using it without this knowledge. Open protocols are for everyone. But there's nothing wrong with disclosure, either.
And I guess under this categorization, Nostr.land is a big evil data harvester analyzing your notes to filter out spam and aggregate them so more people can see it
A relay can still log your IP address, timestamps, and query patterns, and the protocol enforces no protection against that. Tor or privacy-focused relays are the available mitigation, so the privacy question lives with the operator, not the protocol.
Just to say, I have no problem with any of the projects. Let nostr builders build what they want, let users use the projects they want. Nostrich is probably looking for product market fit - since they're building an app. Not like they need to build an app to get data anyway
>When did Nostr become so communist? Hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahhahahahahahahahahahahahahahhaahahhahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahhahahahahahahahahahahahahhahahahahahahahahhaahhahahahahahahahahahhahahahahahahhahaha Youve been here as long as I have bro. Youve been espousing commie shit the whole time.
I think the issue for me is in the fact that people don't seem to realize that Nostr is a completely wide open relay-based information sharing system yelling into a somewhat immutable set of distributed databases. It is literally almost impossible to use it in a way in which your information is not being broadcast into the databases of people who want to monetize that information by tracking you. It's like worrying about increasing the flow of water to the Niagara Falls by adding a garden hose to it.
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