This really is the worst. Instagram started the trend with their hideous "log in or else" flow. Then Twitter and reddit went to insanely privacy-hostile API changes instead of simply requiring a proof of work or anon payment. Even some major nostr relays seem to be doing Tor blocking now (damus? Not sure, but I get a ton of errors connecting to certain relays via Tor.) Platforms have become so fearful of bots/spam/scraping (or rather pretend to be fearful, so as to justify blatantly commercial and anti-social decision-making) that they've totally destroyed the open access model that a functioning freenet depends on. This is the main reason I want to see "unowned" protocols succeed. Jack has it right: we're at a turning point. View quoted note โ†’

Replies (61)

The shift towards restrictive access on social platforms is indeed concerning. Open and unowned protocols offer hope for a more inclusive future.
Most the "corporate" or "commercial" sensibilities are actually just Marxist sensibilities. They caught on a while ago and have decided to subvert commercialism the way they subvert everything else.
I am, not a technically savvy, I'm working on it. But getting on nostr was hard for me. I'm using chatGPT constantly to walk through technical things. But the process is slowl going. I pretty much can't run a VPN ever anymore. Because I can't access anything through one. ClamAV was a hell of a challenge to get running with GPT's help. Any advice for me, and probably many others in my camp?
You forgot to mention AI. People get really mad when they figure out it's a AI they've been shooting the shit with. So companies want to verify accounts aren't AI
Agree! The "Internet" has pretty much moved its content behind Cloudflare (giving US Intel Community a vantage point?). Agree, VPN and Tor endpoints are blacklisted and throttled. A real pain. (Even rented VPS IPs tend to be in blacklisted range). The solution? As mentioned, a new protocol or set of protocols has to succeed.
On a long enough arc all things trend towards entropy..... when will this kick in in cyberspace? It has to, right?? Feels like the walls of centralization are inexorably closing in.....
What do you think about AETHER? Seems to work very fine and it is free software...
> Even some major nostr relays seem to be doing Tor blocking now Ed, I've been a Tor maximalist for nearly 10 years, and can definitely relate. But I think the Tor friction that we've been experiencing on nostr is mostly due to naive operators using Cloudflare to front-end their services and relays, rather than malevolence (as is definitely the case with centralized platforms). Most of these people have never run a server before, and while it's sad to see them walk straight into the Cloudflare funnel, in my opinion it needs to be part of their learning curve - just like a bitcoiner's shitcoin period. I think as the network matures and the rubber meets the roadspikes, Tor friendliness will emerge organically. Give it a year :)
5 of my 14 relays are regularly blocking me until next day. Of one I know it is behind Cloudflare, and suspect the others are too.
Stay strong, what VPN are you using? What apps are you trying to access?
I haven't run the numbers, but a huge percentage of websites are inaccessible through a VPN, and it's a PITA for daily use. I've even tried to enter a restaurant menu by scanning the QR code and it wouldn't load (no error message), because I was using a VPN. I would imagine TOR is blocked even more than VPNs. What if the web worked through BTC/LN, and every page load charged a very very small amount automatically? Wouldn't that eliminate spam without any burden to normal users?
goodzilla's avatar
goodzilla 2 years ago
It feels like a relay jungle. Ux is not good right now. I have no clue which composition of relay are the best to have access to relevant content based on following and topics of interest. Got also lots of errors because of VPN. Would also happy to pay if I could figure out the best relay combination for me. We need a relay wizard :-)
goodzilla's avatar
goodzilla 2 years ago
It feels like a relay jungle. Ux is not good right now. I have no clue which composition of relay are the best to have access to relevant content based on following and topics of interest. Got also lots of errors because of VPN. Would also happy to pay if I could figure out the best relay combination for me. We need a relay wizard :-) View quoted note โ†’
Certainly seems so, it reminds me of 2021, fear and stress are slowly ratcheting up. Theyll keep up the facade until people start breaking it down, its like the covid hysteria, they were never going to "give you back your freedom" no matter how much locking down or masking or vaccinating you did, they were only ever able to pull it off because people complied and they had to back off when normal people stopped caring. How that translates to a very narrow realm of people like us is hard to say, most people I know dont bother with so much as a VPN.
Honestly man itโ€™s so fucking epic to have you on nostr, keep the based takes rolling
Instagram has alot of fake pages on there. I don't get anyone safe following me until I told Shane. And I mostly get creeps.
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puddintaine2 2 years ago
There is no โ€œbride sideโ€ to the grave dangers we all now face.
Relay within Tor ws://2pbkpndvpeebljfvjew6auq63lndzszqnntct5aqfmazslerzxe75kad.onion
ws://2pbkpndvpeebljfvjew6auq63lndzszqnntct5aqfmazslerzxe75kad.onion
Between Intel ME and AMD PSP I have a feeling all the protocols are "owned".
Tom's avatar
Tom 2 years ago
โ€œCarrier pigeonโ€ is a good name for a Nostr relay / p2p chat service. ๐Ÿง note1pdxg0aemq7j8algyyu9mx8dcgad82yv2pwhpmes3cwrtvjnhadts92nt3n
Recently on holidays I tried flying my drone close to where I grew up. The app informed me it was now a restricted area and offered no guarantee that I would be able to maintain control of my drone. The app then began an identity verification routine, before launch. Needless to say, I aborted the flying mission.
This is exactly why wss://nostr21.com does not throttle or block by IP address, even though it is public and can be scraped and spammed at will. Throttling by IP only hurts tor and VPN users. The better answer to spam, freshly created 2 weeks ago, it's successor https://pay21.nostr1.com Can kindly asking for 21 sats prevent spam on a large scale? Join and let's find out ๐Ÿš€ View quoted note โ†’
The spam is a real issue. It's horrid. But its a spam problem in most if not all social media, and I'm not that certain that the answer is to make it cost to post. But I don't know, all I can think of is community driven filters you can opt in to.
Aptly said Edward. Add to that the deprecation of useful APIs into these platforms that have been serving the web for decades. This leaves us not much more than a bunch of walled gardens with "imprisoned" netizens.
Anasta V 's avatar
Anasta V 2 years ago
when I connect via Tor, all nostr-links break < the walls keep closing in.>
Many forks of Android like GrapheneOS and LineageOS are going to have problems. It is going to be impossible to debug your own traffic.
Maybe I don't know enough. I'm thinking that a system certificate ensures system integrity and modification should not, for obvious reasons, be possible. It would seem that my understanding is, at least, incomplete, but can you elaborate?
ใ‚ใฎใ‚นใƒŽใƒผใƒ‡ใƒณใŒใ‚„ใฃใฆใ‚‹ใจ่žใ„ใฆใ€Xใ‹ใ‚‰ใ“ใกใ‚‰ใซ็งปใฃใฆใใŸใ€‚ใŠๅˆใซใŠ็›ฎใซใ‹ใ‹ใ‚Šใพใ™๏ผ๏ผ View quoted note โ†’
mleku's avatar
mleku 2 years ago
i've been working on indra for a year now. we have proof of concept in the implementation of the basic cryptographic protocols for source obfuscated routing as well as bidirectional (hidden service) routing, and the protocol comes built in with the ability to do paywalling on a time/bytes basis. we have approached spiral about this, geyser gave us a 500eur grant about a year ago that helped me relocate to cambridge where i spent my time developing the base implementation and refining the spec. have no idea how to get this thing to move forward any further at this point, it's hard to get a word in edgewise between all the metoo nostr client development, even a real utility, a git hosting system built on nostr is still without any funding, i'm working on some parts of the cryptography for that at the moment. i'd be most grateful if people would have a look at what i've done (and the sponsor himself also did some work on the CLI parts of it, though they haven't been wired together. to be honest, it's got a bit of a problem we need to solve with using UDP and making it connectionless, because the network can easily get way too large for a source routing scheme.
'log in or else', as cited by Snowden, is aimed at reading posts/viewing content, not posting (spam).
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