Keep relays fast and dumb, make the clients smart. This is the foundation of Nostr.

Makes more sense

You don't have to. What harm can they cause to you?

You just made that up, you know.

I’d like to be able to connect privately to my own relay for backing up notes. Is it possible to connect to a relay and no one else be aware/able to see that connection? Encrypted relay list?

Your client literally censors ppl for no reason, including me.

Yep, and it's written in the code that everyone can see. That is my point. People can use Onyx if they dont like the filter or simply disable the filters in Amethyst's settings. However, you have no idea if relays are censoring you or not (hint, they are).

Client-side filters are the future. I don’t like relying on relays to curate content. Users can discern locally (1st person POV) rather than relays discerning globally (deciding the 1st POV for everyone else). Both types of filtering will occur, but I prefer client-side so as many relays as possible host diverse content.