Obviously relays and and apps can get shut down.. The difference in shutting down Telegram vs. Nostr (the actual protocol) is that you shut down a centralized unit and users can't do shit with their data posted there after shutdown compared to shutting down Amethyst, people just login somewhere else with their key pair and it's all back. The protocol lives and new simple self hosted protocol using apps can be built.

I say this meaning well. If we can visualize how the state(s) may crack down on the protocol, we can build more resilient systems that withstand any pressure.

Just because you can count it doesn't mean you can stop it. Take gossip for example, how do you shut it down? It's not on an app store not on a DNS. Even DNS based WebApps can be run from their built html. Also the relays that you can count on nostr.watch aren't the only relays. They can make the experience worse, yes. But they can never kill the protocol for those who need it.

Government tried to kill torrents and IPTV for years, they failed, Nostr is akin to these protocols, sure you can stop one here and there but in the end it’s like weed, it will inevitably regrow. Nostr is not perfect, nothing is, but it’s a 1000 times more censorship resistant than telegram.

When you kill telegram you take all the data down, DMs and so on. Take a Nostr app down and I’ll use another one. I have my Relay at home, this one is not getting down anytime soon

You are right, but the spread across different countries would require coordination between governments.

Nostr is a protocol and basically just set of rules around which people build different apps. No one can stop nostr but you are right about apps and relays. In future I am sure we're gonna see many such cases. If I run a relay which propagates illegal content and the government decides to fuck me - I am fucked. Before locking me up they might try to put a pressure on me to reveal the IP of the users who distribute illegal content and if I am unable or unwilling to do so - I am fucked. From the users perspective the only way to use nostr absolutely privately and anonymously is though tor as all relays are aware of users IP addresses. But the thing is - anyone can run relay and the most important thing is to decentralize relays as much as possible so that there is really no "one head to cut off". And I am sure they will try to intimidate replay owners buy fucking up some people as an example eventually.

I’d love to see the word salad justification for targeting the creators of open source apps built for peace, cooperation, self sustainability, and community

I'd just go to microsoft and let them censor/shutdown github. Still don't understand how pople don't see this obvious attack vector.

In the same way our governments stopped the pirate bay? 😉 Decentralization means resilience and low cost of switching providers. You can deploy an infinity of Relays and web clients on an infinity of domains

They've done that this year against Monero. It survived. You can threaten popular apps like Primal and so on to introduce backdoors, you can threaten popular nodes to censor texts. What you can't do is stop them. Someone, somewhere will host a node with the forbidden texts and our apps will still be able to reach them. It won't be shutdown, albeit you are right they will try their best to break it.

Agree. Every relay operator is accountable for her relay. Just like Torrents uploading.

it will have no reach though. Anyone can upload a censored youtube video to a differnt platform or webpage or server or torrent site too. Has not made censorship go away or ineffective,

agree. they did this with youtube-dl on github.