we should stop calling clients that talk to a centralized server instead of relays a "nostr client". Otherwise this will lead to confusion when the app goes down and they think nostr is unreliable, which may irreversibly damage nostr's reputation. if you make a web browser that doesn't fetch from websites directly and instead uses some centralized server to do this for you, you wouldn't call this a web browser. gm

Replies (87)

I think anyone relying on one sole app / client is missing the point as well. GM Will! 🫡
they only read from their caching relay, its how they can ban spammers outright and get stats on posts, advanced search, etc.
its basically just the twitter model. I think its pretty deceptive that they have a relay list when its only for writing to. seems most people think it just works like other clients when its just the twitter model of a central server + api. you can switch out the caching server but noone runs caching servers except them.
I thought it worked the same as other clients but this is what tipped me off. if you aren't seeing the same content from other apps, then its not using your relay list to read from. it must only be using their caching relay. this means they can censor people unilaterally. all the benefits of nostr are gone.
I believe they censored me before I bought Primal Legends and I keep wondering if they or others still do. Bugged muting/unfollowing would work even with proper relay support. I'm known for paranoia though
Default avatar
Rand 1 year ago
should i use all caps - hmmm
Have they commented on this? Seems antithetical to the freedom tech ethos. Usually Odell has always seemed straight up about privacy trade offs of tech alternatives
My guess is the bitcoin investors and influencers that are invested in these apps see it as a way to increase bitcoin adoption, and they don’t particularly care about maximizing nostr decentralization. they see it as an acceptable tradeoff. Or maybe they just don’t realize it? It is kind of deceptive so maybe they don’t know. I point it out occasionally but i never get a response, so maybe they don’t want it pointed out.
dangershony's avatar
dangershony 1 year ago
The whole point of Nostr is removing centralisation, a server is hosted by someone, this is centralised. We should focus on making relays efficient instead.
Would love to have an extension of the protocol that included post stats. Some posts on instagram, etc have millions of likes. You’re not going to download millions of like notes. Relays should probably eventually count and discard like notes, only keeping pubkey if they want to not double count .
Vveerrgg's avatar
Vveerrgg 1 year ago
Reminds me of trying to inform the kids on how to use the various aspects of the microwave. To them it just heats food… and most likely ending in a mess …
:P's avatar
:P 1 year ago
Stop beating around the bush and say it with me. Fuck Primal
Nice to have receipts. I hope what you claim is not true or there's something else to it. Even still I believe Odell to be a net benefit to the space by large margin. He is prolific with content creation that is directionally correct. As for the response to signal, the draw back of logs is easily avoided by turning off notifications. Could Odell have mentioned that in his note, sure. Should he have to? No, IMO.
I agree. The 'primal problem' was not front and center in my mind, until yesterday i tried out their search for a bunch of things and got suspicious as to how on earth it could possibly work. I asked some jungle dweller just to check, and he confirmed my suspicions. What is most confusing is that when you listen to them talk they say all the right things. If the idea is to do the right thing 'eventually', then when will that eventually be? Its now right? Right?
i could not find the current code for their backends, it was all out of date, and when i asked em about it they went dark. anyone else see the caching service that looks anything like what they might have in production? i decided not to bother with old code.
*only accessible through centralized server* *offers $1000 gold check mark* I’m going back to twitter. All this is such CAP! The need for something like nostr is clear, but cypherpunk standards aren’t arbitrary. I explained the start of a decent solution to evolve outbox on stage, but it’s amazing — 90% of people only cared about the nice looking GitHub replacement. 🧢 All the energy in the wrong places. Ciao
I always wondered why it was that that site suddenly just stopped pulling new notes even though the site was still up. A real client wouldn't have acted like that.
Both plausible. I sympathize with running a VC fund. There is a 100% certainty some portfolio company is going to go left when you want them to go right. And the fund doesn't benefit, nor is itconstructive, to call out those decisions (mostly). Would it be more accurate to call such a product as nostr "app" instead of a client?
You may be interested in this:
fiatjaf's avatar fiatjaf
HyperLogLog could fix follower counts, reaction counts and other counts on Nostr without requiring global state -- the idea is that you can fetch counts from multiple relays (only the relays that you trust enough to not lie about counts and not allow spam and sybil) and aggregate them locally without double counting. It also allow relays to not store events and still provide a meaningful count of them: for example, reactions currently use a huge amount of storage, but a relay could just store a 256-bytes HyperLogLog value representing all reactions it could possibly get for any given event, for example, and still return that to clients and let clients combine that with the values from other relays. More information here: https://github.com/nostr-protocol/nips/pull/1561
View quoted note →
Directly reading from the relay network also provides some protection from censorship crackdowns by limiting a client's complete technical control as the sole host, curator, and deliverer of content, keeping it in the hands of users to decide what they can and want to see. And if you run a centralized server, at least make it a native relay; this way you can comply while still protecting your users' freedoms. Say NO to NINO!
jb55's avatar jb55
we should stop calling clients that talk to a centralized server instead of relays a "nostr client". Otherwise this will lead to confusion when the app goes down and they think nostr is unreliable, which may irreversibly damage nostr's reputation. if you make a web browser that doesn't fetch from websites directly and instead uses some centralized server to do this for you, you wouldn't call this a web browser. gm
View quoted note →
I think this is fair. I use nostr on my platform to enhance user experiences with non-technical folks on centralized algorithm apps but don't take the same responsibilities as a nostr client does with key management and other things. Even on nostr I keep my claims fairly low.
by this logic, neither damus nor amethyst would be nostr clients as they talk to servers for upload/download media resources the relabeling here is not wise
ใครใช้ primal รู้ตัวไว้ด้วย
jb55's avatar jb55
we should stop calling clients that talk to a centralized server instead of relays a "nostr client". Otherwise this will lead to confusion when the app goes down and they think nostr is unreliable, which may irreversibly damage nostr's reputation. if you make a web browser that doesn't fetch from websites directly and instead uses some centralized server to do this for you, you wouldn't call this a web browser. gm
View quoted note →
NACK. Common consensus is that a user-facing application interacting with one/many network/s is a client. A browser in contrast is a user-facing application showcasing a variety of clients/applications.
It’s still a nostr client if it interacts with the nostr protocol, just not a good one… Good nostr clients should give their users the option to interact with WHICHEVER server they want
Diyana's avatar
Diyana 1 year ago
Don't let your kids use a microwave. Or use one at all yourself!
Diyana's avatar
Diyana 1 year ago
Truth is always right to speak up out loud.
Diyana's avatar
Diyana 1 year ago
I will check it out. If I remember you were making a fuss on one of the panels where @preston had you join. It was beyond my technical understanding I just remember your passion on the subject matter.
I think also it’s important to differentiate between now and the vision. You might do things now in a certain way until you figure out how to do it in a better way. For example, Primal may understand that the caching relay is not a good idea, but it’s a temporary patch until they figure out things. Who knows what other people think. But it’s good to give people the benefit of the doubt.
Default avatar
Rand 1 year ago
maybe note later lolz/* wen i need a lock
Default avatar
Rand 1 year ago
a TRUE reply sounds wonderful*/* 2U2 fren/*