***Firstly, a disclaimer. I'm a silly goose, I'm newish, I'm not a dev, I'm learning, I just have some questions, which I am grateful to anyone who can answer 🙏 & Don't hurt me!***
You know how nostr was poopooing the BlueSky vibecheck? Well, I was wondering if you could say that nostr does indeed have a vibecheck?👀
Could you even say nostr does have a shadowban system?
Is there or isn't there a vibecheck and/or shadowban system here? It seems maybe it's open to interpretation. Even whether it's at protocol level. I would say Will and Vitor give somewhat contradictory or at least confusing answers 🤔 (am I misreading this?)
Correct. So separate from the automated anti-spam filter (which is an Amethyst thing), there is the usual Nostr reporting system with NIP-56.
In that system, people can report you for Spam, Scams, Explicit Content, Impersonation, and/or Illegal Behaviour. Anyone can report you or your posts at any time. Reports are saved on relays and might last forever. Many relays use that information to delete posts they don't want on their servers.
Your reports only affect the people that are following you. When you report content, you add a warning sign for your followers. BUT that warning sign only shows up if 5+ accounts that a user follows reported the same note.
So, alone, a reporter cannot do much damage. But if there is some agreement among the people a user follows, that user will see a warning post that shows who, among the people he/she follows, reported the post and a "Show Anyway" button.
At that point, they can agree with their follows and also report that content or simply hide the reported user from their view entirely, OR they can disagree and report the reporter.
If the report is not for a post, but for a user, a similar 5-reports-among-follows happens. BUT, for users, we cap the report in 24hrs. So, if your user (and not a post) gets reported today, tomorrow the followers of the reporter will start seeing your posts without the warning again.
The reporting system does not hide posts from global feeds or chats, it's only between the user and the people that user follows.
For instance, I have 100s of reports on my user. Many of them were deleted by relays that evaluate reports. But I believe 108 are left out there. Those reports only affect the followers of the reporting accounts. Since they are mostly random accounts, it doesn't affect anyone.
I think this system as described basically does mean there are shadowbans on nostr(?)
There are a bunch of core people who almost everyone follows - devs, trending users - jack (npub1sg6…f63m) , jb55 (npub1xts…kk5s) , damus, fiatjaf, etc etc (and some clients even auto follow from the start) and are recommended to follow. New users will often do this. So if these mass-followed users block someone (I'm not saying they shouldn't manage their feed btw) doesn't this have the unintended consequence of making an adopted blocklist for a huge amount of users? And it's a little bit fiddly to undo, not v apparent to a new user and perhaps not even worth looking into cos it's a bit of a hassle.
🚨🪿#badges
Anyway I was think of badges it could be used to make a list of these invisible (real, not bot) users at least(?) I don't know how to make or award a badge btw lol
And I'm also not saying people shouldn't block and manage their feed btw. I'm sure the 'shadowbanned' / 'invisible' badge will have a mixture of annoying people, cantankerous numpties, non-bitcoiners, bitcoin-skeptics, maybe mentally unwell people, silly geese, trolls etc etc. But it would at least be good to make them more visible.
I have no idea how badges work or how to award them tho lol. Is there a guide for this? ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Some hashtagspam for feedback lol: #plebchain #grownostr