The US state of Mississippi has an age verification law that requires social media platforms to identify the age of all users. Bluesky has refused and blocks users from connecting from Mississippi.
Here’s the Bluesky story https://www.myprivacy.blog/mississippis-age-verification-law-and-the-bluesky-standoff-a-critical-analysis/?ref=compliancehub.wiki
And how Mastodon instances are responding https://www.compliancehub.wiki/the-decentralized-resistance-how-mississippis-digital-id-law-met-its-match-with-mastodon/
Have anybody in the Nostr ecosystem considered this? Are clients doing KYC on users? Anyone blocking Mississippi?
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Replies (38)
Wouldn't really matter unless there's a Mississippi based entity for them to litigate against though?
No. Fuck Mississippi.
How to say that you are not a decentralized network without saying that you are not a decentralized network.
that is the problem with centralized social networks, by having someone behind the page, you can go to that person and force them to implement things they did not want. and the way clients and relays work, in theory makes it difficult to apply those laws, a client can not even store anything and only retrieve messages from the relays, even if a client there is someone behind it, it would be of no use since that if one wants to evade that, they could only switch to another client
imagine that each person in the world has their own server and local relay and also that several even use tor networks to host them, it would be hell for regulators to ask each person to add age verification to their servers.
Lol
Imagine doing age verification on nostr
nostr:nevent1qqsz3u5yr0vhn8ur9g5yca4vyg3k8hy0g04y5vdml5ptf6w5qlak30spndmhxue69uhkummn9ekx7mp0y5erqamnwvaz7tmwdaehgu3wd3skuep0y5erqffjxpshvct5v9ez2v3swaehxw309ahx7um5wgh8w6twv5hj2v3sy5erqctkv96xzu39xgc8wumn8ghj7ur4wfcxcetjv4kxz7fwvdhk6te9xgc8wumn8ghj7un9d3shjtnyv9kh2uewd9hj7ffjxpmhxue69uhhyetvv9ujuumwdae8gtnnda3kjctv9upzqak8r2hr5jglrk0wc37t59lz98x6gyf6pwaku6hpwakhvslznjh6qvzqqqqqqyvkh26n
nostr:nprofile1qqs8d3c64cayj8canmky0jap0c3fekjpzwsthdhx4cthd4my8c5u47spp4mhxue69uhkummn9ekx7mqpzpmhxue69uhkummnw3ezumrpdejqna7ea3 interesting content, my view:
"Something about this feels eerily familiar 🤔 freedom wrapped in
the language of protection, when verification becomes surveillance and access turns into privilege, we stop being users, ... and
start being managed, the line between safety and control (isn't just thin) it's
😶DISAPPEARING 🔎
😟😓
...
nostr:nprofile1qqs8d3c64cayj8canmky0jap0c3fekjpzwsthdhx4cthd4my8c5u47spp4mhxue69uhkummn9ekx7mqpzpmhxue69uhkummnw3ezumrpdejqna7ea3, are you pro KYC?"
This idea that nostr clients are just these free-floating things is pervasive but not true at all. You've got the funnels of Apple and Google stores, and the domain registrars, and ICANN, and ISPs, and CDNs, and cloud media hosting, and so on. Chokepoints right and left.
Yes! People do like to talk about Nostr like we are running a giant LAN party or something. Decentralization is a spectrum, we should be ok with that.
most likely, once you have your own servers, now instead of going after the owners of the page, they will now force ISPs to be in charge of regulating or cutting off access to a specific user.
Privacy tech is good and completely necessary, but this shit that is spreading around the world needs pressure against it from more angles. How do we get the obvious fact into the heads of people that this isn't about protection, but grabbing more power through controlling narratives, and eventually locking up political opposition? "We can't" isn't a good enough answer if we want to even be able to use privacy tech in the future. If left with as little pushback as is currently the case, they will not stop until it's literally impossible to use private systems, either through being completely blocked or guaranteed to go to prison.
Yup. Also a decentralised system is only as decentralised as the least decentralised critical element in it. If the least decentralised critical element is in fact pretty centralised then it's just decentralisation theatre, adding complexity and slowness for no real gain.
Worst part to me is the dependency on GitHub
furthermore, a problem that is not yet talked about by 'nostr' is that many, not complicating things too much, many decide to only use the relays and servers that are normally on all clients, causing only those relays to gain power, apart from that many are using cloudflare and third-party servers causing the same thing many don't even remember how cloudflare took control of a mod page, forcing them to delete everything they didn't like, so there was still a lot of dependency.
But this is where interoperability is the escape hatch. GitHub is not so much a dependency as it is a choice. There are tons of choices.
Why are people trying to put *inside* of nostr instead of encouraging self-hosted gitea or the like.
There aren't tons of choices for where to download most apps from.
I don't see a point to something like gitea. If it was going to defeat Microsoft, it probably would have by now.
and that is why all the time I am saying that it is necessary to make tutorials so that a person can host their bloossom servers, set up their own relays, since if they are not encouraged to set up their own services, we will continue in the same cycle of giving power to something only to then go to another.
If we get a radicle fork / clone with better UX to promote seeding, that should solve it. nostr:naddr1qq78g6r994nkjargw43z6cm4wfjj6unpv35kxmr994cryupdw3hhyttwdaehgu3dd4hkuetjdukhqun0dfjkxapd0fuk6mm8v4hqygrhwmpj6jcar69l92tt40458tv6mc2hh5mrmzdc07mrumc524vg3qpsgqqqw4rsc69a68
App stores are definitely an issue.
But in terms of Microsoft, who cares about their size, if you have an alternative then your well being does not require them to be defeated.
How can you want to move away from GitHub but somehow see it as not connected to any impact on Microsoft Nostr apps won't all have GitHub repos and often show the GitHub logo on their homepages and stuff when we get something good enough to fuck up Microsoft. Because they'll be using the new good thing
I had many people ask me why I build on Nostr and not ATprotocol at MozFest. And the answer is two fold, one the protocol is easier to build on, and two nostr is permissionless. I’ve never been very good at asking permission.
They could go after any company with operations or a nexus in the United States or who does business with entities that connected to the US. Good luck getting servers or any cloud services.
Permissionlessness is very appealing :)
We should try to get the CEO of Nostr to comment for the article.
It's the only way to live
Most nostr devs aren't as statist as you, might not pretend the authorities' "requirements" matter
You say all this like the authorities can easily do worse than just make us move to Tor or something
How did the announcement go? Hows the reception?
And what I like about reading notes like this, is that I can leverage the insights of someone more technical than me, to make better decisions myself
Keep building!
YUP everything else comes later.
wasting time in other protocol / platform which can blocked / changed isn't worth the time
I'm moving to Gitworkshop and using github as my backup.
nostr isn't a platform, it's a protocol...
But people running things like apps and relays on Nostr aren’t exempt from the long arm of the state.
And FOSS is our own long arm back at the state. Running a relay is no different than running a btc node. The more folks run their own relay the strong nostr is for a state to take down. Apps/clients too are just going to be AI agents eventually (and hoepfully sooner than later). No state has the resources to stop this at scale.
Always gives me a smile while people massively underestimate the power of motivated nation states.
Realistically though nostr has 10k daily active users, and that's been flat for 2 years. And there are like 1,000 nostr apps. So unless you're a core client team or something then whatever you build here you're building for like 100 people. On a good day.
Its a great thing that bluesky is not available in MS