Replies (131)
It's easier to just drop Amethyst as a client until Vitor stops being a faggot and actually listens to the people using his garbage.
I don't buy his "Section 230/laws and regulations" excuse.
I said this a minute after you did.
Great minds think alike, lol.
This is important 🚨🚨🚨
View quoted note →He is exaggerating for sure. Reported messages by the people you follow show up with a warning and "Show Anyway" button. They don't disappear.
So, users always know when this feature is active for given posts.
This is a huge attack vector. Simple malicious scenario:
Someone wants to censor you. They go and continuously create accounts. "OH hey new nostrich got purple pulled give them a follow!"
Once someone follows five of your "trojan" accounts. Boom, you're censored.
This ain't right and is antithesis to what this protocol stands for IMO.
Been there forever. But what nobody knows is who gets them? Relay admins? Nobody has given me an answer
🙏Glad this is such a clear and concise post made by someone with a large following. I've been banging on about this for a bit too, along with other people before me. (However I'm a silly goose so no one cares what I say lol). It amazes me that the #amethyst #shadowban isn't known to everyone by now. It also amazes me when people respond with oh just buy an iPhone / use a different client / make a pull request etc. The ramifications of this are too big for that. I know I've also said this before but I would like to see an open discussion of this at #nostrasia out in the open. The reasoning and motivations behind this unpopular feature, which seems to be antithetical to nostr or at least the purported idea of nostr, has never been made clear as far as I know.
I was told I was somewhat impacted by this. I don’t use amethyst so I can’t really say. My theory for why is because one day I was posting in my client and the post button wasn’t. My post wouldn’t send. So I did what you do. I mashed the post button a half dozen times. And then my client posted the same content in quick succession. I presume it annoyed someone and they reported me for spamming would be my guess. I don’t know if I am “censored” but the feedback I got was that the person was a little wary of following me. Pretty lame experience for people if we are trying to increase users to Nostr. 🤷 just wanted to give some context to the problem of false positives.
Solution is don’t use amethyst?
Thanks. It is useful info. Amethyst users might want to choose another app.
dafuq, that's ridiculous
im more often seeing replies to my posts (it says 1 under the reaction logo) but cant see the reply, is that something different then what Iefan is saying here?
One of the reasons Amethyst is the flagship client is this exact feature. It was the software's natural evolution of a consistent stream of complaints about spam and scams on the platform. The user experience is just better because there is less spam, fewer scams, and these days less porn. It's not perfect (and I welcome PRs that make this better), but it is helpful.
I don’t see it as an overreaction. Censorship free is a main selling point. Sounds like amethyst isn’t living up to that.
not if you dont follow the account 👀
woah
ight, i believe that, the intention is well
not good tho.
quite problematic to amethyst imho
What apps don't do this?
Go ahead!
i personally dont think this is a major problem, besides that you cannot turn it off for yourself.
i do think that it is a significant problem wrt accounts you do not follow yet(!) and hypothetically are being mob-report attacked
Aaaand das the reason that nobody talks to me 😂😂😂😂😂
Just kidding, nothing will be perfect and maybe someday somebody will fix it.
We didn't code amethyst and we are using it for free (no pays or ads) so we can't complain too much for the work of Vitor
I consider this to be simple game theory. You now know who reported her. You can talk to them to delete the report. Or you can simply unfollow them. Either way, you are seeing this happening in your account. It's not hidden.
Reports have consequences as well. That's the only way we can make this system work.
An free network is going to need moderation policies at the client level and here were seeing one moderation policy which is working for some and not for others. I look forward to 100 different moderation policies and hope to see them become pluggable or extensions or subscription based. Let's see all the flowers bloom and collect those we like.
Thank you iefan for raising awareness and Vitor for fostering Amethyst in a way that lets us experience one option for how this can go. Documentation will be important for all options.
If it's based on those I follow this is less likely but also unavoidable for controversial figures. In this case it helps to have different policies that you could use in case you want a more raw experience.
I believe this will become configurable as long as people come forth with code.
It's too early to bank on or write off any options in Nostr.
Ironic that this move basically makes it so a client acts like a mastodon instance Admin. I’d much rather we let users choose who to mute
👀
Thank you!! 🫂🤍 (confusing) 🙃😔
As I was actually whinging about the other day, let us have client-specific options. I know they won't carry across to other nostr clients, or to other devices I may use your client on. Fine! In fact, that may have advantages as well.
Let me opt in (or out) of a safe mode that incorporates your filtering of reported users. Then separately, let me opt in (or out) of other filtered content. It is not good UX to have to click through each time you want to see a filtered note.
TY - and yes, my eyes have been on the competition.
How do we delete a report? I can't find anywhere in Amethyst that I can view and edit my own reports.
Hey would everyone please kindly go to the global and let our mostr frens know about this feature?
#[0]
Holy shit the mostr mastoid bridge garbage is absolutely gone from my global.
#[0]
Wait, what was the issue with mostr?
Apparently reporting now works in Amethyst and all the weebs and fur deviants got teleported back to Hell.
Was there a lot coming across? People have to follow to pull that stuff across the bridge. Personal blocks are a better solution for this sort of thing. If a few people report you for some unfair reason I'm sure you won't like this functionality then...
I am still a little uncertain of whether I should add a relay or not. For instance, do I add Alby as a relay if I am using Alby Wallet? Or is this a ridiculous question?
Couldn't a malicious actor generate multiple accounts and launch an attack on amethyst users by reporting content at will?
Maybe clients should be able to run whatever ruleset a user wants. When you load up dnscrypt there are a few default options, but you can configure it to your own preferences.
My global up till yesterday was like 65% mostr. It would have been impossible to block/mute everyone of them. I understand the potential for abuse. Just enjoying it.
Does this mean that any 5 people from the comments could sensor you just for the hell of it? If they're followed by a lot of people, via plebchain for example, then most of the current community won't see you.
What happens if
@Vitor Pamplona gets blocked by a few major users on his own app???
The majority of people aren't going to do anything, but clowns will find a way.
IDK about this...
Raise the threshold.
I happen to like
@Vitor Pamplona so I'm not going to say make him taste his own medicine. That's not friendly.
But you programmers can let people choose the threshold.
You can turn it off, you follow the user directly.
Let the user choose how many reports should lead to a note not being displayed.
What about using a user configurable script that can be kept up to date from a repo? Like, I can subscribe to a bothunter list, if I ever feel like I'm not getting the right content then I can toggle that list off.
Seems like a bad client decision, unless it also has a power score for the reputation of the users - still is prone to sybil attack by understanding how it calculates reputation
I think you are overreacting. And you can test it. Download Tony's version and see how many new accounts / messages you can see now without the filters. My prediction is that you won't see any difference. The reality is nowhere near the level of "censorship" you expected in the original post.
That being said, I appreciate the concern you raised. It helps keep my assumptions in check.
And thread worthwhile reading!
View quoted note →That’s true, and this “feature” (that’s frequently abused to censor ppl) makes zero sense since spammers just make a million accounts anyway. It doesn’t stop spam at all.
Your posts are still muted for me even though I follow you btw, so this issue is even worse on Damus apparently.
Hmm actually you were muted but I don’t remember muting you… weird.
Wow, your every post is censored, someone told me only bots were getting censored. Following you, fuck censorship.
It’s because I question some of the bitcoin dogma, and some of the large follower accounts here have reported me for it (???) so if that happens, you’re basically completely censored on nostr.
I am truly sorry, my friend. Nostr wasn't intended to be like that. It was supposed to be free and for everyone.
Vitor, I have the feeling you want to utilize the network effects in order to have "better content filtering". If I am right, you should know that this way is probably not the right way to do this.
If you make content rating dependent on othermans choice without ability to verify, instead of a verifyable boosting approach, it wont be as accurate as we want.
Keep this in mind Vitor.
💯
Think about it for a second. Any random 5 users from this comment section can decide to report "this note" for no reason at all, "complete baseless reports" and I will be censored for their entire follower base. Neither I nor his followers will have any say in it. No say wse!
Here's a fun fact: Most of the censorship on Amethyst is unintentionally driven by Damus users who are "completely unaware" that they are censoring individuals for their entire follower base. They're shocked yesterday!
Don't just take my word for it; scroll through this post feed using Amethyst, and you'll find multiple real people being censored simply for criticizing Bitcoin or promoting shitcoins. Really!
This is even worse than Tumblr, this doesn't make any sense & we are overreacting, wow!
So, they are REPORTING people and not expecting anyone to take action from it? That doesn't sound like the correct expectation for reports. Maybe Damous needs are better explainer. Report is a report. Clients can be extremely harsh about it and not show ANYTHING that has been reported, far beoynd what amethyst does. Other clients can fully ignore it. Users can choose apps that are harsh if they prefer. Also, most relays use the reporting function to filter content these days, so reports do matter.
They don't have any stakes in it; I literally see them playing with report buttons for memes and find those events on relays. Some of them even use the report button to flag posts (like hard comment), not with the intention to censor that person for their entire follower base. You are assuming that without any context.
Yeah there may be some cases but not all. You will find so many examples of abuse or misunderstanding around this feature in this comment section. I was just talking to a guy here few hours ago.
Reports are content flags. Clients can do whatever they want with them. I think it's better to address this on the reporting screen of the sender. Otherwise, you will be run into issues with every client.
Example: Here is tanel flagging one of my post, it was a memes. He is one of my closest friend here. Do you really believe he wants me to be censored by his entire follower base. You are just assuming it.
For this feature to work we have to teach every single client user how to use report & when. Not even mentioning basis & intentional abuse.
Correct. We have to educate users. That's why that appears in the profile. You can reply to the report and the reporter will receive a notification.
This sounds kind of harsh, but maybe Amethyst needs a way to view what your follows are reporting. If you follow someone who is reporting aggressively and you don’t like censorship then maybe you should unfollow instead of blaming the client settings.
I know this is complicated, but you have a proven track record. I hope you will also find the best solution for this. Good luck, man! 🍀
Thanks for the SATs! I do hope Tony's or somebody else's fork also bring some ideas to the table. I also hope somebody makes an app just to monitor reports, educate and call out reporting abusers. There is lots of work to do.
We will find a way 🤜🤛
What Iefan says is so true.
Report seems like it applies to only a particular note that you feel others may not want to see/ avoid - not the entire feed of a user.
Even on Amethyst, when I report a post, it's doesn't explicitly mention I'm reporting the user & not just the note.
It's always the note. Unless you are in the user's profile page and click the 3 dots in the corner of the page itself.
Maybe new reports should show up in the notification bar reported note author. I always thought it would make things too negative, but who knows maybe that's the missing element so that people can always react to the report.
But in that case, why would there be people who are shadow-blocked due to reports, as per this thread?
I doubt many would specifically go to the profile & click Report 🤷
Or is it the case that if a user has reports on their notes from 5 people you follow, all their notes get flagged?
Everyone knows this. I'm a Damus user too. Most reports on Damus are for 'Bad Content,' (post) and it's easily verifiable.
But Vitor insists on using 'reports' as the main basis for censorship, not to mention how cheap they are.
It will just suffocate Amethyst users. Just take a quick scroll, it's already happening, you'll see numerous examples right here. I was just talking to one . 🤞
At this point he is too stubborn to listen. Just fork off and siphon users away if you care that much, maybe then he will change his mind.
“Some report tags only make sense for profile reports, such as impersonation”
“Some”
Hence nearly every report tag is referring to “bad content”, primarily per post.
Can you give an example event id? I cannot find anything with "bad content" tag on Damus's relay. I only see spam, illegal, and explicit
Those are subcategories of “bad content”
Well, they are not writing in the event. So, all everybody else sees is literally "Spam", "Explicit" and others. I am not sure why.
Oh I see. Yeah I think the event id should be written if the user is reporting a note. That’s a “ui bug” I think
Sorry, not the event id. They are not writing that this is just "bad content". They are just writing full-on "Spam" and "Explicit" reports. They could create another category for "Bad Content". But they are not doing it.
What would a general “bad content” report offer over the more specific report tags?
I frankly don't know. But if they need something lighter than the other strong report tag categories (which is what people seem to be talking about here), they could create a new one.
It's not always bad content; sometimes they even flag dark memes as explicit, but that doesn't necessarily mean it's bad content.
Moreover, they often flag content for promoting shitcoins.
@npub1dyr5...q6f3, for instance, has received approximately 58 reports simply for announcing the launch of a shitcoin.
🎯
Feel like personal content curation is in the domain of clients, ie not report events. UI could offer users a way to do this but it wouldn’t alone stop report event abuse.
How should reports be shown on the screen, then?
Mute words would be good. Clever ML based client-side filtering would be awesome. The UX really only needs to be easier than submitting a report event. That said, even thought I don’t like shitcoins and I don’t want to see that crap, I guess some people will feel conviction in censoring stuff they think is a scam.
Think about impersonation accounts. There is a classic Damus impersonator that most Damus users reported and thus show with warnings on Amethyst. If you are being impersonated, you will find the report system very useful to let your followers know that is not you. And it's fully decentralized.
I agree. That’s why I’m differentiating between personal client-side filtering and report events
Unverified reports should not hold any value imo, let alone be used as the primary basis for censoring "bad stuff/people."
These reports are cheap, easy to manipulate, and completely influenced by human emotion/baises aka shitcoin.
Not mentioning the culture of Mob Rule and Public Policing they would encourage, I consider that worse than centralization.
While I opted to just mute wolf, rather than report, others may go out of their way to report even if it takes 5x more UI interaction to do so, if they feel conviction in their assessment.
How can we reliably differentiate between real impersonation reports and censorship gaming?
Why can relays use it but clients cannot?
btw: am I too newbie for not having understood shit bout it or relays are indeed supposed to be the valid “parental control” or whatever tf which would turn reports purposeless? don’t wanna watch porn, don’t add the porn relay?
I strongly disagree. I think they are an important tool to highlight bad actors everywhere and we have seen them working with many impersonators and scammy accounts in the past.
You will thank their existence when you report your first impersonator to alert your followers that that is not you.
And what about when someone who dislikes you reports you?
The user can make that assessment. All we need to do is to let them know that there is a filed report against this person.
I have had over 670 reports over time. I think right now I still have around 130 reports. Nothing has changed to you folks :)
That's precisely my point: these worthless, out of context, unverified reports should not be used as the primary basis for censorship in client.
Only if something illegal has happened, relay operators should verify and report to the authorities.
They can be completely baseless and still have a exactly same value in current setting. This part is even worst than Tumblr 🤦♂️
But people we never interacted with get auto blocked for weird stuff?
You might have. But if you did, you would have seen my posts with a warning and a "Show Anyway" button on them. And you could then assess if the report is valid or not.
Relay operators are responsible/trusted to verify reports. There is no client operator. You can take the responsibility as the developer but in this case the system will be gamed in accordance with how popular clients are programmed.
When I checked my security filter, you weren't there but Fractal was. Did he have more reports than you?
Don't make any sense. If they are worthless why would relays even use them? If they can be judged by a relay operator, they can also be judged by the user.
The security filter only adds the auto-spam stuff (5 equals messages). Reported people don't get added to the filter.
I’m not totally against clients using report data. But great care should be taken.
So, you are saying that you want to censor people via your relays but users can't know about it? That's an interesting take.
Relay operators have way less context to decide than a user that directly follows the reporter and knows that the person is about.
True but I only need to copy your metadata to appear like you in threads or DMs. Reports don’t really help anyway, I can also create 1000 keys to report your OG account as the impersonator account.
Preach!
I lived that nightmare on Facebook and every other shitcoin platform.
Bullshit, relays aren't in any position to do this
I am talking about unverified reports. If you can't verify the authenticity of a report, why would you take any action based on it?
Are you simply trusting the person who reported without even verifying? I mean, I can report you for anything. Will they trust me without verifying and take action against you? I am a little confused.
I get why you’re being hyperbolic. But we’re not talking about blocklists or suppression. We’re talking about adding little report warning indicators, right? Literally extra information.
Correct. There are many ways to display the reported information. Almost all of them are better than a relay making decisions for the user. Relays don't have any context of who the reporting person is. But users that follow them daily do have context.
If users want to blindly trust another user, it's their choice.
Users see likes and zap numbers to make up their position on a post. Reports are the same.
pois é
It’s literally why the report system exists. Regardless, you don’t get to run a relay without being responsible, and obliged by local laws. The censorship resistance of nostr lies in the fact that you can just connect to another relay, not that every relay must serve everything.
💯 this is my relay, there are many relays like it but…
Clients need a rating system
It means a lot.
#nostrscript
@jb55 is that a job for #nostrscript?
This is relevant.
If I have people posting unhinged shit and spam bots galore trying to get me to fall for an airdrop scam you can bet your ass I'm gonna hit report.
🫡👏
I am not surprised about this issue with Amethyst because Vitor Pamplona worked with the Brazilian dictatorial government to develop censorship software for it, such as the digital ID software.
It is necessary to realize that there are big players here who have actively worked to create censorship.
I will never forget them.
#Amethyst blocks information
View quoted note →perhaps the #zaps on this post and a lack of #zaps for Amethyst devs will solve the problem expediently. if not, a new client perhaps... 😇
Good to know. This sort of behavior by a client should be clearly labeled so that users can make informed choices.
