“It is open source and you can run your own” does not make it not censorious — Mastodon is open source and you can run your own, and it is a hotbed of censorship. “Just run your own social media service!” is the exact echo of the most censorious people on earth. Most clients outside Primal have multiple relays by default, most or all of which they do not control. This includes Amethyst, Damus, Wisp, etc. If chooses Damus to block me on their relay, most people are still going to see my content because I am publishing to the other relays. Also most people can, via the relay hints provided by nevents when you quote a post, fetch my content from relays I post to even if you do not directly follow me or subscribe to my relay. If Primus blocks me from their caching server’s algorithmic feed, then I am silently erased and you will never see my content again. The only way this is different from Twitter is because people can take their nsecs elsewhere, but they provide no notice to users or opportunity for transparency as to what content they have removed. It is not just “caching the content from the relay” btw, it is selecting who gets seen at all in an editorialized fashion. And they have been caught not only censoring likes, but censoring entirely the display of basic post content in their algorithmic relay feed.
Replies (36)
The fact that I see your post on Primal as well as on Damus—even though it directly accuses them of censorship—means it’s not censorship. It’s high time people start making a distinction between censorship and filtering.
One is designed to silence you or prevent you from reaching your peers; the other exists to improve user experience or conserve resources. One is purely content-based; the other is driven by rate limits. The outcome might be the same (not seeing certain posts or interactions), but the purpose is completely different.
A given user might value experience over reach, and vice versa. I might not want to see everything you have to say, and you might feel the same about me.
I’ll grant you this, though: Primal could choose to abuse its capabilities. But other clients won’t—and that’s the whole point. I use four Nostr clients, and what I post with my private key shows up across all of them. Even if Primal went full censorship, I could switch to another client and bypass it entirely without losing any content.
All this constant dunking on Primal just shows that it has superior UX—and that people don’t really understand how censorship actually works.
This is a ridiculous claim -- “you haven’t been censored yet, so there’s no censorship or shadowbanning happening at all!” It’s either so egregiously fallacious that you lack the logical capacity to have this discussion, or it is manipulatively dishonest.
People dunk on Primal because they are positioning themselves as a future censor. If they kept their caching server for “experience” but then also connected to multiple relays they don’t control, then it would be reasonably decentralized like any other Nostr client. But they have explicitly made themselves the sole arbiter of what people see on Primal, and have a track record of algorithmic censorship. Regardless of whether they *choose* to censor or not, if Nostr gains traction courts and governments will make that choice for them, and they will not be allowed to say no.
Read my post again. You simply don’t understand how censorship works.
Amen. After getting into an argument about regime change in venezuela on a Primal developers post, My comments and individual posts about that exact topic disappeared from their caching server (and this primal users' feeds) until somebody rebroadcast them. And of course after they were rebroadcast, primal influencors and investors piled on to discredit with me (which some still frequently do) and say that Im lying because the posts are now visible lol
Fuck primal and anybody affiliated with that garbage
Youre better than this. They clearly do not mind censorship (or "FiLtErInG")
You don’t understand that Primal is already curating its algorithmic feed. That’s a form of editorialization and censorship. You aren’t checking the entire Nostr social graph — you are only checking specific posts. Even a tiny smidgeon of statistical bias can completely change the social graph.
Normal people are not using 4 Nostr clients, and you are only checking for *your* posts. This means you would only notice censorship both if it were happening to you and only if Primal censored the posts to the author as well. Obviously, that’s never how it works. Shadowbanning is the absolute inverse. You don’t get any notification that you’re banned, but your reach is limited beyond the capacity of a normal person to demonstrate how, and sometimes isn’t even noticed by the author.
Congrats mate, and thanks for explaining me the basics. You still don’t understand how censorship works and the difference between censorship and filtering. But you can keep defending that hill. 🫡
View quoted note →Because weev hasn’t yet been censored by Primal so there’s no issue? Am I misinterpreting what you’re saying?
They also enjoy being criticised for it and not doing anything about it.
They have plenty of investors and shirtless retards who will twist anything they can for them, so unfortunately theyll be just fine
> Am I misinterpreting what you’re saying?
Yes, you are.
I’m not their advocate. Just trying to be objective. I’d probably be worried if Primal was the “implementation client” on Nostr, like Core was for Bitcoin. They can manipulate your feed, but can’t gate your content even if they tried.
I just think they should be criticized at every opportunity. Wisp is about as slick/fast and doesnt make a quarter of as many tradeoffs, and the infrastructure Primal is building is inherently censorial and they clearly have no qualms using it that way already. They are going to become a much bigger problem imo
Time will tell.
Dude I fuck with you, but you 100% lost this exchange with him and the only one that ended up looking retarded was you lmao
Are you invested in Primal? Because this seems like abnormal behavior for you
Hey
@miljan throw some sats at me. People are calling me a retard for your sake and I’m doing this for free. 💀🫠
If you use Primal, this paragraphless note is important to read.
🤭
Sup bro?!
So if I post something from primal, the caching server prevents it from being hosted on other relays like damus and nos.lol?
😂
No. The caching server is for reading. Your posts can be rebroadcast on external relays. Primal is controlling what you *see*.
Okay I get what you're saying but what is the solution here?
Nostr does not work well when bandwith sucks. During long drives through areas with poor signal, primal is the only thing that works for me. In poorer countries, you can forget about damus. Deleting damus recently literally cleared 14 GBs of storage. Plus the strain on batteries and data consumption is a huge problem. I primarily use Yakihonne and even that client is painfully slow at times. Censorship resistance is great but if most people can't use nostr, then we've accomplished nothing.
Damnit🤔😳
…I knew some MF was censoring my likes🧐….my content is jus too smokin good for this paltry number ⭕️ likes🤨🤣
All of that 14GB is basically media cache. I *do not care* that Primal resizes media ahead of time to save you on your cellphone bill. This does not affect Nostr’s decentralization at all, because images and videos on Nostr are not distributed in a decentralized fashion. They’re just links to normal, centralized, http servers. What is decentralized is the note content and metadata.
Primal can continue reducing media downloads. I support this! It’s an excellent feature they provide. But they need to at least query real Nostr relays periodically and make any content that is not appearing via their caching servers available. That’s the bare minimum. Otherwise they can offer people a choice with informed consent. When you launch Primal for the first time you can get a choice between “decentralized and censorship-resistant” or “a centralized caching and algorithmic feed that we curate to save cellphone bandwidth.” So people then know and understand the difference, and are choosing the latter.
Additionally I’d like to see transparency on the decisions that Primal makes regarding its caching server. Automated, publicly accessible reports on what is being hidden and what is given extra reach.
Fucked it we rolled
Yeah bro it’s doing the shadowban thing again I already liked this post once but when it reloads the like is gone, on Damus on iPhone
I know it’s not your fault just making you aware you may be getting more interactions than the app is showing
I see two interactions from you so they both made it lol
Running your own instance doesn’t guarantee freedom if the network’s relay structure still enables central points of control—see how Iran’s state media manipulates narratives across platforms by editing content selectively between languages. It’s not just about ownership, but who controls the pipes.
The Board
Two Voices: How Iran's State Media Edits Itself Between Languages
Iranian state media runs different content in Farsi and English. The 10-point ceasefire plan of April 2026 is the clearest documented case — and ...
I just went through and liked at least 10 of your posts, that’s why I comment so much because I’m pretty sure my likes aren’t going through on Damus on iPhone
I saw the likes. The submissions of the likes are working fine. Clients probably don’t have a great way to keep track of what they’ve liked or query the like state. But I’m getting them fine.
I think I found a way to get them to show up, it’s Damus not loading them for me. You would think liking a second time would be enough to pull a refresh but I have to click on the number and then they update.
