Yeah. Amethyst has just implemented the Outbox model, and I’m doing my best with Haven, and lots of other devs are proving other self-hostable relays of all shapes and sizss, so the alternative to big public relays is already there (not that I expect the vast majority of users to self-host, but there are already hundreds of Haven relays out in the wild). For communities, while it’s still very early days, check out nostr:nprofile1qqs2js6wu9j76qdjs6lvlsnhrmchqhf4xlg9rvu89zyf3nqq6hygt0spzemhxue69uhku6t9dshxummnw3erztnrdakj7qg3waehxw309ahx7um5wgh8w6twv5hsz9thwden5te0wfjkccte9ejxzmt4wvhxjme03d56gx’s Communikeys. I think it will go places.
There are also "thematic" relays out there that work fantastically on dev.nosotros.app and jumble.social. A recent one I really like is Spatianostra, curated by nostr:nprofile1qqsvyv8d6dx2tjp33069j2kq2mx7xage6w2upyzvxl4pcegt3t22wyspz9mhxue69uhkummnw3ezuamfdejj7qfqwaehxw309ashqmrpvdjkjmn5dpjhxatw9ehx7um5wgcjucm0d5hszyrhwden5te0dehhxarj9ekk7mf00fytsp and nostr:nprofile1qqsymsh9wrz5lmurz0arqn6jjaqyfmtvz2z3qpfxqz5msnvr0wqjd7gpzpmhxue69uhhxmmvda3k7tnwdshsg6f0ul and a small community of less than ~300 people with diluted shares.
https://dev.nosotros.app/feed?relay=wss%3A%2F%2Frelays.land%2Fspatianostra
Other than that, I’ll be annoying and go back to my original point: intermediate servers or not, Mastodon’s experience is also linear. The difference is 10 million users and a culture of hashtags and boosting. We can do the same here with the tech we already have. Some people already do, and when you view their feed (you can “log in” with their npub for a read-only view), Nostr becomes awesome. We just need to make that awesome experience the default and flood Nostr with it until all the BTC chatter and Nostr "influencers" and predatory / toxic stuff is just a drop in the ocean instead of 90% of what’s "trending" on Nostr.
