The filtering/blocking approach used by Amethyst today has a few main faults - the primary one being lack of visibility of app wide filtering. People find out by accident, or at all - which is obviously a sign of a broken approach. I don’t quite see it as censorship, yet more as a poorly functioning content ‘value’ scoring system.
The inability to opt-in and customise your filters is really the lacking feature here. I’m actually surprised just how badly the WoT - trusting 5 nth degree following spam reports = shadow ban content - has performed. It shows that close/greater connected individuals (group clusters) regularly have different preferences and desires to self-curate what they see - instead of having it done on their behalf somehow (I.e. WoT signals). People also report or mute for many reasons - from bad content to “I just don’t care about this type of content”. Breaking News: Humans value different things.
Enabling users to self curate more easily and see how far that gets us is the best approach. We can even add filtering for NIP05 domains, or perhaps relays to avoid connecting to. Even content warning, profanity masking, nudity detection, etc. all done locally on devices without major performance impacts.
Damus POC I mocked up. Damus has active development in this area. 
IMPORTANT: If you are here because you see Nostr as a censorship-resistant alternative and the beacon of free speech, YOU MUST READ THIS. Something bad is going on, and you should be aware of it. It affects every user on Nostr.
First: Please, only utilize the 'Report' feature in extreme cases. Instead, prioritize using the 'Mute/Block' option when necessary. This is a humble request to all the IOS & Android users 🙏
Because we have a very huge problem and it's not a bug. Let me elaborate:
Regardless of where you choose to report, your 'report' will censor that person not just for you but "all of your followers" who use Amethyst. It only takes five reports from 'following user' to censor the individual "for you" without your intent and knowledge. No matter which client the censored user is using, they will be censored for Amethyst users after reports.
Amethyst users don't even have an option to turn off this setting. This is really messed up. Any five users I am following can censor any person for me, and I can't do anything about it. This is ridiculous.
By the way, don't make any mistake here, it's not a bug, it's by design. I raised this issue with Vitor many times. I respect his work, but there has been no meaningful response regarding this. In fact, he wants you to learn coding and do it by yourself.
I don't intend to call out any person; I just want to spread awareness. Maybe you like this feature idk but you deserve to know what's exactly happening and make informed decisions.
Btw, You don't have to share this exact post, but please let people around you know what's happening. So they can participate in this debate.
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