I keep talking about some good ideas for developing on WoT 1. A web of trust relay that lets anyone in (at least temporarily) for submitting a note with enough mined NIP-13 proof of work 2. To combat AI spam, a robust tagging system with stuff like a standardized tag for "met in person to verify human identity at this timestamp" so that your web of trust can have filters like "known human npubs only"

All ideas can and should be tried. I'm a fan of simplicity, and it seems to me that the simplest solution is to have the client not show a note at all (in a reply) unless the note paid 1 sat to the OP. Its nothing. It can be lowered to a smaller unit when we get to smaller units. Some spam will still get through, if they pay, but most will stop when they math the total cost of an attack. I'd like to try this solution.

Amazing that I was a suspect. 😂 Yes, I definitely agree on your points. It could be a state actor (I err towards this being likely) but a dev forcing people to improve the platform is also a possibility. Or perhaps trying to get people onto their paid relays. One of the bots I saw had a message to remove nostr.land as a relay for the attacks to stop. I imagine that if analytics show a drop in users following a bot attack, then that would be considered an effective strategy and expanded. My first question is who stands to gain most from destroying a growing protocol in its early stages, when it is so very promising? That's what makes me most suspicious. Couple it with the previous doxxing of fiatjaf as well as the media hitpiece labeling nostr as 'extremist' or 'far-right'. Anytime I see that, it's obvious there is a campaign to discredit.

Proof-of-Work is unlikely to be effective for deterring spammers. Spammers easily operate at massive scales (botnets, server farms, cheap cloud). They can absorb the PoW cost more easily than legitimate users because spamming is a numbers game. The meet-in-person (like in the old PGP era) is even less likely to work.

Tfw you realise that Comte is on to you for being a fed but then you remember you’re not a fed. “Maybe. IMO those Intel agencies are quite active on nostr. Lots of influence ops here. I've suspected you, for example. Decided probably not.”

I think it was Solzhenitsyn who said that you must always question whether you're speaking to an informant. The Intel agencies have recreated the Soviet Union on the internet, and now we must always wonder if the person we're interacting with is one of them.

I'm gonna spout some pure conjecture here, but I suspect there are broadly two camps in the intelligence world : the commies, aka the black lodge ; and the rebel alliance, aka the white lodge. It just doesn't look like a unified force. There's some push back occurring and its not originating from plebs. Just my pattern recognition again... Could be wrong.