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Why Is Nostr Sanction or Censorship
147 sats \ 7 comments \ @spiderman 13h nostr
So, I understand asymmetric encryption, pub/private keys (use them every day for SSH into EC2 instances, and git push). I created the account with my nsec and npub as well.
But how exactly is it censorship resistant? I still need to be connected to the internet, and any service need to reach a specific server (that someone, like my ISP, can block by firewall), right?
As an example, the Chinese government bans WhatsApp by blocking any traffic to WhatsApp server? Similarly, can they block any traffic to Nostr client servers? If they do, does holding my private key help?
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121 sats \ 1 reply \ @SimpleStacker 13h
I'd say there are a couple of issues at play here.
For censorship resistance, there's two levels of censorship resistance. 1. Censorship a company/platform, and 2. Censorship by the government. Nostr should be resistant to the first kind because no single company controls all the servers. This would be unlike something like Twitter, which controls all its data.
Resistance against government censorship is trickier because you're right that ISPs are a target. In practice, it might be hard for a government to crack down on all nostr/bitcoin traffic without shutting down the whole internet, because they'd need a reliable way of detecting whether an IP is hosting a nostr server and whether encrypted traffic is nostr traffic.
Because of that, when a government wants to censor information it usually goes after platforms like Facebook, Twitter, etc, first, before going after the ISPs. But, as I said, that won't work for nostr so they really would have to go after the ISPs, which woudl probably result in less effective or more costly censorship.
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0 sats \ 0 replies \ @spiderman OP 12h
no single company controls all the servers.
So, taking Primal as an example, they do not own primal infrastructure? If they want to ban my public key (because I posted something offensive, that primal does not like), they cannot?
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0 sats \ 0 replies \ @kehiy 1h
Nostr relays can be run by anyone. They can't block ALL relays. It's too hard. You can run your own relay as well.
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0 sats \ 0 replies \ @helloboy 3h
In fact, China had blocked any traffic to Nostr client servers many years ago.
In china, you must use VPN .
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0 sats \ 0 replies \ @sebastix 4h
Check out https://how-nostr-works.pages.dev/#/pathological
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0 sats \ 1 reply \ @Entrep 10h
If a government blocks one relay by firewalling its IP, you can just switch to others. There are hundreds of public relays worldwide, and they're constantly popping up. Your private key ensures your identity and data stay yours, no lock-in to any relay.
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0 sats \ 0 replies \ @anon 3h
Except, they dont have all of the messages. Most people post to the 10+ top relays.
Besides they are blocking thousands of sites - automatically. It's absolutely zero effort for them to block a few extra relay sites every day.
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