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Nostr is not a web of trust. Right?
115 sats \ 20 comments \ @pillar 4h bitcoin
I regularly see mentions of "web of trust" in the Nostr domain (i.e. WoT Relay). I don't understand why this term is brought up, and I'm hoping stackers here can either point at what I'm missing or confirm I'm not crazy.
The thing is this way of looking at Nostr, from what I've observed, assumes that because you follow someone, you're somehow friends and trust each other. I have issues with this, because there's a lot of people I follow I have no trust, friendship, or anything like that at all.
Am I stupid, or is Nostr not a web of trust?
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49 sats \ 12 replies \ @DarthCoin 4h
just some dudes posting all days "GM".
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21 sats \ 11 replies \ @oliverweiss 2h
Exactly! The other day, I was checking a list of trending posts from the last 24 hours (at least the Primal client has this option), and seven out of ten top posts were the GM posts. The second category of posts and endlessly repeated shouts like stack sats. Symptoms of a rotten body?
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0 sats \ 10 replies \ @dtonon 2h
No, the problem is that you are trusting an algorithm that say you what is trending.
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0 sats \ 9 replies \ @oliverweiss 1h
How does this algorithm work? Can I change it for another one? Or influence the outcome?
Just checked it again: it’s 10/10
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51 sats \ 4 replies \ @dtonon 1h
It depends on the client you choose to use. The basic Nostr algorithm is no algorithm, or better you are the algorithm, so you just get a feed of who you actively follow. Apps can then have different built-in logics to help discoverability (e.g. using your web of trust, or the most reacted/zapped content) or let you explore different external DVM (data vending machine, that actually are algorithms).
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0 sats \ 3 replies \ @oliverweiss 1h
It seems to me that the logic in Primal is the most reacted/zapped content then, because the top trending posts have quite some reactions/zaps. Posts like “gm, this is my breakfast today” or “gm, a song I’ve just listened”. It’s like a decentralized instagram.
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21 sats \ 3 replies \ @oliverweiss 1h
It’s even worse, the first non-gm post is number 16 now, which says GN 🤣
Maybe it’s a dumbest yes/no algorithm ever: is there GM?
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0 sats \ 2 replies \ @dtonon 1h
Primal is not Nostr.
If you have been following the discussions over the past few days, there have been many jokes and memes about this Primal's weird trending list.
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36 sats \ 4 replies \ @justin_shocknet 4h
The pre-history of Nostr is that of a user graph (Graph User Nodes specifically), so yes, Nostr to the extent its used as a social network is a web of trust... all a decentralized social network can ultimately be is a WoT
Since anyone can create a key and just start signing things, keys are worthless or even deleterious to the broader network without some trust to privilege them.
Individual actors on Nostr may "trust" a key based on PoW, payment, or other such thing... but that individual actor is only as valuable to the new key as far it is trusted by the broader network to gain it privileges by association
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0 sats \ 3 replies \ @pillar OP 3h
I think the issue might be my understanding of what we mean by "trust" in this context.
Just playing stupid here, how would you describe "trusting" a key?
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0 sats \ 2 replies \ @justin_shocknet 3h
Yea sounds like you might be taking the term trust too literally
If we follow each other it doesn't meant we necessarily trust each other... If 100 people that I follow happen to follow you it doesn't mean I trust you either... If you paid a relay I use to post, same...
But those are all heuristics I or some application would use to treat your key in a privileged way, that's WoT. There's no definitive algo, nor is "trust binary, it's just that relationships are observable and "WoT relay" uses that heuristic
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0 sats \ 1 reply \ @pillar OP 3h
I follow you, thanks.
It makes me wonder how coolio would it be to have a kind that is not "follow" but "trust". So that we could truly communicate publicly "I trust this guy".
I think it could the foundation of very, very interesting stuff.
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0 sats \ 0 replies \ @justin_shocknet 3h
Yea that's kind of the beauty of Nostr, just passing signed notes, you can literally do exactly that right now
Standardizing that process and getting other projects to adopt it in their apps is a little more work...
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10 sats \ 0 replies \ @k00b 4h
It depends on how you define web of trust. The term is overused to mean transitive relationships as naive as "followers of followers." You can definitely construct less naive webs of trust from nostr data. I've seen lots of folks experimenting with it.
Though, sometimes I wonder if WoT is passed its prime and most algorithms will be using more advanced machine learning to give people what they want.
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0 sats \ 0 replies \ @dtonon 2h
It depends on the meaning of "trust". For example talking about impersonator, you trust someone to be "real", even if you don't agree with his positions or you don't trust what he says.
WoT could work better if you follow people you actually fully trust, and put in separate lists people you want to monitor for other purposes.
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