this post was submitted on 15 Feb 2024
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Because you can choose which relays to connect to and you typically connect to multiple relays. This is all seamless. On Mastodon/fedi, an instance controls your entire view of the fediverse unless you make a separate account elsewhere and check it separately. You can't follow or be followed by users or instances they block even if you want to. They also control your identity, since it's tied to a relay/instance. If your relay shuts down or your account gets banned, you have to make a new account elsewhere, re-follow everybody, get everybody to re-follow you, etc. It's a mess.
On nostr, instance/relay admins only control that goes through their specific relay. Relay admins can, of course, share common blocklists if they want for anti-spam or anti-abuse purposes. If you want to follow somebody blocked by a relay, you are connected to other relays and the signal can flow through there. You don't need to check multiple relays separately. If your relay closes, you don't lose your account/identity.
Ok, now I get it. It's an interesting concept. However, I think usability is a trade-off here and that means limited scalability. The average user wants to join a server and that's it. I continue to place my bet on the federated concept ;)
It's just as scalable as fedi, I'd say it's even more scalable since relays don't need to communicate with each other, which reduces the cost to run a relay. The average user experience is basically identical. They download an app, it connects to a set of default relays (or they can choose some manually if they want), they tweet.