Republishing Nostr notes is one of the great superpowers of relay-based feeds and one that is (currently) vastly under-supported by social clients. Because of this, the feature is still unknown to many users. The ability to participate in creating themed feeds or age-appropriate feeds that are deemed as safe by a subset of users rather than an alogrithm or overarching policy, is something the no other social media experience can offer. While legislation and big tech companies try to push AI driven decision-making and privacy encroachments onto everyone and everything, human-led Nostr curation gives to conscientious individuals, the ability to share and guide a social feed that is suitable for a chosen audience. Using republishing as the mechanism to build a variety of feeds, opens up nearly effortless participation from any individual or group.

Client-side, this is simple, though limited by a lack of client support. Fevela and Jumble are a couple that work right now. Let’s say, while browsing on Jumble, a parent sees a note that is fun and age-appropriate for a group that they help to moderate. They believe that it would be good content for the children’s feed. They click a couple buttons, with no need to navigate away from their own experience, and the note is sent to its destination. Right now, in Jumble, it looks something like this:

The flow:

• Star/save the destination relay as a “favorite”

• Click the 3-dot menu on any note in any feed

• Choose the “Republish” option

• Click on the destination relay

The note is then visible within the destination feed.

An appropriate style of relay is essential to the process, of which, someone must be the host. Ideally, that person, organization, or even, business, would be trustworthy to the group, as they would be the final authority of all moderation. Moderators/members are then added by whatever method the relay operator has chosen. The relay, regardless of its other capabilities, must accept republished notes from a list of allowed users, whether that be a group of parents or some other group is entrusted with moderation duties. The notes do not need to be authored by these users. These people are entrusted with the responsibility of finding and sharing appropriate content to the feed. From there, the notes can be republished directly to a relay feed, such as what you see here . Alternatives that include an extra layer of moderation, such as this, will move these republished notes to a moderation queue for other participants to approve or deny, before they are viewable within a main feed. These methods could be used together to create a system of graduating through different levels of exposure to content. Perhaps, an author needs to be vetted via the the moderated feed before the group agrees to allow any of their content in the other. Or perhaps one feed contains content that needs an extra layer of approval to be deemed as safe for younger ages, while the other is a bit more loose, for older ages. So long as the group agrees on basic standards, as to what is “appropriate”, the sytem can flow smoothly. Should anyone disagree, there is nothing preventing them from moving their efforts to a different relay-based moderation group, since everything is on Nostr.

Until more of these such community efforts start to form, discovery of them will likely happen mainly by word-of-mouth, which is honestly healthier, more personal, and grassroots-y, than alternative methods. For more information on hosting or participating in such a community, read this. To see a list of other relay-based curation methods, read this one. If you would like to join such a community, ask around. While these concepts can apply to any group, the examples used here were inspired by the efforts of the Web of Trust Foundation. Visit their page for more information on about their projects, protocols, and initiaves.