[HN Gopher] Nostr - Decentralized social network
___________________________________________________________________
Nostr - Decentralized social network
Author : throwaway689236
Score : 130 points
Date : 2023-05-01 14:23 UTC (8 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (nostr.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (nostr.com)
| natural219 wrote:
| I had the chance to speak to some Nostr devs this weekend. My
| impression (like other mentions below) is that it seems less like
| a social network than it does a messaging protocol.
|
| As with all tech protocols, there's potential for more
| sophisticated things to be built on top of them, but I didn't get
| a clear sense that Nostr people are interested or serious about
| product engineering to make this a "Twitter killer" or some other
| popular buzzword.
|
| There was an interesting discussion on how to limit spam in
| distributed networks, the primordial problem of any social web
| endeavor. The two poles seem to be relying on "financial
| incentives" vs "identity gatekeeping". For those that believe in
| the power of the free market to regulate tricky social problems,
| I think Nostr has a lot of promise.
| benwerd wrote:
| For what it's worth, Nos is a pretty great iOS app for this:
| https://www.nostrapps.com/apps/nos-social
| 65 wrote:
| Does Nostr use ActivityPub or is it a proprietary implementation?
| erskingardner wrote:
| Nope - it is its own thing. https://github.com/nostr-
| protocol/nostr
| rchaud wrote:
| The latter.
| agg23 wrote:
| Saw a post about Nostr on here a week or so ago and haven't been
| able to stop thinking about it. I don't think it's likely to
| become the next platform (and the crypto stuff probably doesn't
| help), but I just find enjoyment with the minimal spec and how
| simple it all is.
|
| I don't understand how moderation or handling the large transfers
| of duplicate data between relays and clients will work.
| cube2222 wrote:
| On the last HN thread about Nostr I've mentioned Bluesky, and
| talked about its qualities, including the separation of various
| duties, like the feed, moderation, storage, etc. into different
| entities that can be pluggable.
|
| Since that I got an invite (thank you, Sam!) and I'm even more
| bullish now (though I'm not much of a social media poster
| myself).
|
| Compared to Nostr it seems like there's a first-party "base" app
| that most people can use, which has UX very similar to Twitter,
| with the assumption that people will be able to make their pick
| of app/moderation/feed/... later based on merit, not lock-in.
|
| It seems like in the recent days/weeks a lot of non-technical
| various public figures have onboarded Bluesky, thanks to this
| ease of getting started. Folks that I wouldn't expect there for a
| while yet.
|
| To any Nostr users - how's that developing there? Based on my
| cursory look onboarding looks quite a bit more daunting.
|
| Anyway, the Twitter blue checkmark seems to be a blessing for
| decentralized social networks.
|
| EDIT: Since I already got an email about it 5 mins after writing
| this - No, I don't have any invite codes, sorry.
|
| [0]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35692378
| _fizz_buzz_ wrote:
| Seems like bluesky will be where people move from twitter. I
| was kind of hoping mastodon would be it and my mastodon feed is
| actually pretty good. But everyone seems to be moving to
| bluesky as soon as they get an invite.
| kylecazar wrote:
| The AT protocol is interesting to me, but I actually don't like
| Twitter's UX. The organization has always seemed off to me --
| when Bluesky starts taking more people from the wait-list, I
| suppose I'll see if it's any better, but I'm glad it's only a
| 'reference' or initial front-end, and more will come.
| RobotToaster wrote:
| Bluesky doesn't even have federation and/or decentralisation
| yet, so they aren't really comparable.
| javier123454321 wrote:
| Download amethyst on Android or Damus on IOS. You're onboarded.
| Set up a lightning wallet to receive tips for valuable content.
| No wait list for this decentralized protocol. No native app, no
| dev team, no terms of service.
| cube2222 wrote:
| Thanks, I might check it out then!
|
| > No wait list for this decentralized protocol.
|
| This should soon be the case with Bluesky as well, iirc,
| since federation seems to be the main thing they're ironing
| out right now (alongside moderation).
| sak5sk wrote:
| I'm curious what part is daunting to you? I have no issues
| getting set up on Damus. It was as easy as any other app.
| stiltzkin wrote:
| What do you think of Bluesky TOS?
| cube2222 wrote:
| Anything in particular?
| [deleted]
| sak5sk wrote:
| Nostr user here, absolutely love everything I am seeing. I think
| Nostr is deeply misunderstood by onlookers and I'd like to share
| a few things that may help clear things up:
|
| 1. Nostr is not a social network - it's a protocol on top of many
| social networks can be built. 2. Nostr is not limited to the
| social use cases - and I think that is the killer advantage here.
| With Nostr, you can integrate various other types of apps to
| facilitate not only chat but content distribution AND payments.
| One click payments with zaps. 3. Zaps are going to open up a
| floodgate of use cases that have a significant advantage over
| legacy ways of doing things. For example: if you have a music app
| with multiple recording artists, any time someone zaps or streams
| their song, all artists involved could get paid instantly. 4.
| Nostr is a discovery powerhouse that enables content to be easily
| discovered across platforms without gatekeeping. For creators
| this is great news because they can just publish in one place and
| be in all (willingly) participating clients/apps. This alone is a
| huge development that I don't think too many are grasping just
| yet.
|
| Yes, it is still clunky at times, but the UX and UI is getting
| better over time. The development model makes it easy for anyone
| to jump in and build. You are not limited to any particular way
| of doing things and can create a custom experience for your
| audience while having access to the entirety of the protocol.
|
| Some resources for people:
|
| - https://www.heynostr.com/ - https://www.nostrapps.com/
| rchaud wrote:
| > Nostr is a discovery powerhouse that enables content to be
| easily discovered across platforms without gatekeeping. For
| creators this is great news because they can just publish in
| one place and be in all (willingly) participating clients/apps.
|
| Beyond the marketing barf, what makes this a "discovery
| powerhouse"?
|
| From the description, it doesn't sound any different from
| Mastodon, or having an email newsletter, or publishing your own
| website.
| sak5sk wrote:
| Network effects. Every new app that joins grows the network
| without the content creator having to do anything new.
| rchaud wrote:
| If I joined today for example, how would I come across
| something you posted? The user increment is +1, but that's
| just the potential number of people you _could_ reach.
| Somebody would have to the equivalent of re-tweeting, for
| your content to be visible on their profile, and
| discoverable by others.
|
| Is that different from say, Mastodon?
| 7v3x3n3sem9vv wrote:
| like mastodon? from my mastodon account I can interact with
| pixelfed (like Instagram), peertube (like YouTube) and
| Lemmy (like reddit).
| swypych wrote:
| "1. Nostr is not a social network."
|
| Someone should really change the marketing CTA.
|
| "A decentralized social network with a chance of working"
|
| I can see why people would think this.
| sak5sk wrote:
| That's the beautiful part about Nostr, anyone can create a
| website and "sell" it any way they like.
| rchaud wrote:
| any way they like...as long as it's in Bitcoin.
| Entinel wrote:
| That's not how that works though. It would be like me
| calling XMPP a cryptocurrency.
| Encrypt-Keeper wrote:
| That's a huge benefit over social media projects like Mastodon,
| which lack discovery features entirely.
| wedesoft wrote:
| Wrote a post om how to access Nostr using the iris.to web client
| in case it helps:
| https://www.wedesoft.de/software/2023/04/25/nostr/
| ravenbitcoin wrote:
| If you're on Android, use Amethyst. If you're on iOS, use Damus.
| If you're on the web, https://snort.social and https://iris.to
| lovvtide wrote:
| Also on web, https://satellite.earth if you prefer reading
| conversations as threaded comments
| Barrin92 wrote:
| Calling Nostr a social network to me seems like a category error.
| It's a messaging protocol. People might build a social network on
| top of it, but it's not necessarily going to have any of the
| properties Nostr has, the same way Facebook is built on top of
| html.
|
| If you want to solve social issues at a protocol level, there
| need to be social mechanisms in the protocol. That would honestly
| be kind of interesting to see. But Nostr is just a reinvented
| networking stack.
| rchaud wrote:
| Seems like it's more than that considering they have mobile
| apps coming that are definitely social networks.
| erskingardner wrote:
| Lots of misconceptions here. If you're interested in learning
| more I'd highly recommend reading up a bit, https://nostr.how
| (disclaimer, I'm the maintainer of that site).
| rchaud wrote:
| Shouldn't explanatory information be on nostr.com? What
| credibility does this 3rd party site have?
| netbioserror wrote:
| This has zero chance of working if normies have to fiddle with
| keypairs.
| Turing_Machine wrote:
| There's no reason they have to "fiddle" with it. Generating a
| new keypair could be a button.
|
| Normies use keypairs every time they connect to an https site.
| They just don't know it, nor is there any reason why they
| should.
| netbioserror wrote:
| This is not a function of "could." They're already asking
| users to do it. If they "could," why didn't they? To make
| something easy, you first have to actually make it easy. Not
| let forum users argue about how easy it "could" be.
| Turing_Machine wrote:
| > If they "could," why didn't they?
|
| Because this is early days?
|
| Surely you don't imagine that every product emerges in its
| final form?
|
| Maybe instead you could explain why they couldn't. As I
| noted, people seem to be able to use TLS to make secure
| connections to websites without generating keypairs from
| the command line, or whatever.
|
| Edit: and in fact this has been done.
|
| https://nostr.how/en/guides/iris
|
| Type in your name. Hit "Go". Done.
| rideontime wrote:
| Dupe: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35163590 ,
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34937223
| colesantiago wrote:
| This 'Nostr' thing will never take off, it has too much
| 'cryptocurrency' laden features that nobody asked for.
|
| yuck.
| javier123454321 wrote:
| A culture of tipping for content you find valuable at the click
| of a button that works for people to cash out regardless of
| their jurisdiction is yucky to you? I guess, i see it as one of
| it's biggest selling points, however you can turn it off in
| some clients
| colesantiago wrote:
| How do people cash out of a token that isn't a currency?
|
| I'm not interested in being blasted with prophetic bitcoin
| nonsense 24/7 on every thread or on any conversation I have
| with people.
|
| I opened a random web client and saw too many 'cryptidots' on
| this nostr thing.
|
| No way this will grow.
| javier123454321 wrote:
| Honestly the content being almost exclusively about Bitcoin
| and Nostr might be it's biggest problem.
| INTPenis wrote:
| You're twisting words. Tipping is not the problem here, it's
| the cryptocurrencies. If you can't see how people mistrust
| them then you're probably deeply invested in them yourself.
|
| As long as there is no real value in the real world it will
| remain inflated by confidence, which reeks of scam. And no
| one pizza place here or a bitcoin atm there does not make a
| difference. So far the only real goods and services crypto
| has traded at scale are on an illegal black market.
| stiltzkin wrote:
| Cryptocurrency is optional.
| _fizz_buzz_ wrote:
| Everything "crypto" has become a bit toxic during the
| past year.
| rchaud wrote:
| What you're describing was tried with "steemit.com" and it
| ended as you would expect; lots and lots of spam.
| [deleted]
| Kye wrote:
| Everything I've heard makes it sound like it's for people who
| don't think Mastodon's onboarding is confusing enough.
| pharmakom wrote:
| Nothing about the Nostr protocol struck me as particularly
| interesting. Spam control, moderation and anonymity are not
| really dealt with. Why the hype?
| robcohen wrote:
| I feel the same way. It seems like it doesn't even try to solve
| most of the hardest problems for decentralization. I too find
| it weird, but it is fun to play with.
| dtdannen wrote:
| How did you use it? The default setting is anonymous unless you
| reveal who you are.
|
| After I muted a small number of people and used some paid
| relays I don't see spam or bad content.
|
| Coolest feature is that you can switch clients while keeping
| the same relays and all your data stays with you.
|
| Plus a bunch of clients have this auto translate feature so
| people are talking to each other regardless of the language
| they speak. I started following some people in other languages
| - very unique social media experience.
| dizhn wrote:
| You are already paying for paid relays ? What is the
| reasoning?
|
| Congrats on your first comment by the way.
| ursuscamp wrote:
| I used paid relays. The reasons are higher quality content.
| It works alright for spam prevention. Also, I use the
| nostr.wine filter relay, which is pretty neat. You can
| connect to it and it will pull notes from your web of
| contacts (your follows, plus their follows). Additionally,
| it will rebroadcast your notes to public relays.
|
| It's a pretty nice way to keep your feed quiet (not
| spammy), but also allow your notes to make it out to the
| broader public nostr sphere.
| dizhn wrote:
| I will have to look into this more. It sounds like it's
| not as simple as the project website makes it sound.
| irusensei wrote:
| > anonymity are not really dealt with
|
| Why would you need to deal with anonymity?
| de_keyboard wrote:
| Does Nostr have any mechanisms to ensure anonymity, or can
| the relay log everything?
| mikem170 wrote:
| > Does Nostr have any mechanisms to ensure anonymity
|
| Your identity on the network is a public/private key pair.
| You don't have to associate your real name with your posts,
| if you don't want to. And you can have multiple key pair
| identities if you want.
|
| Posts are plain text by default, but encrypted private
| messages can also be exchanged.
|
| You can choose what relays to post to, and obfuscate your
| ip address with a vpn or tor if you desire.
|
| > can the relay log everything
|
| Yes, subject to the above mitigations.
| rektide wrote:
| Nostr is decentralized. I think a big part of the idea is that
| relays just dont carry spam/bad actors. The protocol doesn't,
| as of yet, have need to handle most of your "it doesn't handle
| complex social issues X Y or Z" nags because it so far handles
| these problems socially, not technically, and that's been
| working for now.
|
| Nostr is all based on anonymous cryptographic identifiers, so
| it seems like you have some special definition of anonymity
| that you are looking for, as it seems nothing if not anonymous.
| Having a stable identifier allows relays to know who to send
| versus who not to send, and allows connecting data together.
| Users are free to sock puppet up to their hearts content, if
| they wish to further diffuse traffic.
|
| The appeal? The appeal here is that this is an incredibly
| malleable & comprehensible low level tool for messaging.
| Competitors like AtProto or ActivityPub involve complex
| protocols to exchange/syndicate data around, as much as the
| payload of the messages themselves. They are high level visions
| for what a network is. By compare, Nostr's low level approach
| is organic & searching not a refined final product, but a
| thriving ecosystem of expanding ideas.
|
| Nostr has extreme elegance as a protocol by being focused
| primarily on messages themselves, which start as very simple &
| understandable self signing devices. The transport & exchange
| of messages is almost incidental, and indeed, Nostr over
| shoebox or carrier pigeon is possible. This allows a lot more
| flexibility with how the network can form distributed
| connections, allows great offline capabilities, allows creative
| relays & creative/selective distribution mechanisms to form.
|
| Nostr is an excellent base layer. The base specs are quite
| short & direct. It's a protocol one can happily implement in a
| weekend.
|
| Nostr has incredibly wild applications, because it is a simple
| _extensible_ base. There 's a wide variety of interesting
| capabilities that have already need accepted as Nostr
| Implementation Possibilities, NIPS, that grow & build on one
| another. Nostr base protocol is just a start, just the seed of
| an idea, one that's meant to be iterated on & expanded, and
| it's so easy & direct to do so. This is the biggest advantage
| by far; I cannot stress this enough. Not trying to do
| absolutely everything & making a modular simple protocol to
| start building & iterating from is all the wins, is the Bazaar
| to the ambitious Cathedrals. https://github.com/nostr-
| protocol/nips
|
| Nostr is by far the most malleable, most open set of
| possibilities, the most grow able, of the social networks we
| have. Everything else seems to have been designed to arrive
| somewhat fully formed, ready to go, but Nostr's strength is
| that it doesn't purport to know every use case & to have a
| total picture of what it is. It's a much simpler idea, with
| much more focus on finding out the uses.
| m4lvin wrote:
| Can you explain why nostr is (apparently?) your favorite over
| scuttlebutt? Are the protocols similar?
|
| https://scuttlebutt.nz/
| rchaud wrote:
| > I think a big part of the idea is that relays just dont
| carry spam/bad actors.
|
| How would the relay evaluate what is spam and what is not?
| r721 wrote:
| Yeah, I just don't understand what would relay operator
| actually do if someone would generate 10k key pairs and
| post 100k gpt-generated replies to some random posts.
| jonesjohns wrote:
| Spam control = relay configuration Moderation = client side
| moderation features, most allow muting and blur images from
| unknown accounts prior to opening. If you don't like the way a
| client moderates, move to another Anonymity = not sure how it's
| not anonymous. There's no sign up, no email, no password. It's
| just keypairs being generated. Use a vpn.
| haarts wrote:
| There's little spam at the moment. There will be. But at that
| time the relays (pieces of server software that relay nostr
| messages) can step in and implement spam control via whatever
| they see fit. Perhaps some smart filtering, perhaps pay a few
| sats to have a message relayed or perhaps some real name
| policy. Clients can pick a (set of) relay(s) which fit their
| preference best. Or not, and accept the default.
|
| The protocol is surprisingly simple to read [1], many relays
| and clients exist already.
|
| I exchanged messages with a friend of mine who was using a very
| different client and it just worked!
|
| Personally I like the fact that you can 'like' posts by sending
| a couple of sats via Lightning. I think it is a great motivator
| to write thoughtful, quality content.
|
| Currently nostr is radical, weird and unpolished. The Amethyst
| client is slow at times. But the pace of development is
| incredible.
|
| [1] https://github.com/nostr-protocol/nips/blob/master/01.md
| cube2222 wrote:
| Could you expand on how relays differ (mostly conceptually)
| from something like Mastodon instances?
|
| Adding because Nostr seems to be marketed as something more
| decentralized than that, and I'd like to get a deeper
| understanding.
| masukomi wrote:
| This is gossip protocol not a federated thing.
|
| assuming it's the same as Scuttlebutt (also gossip
| protocol) a relay is literally just a relay. There's no
| "home server". You don't have an account on anyone's
| machine. You just shove data out to "people" who are
| listening to you. In scuttlebutt the relays are configured
| so that anyone can ask it to "follow" them and then they
| send their data to it. Anyone who listens to that relay can
| get any data the relay has.
|
| in scuttlebutt the problem was that I never felt like i
| could trust a relay to exist for more than 6 months, so i
| just followed every one i could. No-one wants to set up a
| relay, and relays have to have a static domain / ip so that
| you know where to look for them. It's not like tor where
| you can just leave your computer on and that's good enough.
| I expect the same problems here.
| evbogue wrote:
| Nostr is way simpler than ssb, there isn't even a gossip
| or replication strategy. You just publish your signed
| messages on servers. There isn't even a blob strategy!
|
| This makes it way easier for people to write clients or
| bots or whatever, but it also tosses out many of the
| guarantees people who used the original scuttlebot took
| for granted.
| mikem170 wrote:
| You configure your client post your content to one or more
| relays. You can use relays that you setup for just
| yourself, paid relays, and/or free public relays.
|
| When you follow someone, or someone follows you, the
| follower's client will get a list of relays the person they
| want to follow is posting to. The follower can connect to
| any of those relays and get any new content.
|
| On many relays it's possible to get a firehose feed of
| everything posted to that relay. On free public relays this
| firehose feed may contain lots of spam accounts.
| RobotToaster wrote:
| My understanding is the relays don't actually... relay,
| like mastodon instances do.
|
| With mastodon your client only talks to one "instance" to
| see all the "instances" that "instance" is federated with.
|
| With Nostr your client connects to every "relay" you want
| to see content from, there isn't really any communication
| between "relays".
| drowsspa wrote:
| The responses are quite funny "yeah we don't need to have
| moderation or spam control as opposed to literally any other
| successful social network". I don't really get excited when
| that's the default response, because it means they don't get
| that that's basically the point of a social network.
|
| Coming up with a protocol is not that hard. The technical side
| is fun to work with, but I guess technologists don't realize
| that the human side is way harder to do.
| rchaud wrote:
| > Why the hype?
|
| Jack Dorsey is a co-founder, that's it. I feel like "nostr.com"
| has been showing up on the HN front page, with no context, at
| least once every week.
| CharlesW wrote:
| Someone's got professionals pumping it, for sure. Along with
| the recent context-free appearances on the front page, note
| that this is the 2nd post from submitter _@throwaway689236_.
| jonesjohns wrote:
| Jack is not a cofounder. Nostr.com is owned by a random user
| (not sure who, but can probably figure it out). Nostr was
| created on 2020 by an anon developer named fiatjaf. Jack made
| grants to nostr devs in 2022 (among other FOSS projects)
| after he first discovered it. He has no part in the
| development of the protocol other than the grants, although
| he is an active user.
| erskingardner wrote:
| Jack Dorsey funded some of the early development through a
| grant. Nostr has no co-founders or CEO. It's a protocol, not
| a company.
| newswasboring wrote:
| I guess because it's the only one on the market? At least afaik
| ravenbitcoin wrote:
| I don't see much spam. It's far, far less than Twitter. I can
| mute people I don't want to see. And I can be anonymous if I
| want. What exactly did you mean?
| graypegg wrote:
| Is it possible you don't see much spam because it's currently
| not big enough to be worth spamming?
| hospitalJail wrote:
| As much as I like the idea of anonymous posting, there are
| some serious issues with spam/astroturfing.
|
| I'm ready to join a social media website that requires a
| social security number, photo ID, and interview process.
|
| I've had enough of propagandists and marketers.
| [deleted]
| sleepybrett wrote:
| When I see a platform that advertises as 'censorship-resistant'
| as it's top line I just figure it for libertarian bullshit.
| sigmoid10 wrote:
| All these projects don't understand that it's not the principle
| of free communication or the idea of sharing content that made
| networks like twitter and facebook so successful. It was an
| army of engineers and designers working closely together with
| marketing people and even psychologists to maximise user
| engagement and retention. Heck, you could just endlessly
| recycle the same algorithmic content mixed with camouflaged
| marketing influencers sans any real stuff and people will suck
| it up like crazy (looking at you, tiktok). One of the key
| things nostr criticises (addictiveness) is what will keep it
| from succeeding on any broader scale.
| orbital-decay wrote:
| What makes you think their goal is succeeding on the broader
| scale, though?
| volkk wrote:
| right. was going to ask the same thing. i'm okay with it
| being a relative niche. that is to say, writers,
| economists, artists, etc with a lean towards tech. i'm
| completely fine with Nostr not becoming the worldwide
| phenom so that it doesn't attract the spam and the types of
| people that comes along with popularity.
| sigmoid10 wrote:
| From their website:
|
| >Nostr is a protocol, designed for simplicity, that _aims
| to create a censorship-resistant global social network._
|
| So they basically want to create twitter without Musk (or
| anyone in charge for that matter). Nothing wrong with that
| goal, it's just highly unlikely to succeed given the
| fundamental shortcomings of this approach.
| int_19h wrote:
| "A global network" doesn't mean "the dominant global
| network", though. Mastodon is global, for example.
| kipchak wrote:
| I think at least some number of people will grow burnt out on
| addictiveness and want something else. While it may not
| replace addictive social media there's still potentially
| substantial value there, which to me seems similar the
| internet pre Facebook.
| sigmoid10 wrote:
| To me that seems about as likely as drug addicts suddenly
| growing tired of shooting up stuff and going into gardening
| as a hobby instead. Sure, it's not theoretically
| impossible, but I definitely wouldn't start a gardening
| platform targeting those people. Pre-facebook basically
| means a 90s style forum with highly specialised zed
| communities. You don't need decentralised approaches for
| that.
| indigochill wrote:
| > Pre-facebook basically means a 90s style forum with
| highly specialised zed communities. You don't need
| decentralised approaches for that.
|
| For a number of years I was a forum moderator for a game
| forum called Uru Obsession. Eventually that wound down
| and the forum closed, meaning all those discussions have
| also been lost (unless someone backed them up - by the
| time they closed I had moved on, so I dunno), and that
| community as far as I know has mostly dissolved since its
| closure.
|
| A gossip protocol means there is no host - clients
| communicate directly with each other and also store the
| conversation locally so someone else deciding to stop
| paying hosting costs becomes a non-issue.
| Turing_Machine wrote:
| > To me that seems about as likely as drug addicts
| suddenly growing tired of shooting up stuff and going
| into gardening as a hobby instead.
|
| I've seen a lot of people leave Facebook over the last
| couple of years. And I mean _a lot_. Oh, they might still
| log in every month or two to see what 's up with friend
| and family, but daily use? Nope.
| rektide wrote:
| We'll see, I guess. This feels like an attempt to apply
| lessons of what happened yesterday to today. It feels like
| assuming success only has one mold. And it resists
| acknowledging how much people hate the thing we have, how
| many people consider it toxic and damaging.
|
| I think people just need to be lead to greener pastures.
| Right now the alpha geeks aren't cooler & better, don't have
| great & obvious advantages for being out on the frontier
| trying cool shit. The Tim O'Reilly "Follow The Alpha Geeks"
| advice is rarely wrong, in my view, for the alpha geeks
| mostly want to expand capabilities & power & enable, in ways
| most consumer efforts are too bounded & limited to go for,
| but we keep forgetting this wisdom's words anyways.
|
| Once the alpha geeks are unqualifiedly better than the
| mundane normy-nets, the tables will start to turn. I think
| the geeks are doing the good work, are putting in the right
| effort.
|
| Dogfood your way to success. Do what empassions & excites
| you. Don't worry about l-users. Focus on being really good &
| powerful. You'll be out competed if you do what sigmoid10
| says & compete to be the lowest common denominator of social
| networking, and your product will suck as bad as everything
| else we have.
|
| Truly good works market themselves. Places where genuine
| authentic people (and creative fun bots) mix & share
| themselves in are what we are searching for, is the
| authenticity that the engagement-loop corporate networks
| break & burry. There's different races here. I do think the
| broader we are searching for better more open pattern en mass
| to replace the walled garden networks (a challenge many
| distributeers reject), but the path to victory is assymetric
| competition, is tapping into different sources of value &
| raising it up in different ways.
|
| Do you believe in humanity? Or do you think synthetic gloss
| shit forever & ever will always win?
| javier123454321 wrote:
| It's simple, you can develop a client or relay without too much
| effort, and has an active dev community. It's also FUN. It
| keeps me going back on a way that Mastodon never did. Not to
| mention client interoperability is dead easy. It kinda just
| works which is really nice.
| Entinel wrote:
| Nostr doesn't need to become the new Twitter and I think it fills
| a fun niche but I think bluesky will eventually be that new
| Twitter because your average Joe just wants to go to
| twitter.com/whatever and not have to mess around with other
| people's domains, private keys, and whatever. Again, I think
| Nostr is great and eventually I imagine you can just push to both
| platforms but the people I follow on Twitter are not technical by
| any means and Bluesky is probably where they will land.
| valianteffort wrote:
| In the same way your average person doesn't care about privacy,
| they don't care about Elon Musk's shenanigans. Twitter is not
| failing in the way his detractors continue to hope.
|
| Bluesky will never gain any more traction than Rumble, Truth,
| Gab, or Mastadon. It will fade into obscurity before even
| launching just like Clubhouse. Because offering the same exact
| service, with seemingly no visible changes, does not matter to
| most people.
| agentdrtran wrote:
| There's been a steady attrition of celebrities and other
| major players from the platform. social media platforms don't
| die overnight, they die over time.
| Entinel wrote:
| > In the same way your average person doesn't care about
| privacy, they don't care about Elon Musk's shenanigans.
|
| They obviously do care about Elon's shenanigans. Celebrities
| are leaving Twitter, politicians are leaving Twitter,
| companies are leaving Twitter, news organizations are leaving
| Twitter. These are the people Twitter should be concerned
| about because they have the followers and people will go
| where they go and they are currently going to bluesky.
| Grendalor wrote:
| Yes, this is right.
|
| Nostr will be more like Mastodon was before Elon ... a smallish
| place for enthusiasts of decentralization, albeit following a
| different protocol than Mastodon, of course.
|
| Bluesky is already the new Twitter, you can tell. The cool kids
| all want to be on Bluesky. In effect, the very low rate drip of
| invites approach they are following, coupled with a virtual
| megaton of almost entirely gushing, breathless positive stories
| from the tech press are generating a high pent-up demand and a
| sense of virality even while it has a tiny userbase. The people
| running it are very clever, and are clearly doing everything
| they can to become the alternative for disgruntled Twitter
| users that Mastodon, Nostr and others are not (and arguably
| never were trying to be ... Bluesky is, by contrast, trying
| like heck to be exactly that).
|
| Does this mean Twitter dies? No, I don't think so. What I think
| it means, though, is that, like the MSM, we will have likely
| two microblogging platforms that are broken into socio-
| ideological camps, like we have with most of the other media.
| It's new for social media, of course (not that there haven't
| been wing platforms before, but they have been small), but not
| new for media in general or the internet in general. And one
| could say that it's actually somewhat surprising that it took
| so long for this kind of split to happen in social media as
| well, but it kind of "feels right" that it's happening, given
| the very divergent ways that people have reacted to Twitter
| over the past year. It seems "right" that there should be
| separate services for people based on the kind of ideology and
| views they prefer, since this is how pretty much everyone rolls
| in every other aspect of the media already anyway.
| malikNF wrote:
| If someone's looking for a fun project to do on a weekend.
|
| Going through and implementing the nips for nostr is really fun.
| You can make a mvp version of a client in a afternoon.
| lucabs wrote:
| [dead]
| [deleted]
| jb55 wrote:
| Author of damus[1] here. We've seen a crazy growth in nostr in
| the past couple of months. Damus itself sees about 1000 to 10,000
| download per week, and we're up to about 500k to 1mil+ users
| (hard to get exact numbers on a decentralized network). Exciting
| times for social networking protocols!
|
| [1] https://damus.io
| irusensei wrote:
| I love Damus and Nostr. Thanks and please keep up the good
| work.
| m4lvin wrote:
| How does damus relate to nostr? Your landing page does not
| explain this at all. Is this because already the concepts of
| (distinguishing) client and network would be considered too
| technical for your target audience?
| JTyQZSnP3cQGa8B wrote:
| I like alternatives to big sites but this sentence makes me
| nervous: "Bitcoin & , the native currency of the internet." Is
| there a need for this?
| throwaway4837 wrote:
| If you don't like Bitcoin, you could always just get an
| address and if you get tipped, sell immediately. I don't see
| how this is any different than an app with "gems" you can buy
| and re-sell back to the app. Some games like Entropia[0] have
| a fixed exchange rate with the dollar, allowing you to "cash
| out" of the game, if holding game currency isn't your thing.
|
| It's just game currency essentially for the social app. When
| I think about it like that, it makes me less nervous.
|
| [0] https://account.entropiauniverse.com/account/deposits/#:~
| :te....
| remram wrote:
| No one is claiming that "gems" are "the native currency of
| the internet" though.
| xigoi wrote:
| > I don't see how this is any different than an app with
| "gems" you can buy and re-sell back to the app.
|
| The difference is that the Bitcoin transaction will cause
| millions of computers to waste a serious amount of
| electricity calculating hashes over and over.
| channel_t wrote:
| IIRC lightning network transactions only use as much
| electricity as 10 emails, although I guess at some point
| a real Bitcoin transaction will happen eventually.
| ursuscamp wrote:
| It uses the Lightning network, which is a separate
| network using off-chain transactions. The Lightning
| network crams upwards of infinite transactions into a
| single on-chain transaction, called a payment channel.
| jb55 wrote:
| Its optional, you don't need to attach a lightning address to
| your profile and you will receive no bitcoin for your posts.
| DJBunnies wrote:
| Why does it make you nervous?
| evilspammer wrote:
| because 99.999% of cryptocurrency projects are scams
| INTPenis wrote:
| 100% of it is a scam, the only reason you said 99.99 is
| because blockchain as a technology is worth something.
| But crypto coins themselves have no value at all in the
| real world.
|
| One pizza place here, and one bitcoin ATM there does not
| make a difference. As long as you can't trade real goods
| and services for crypto coins it is absolutely worthless.
| And that is why any association with crypto makes
| intelligent people scared. Because it's inflated by
| confidence, like a true scam.
|
| The only real goods and services that have kept bitcoin
| going is a black market of illegal goods and services.
| malikNF wrote:
| >>But crypto coins themselves have no value at all in the
| real world.
|
| Then proceeds to handpick what the real world uses of btc
| should be excluded from the argument.
|
| No coiners are a special bunch.
| int_19h wrote:
| Your last point directly contradicts the claim that "100%
| of it is a scam". People do actually buy _and receive_
| those illegal goods and services; you might not like that
| fact, but it certainly isn 't a scam at that point.
|
| And just so that we're clear, said "illegal goods"
| include, for example, generic drugs from other countries.
| evilspammer wrote:
| in fairness, of the cryptocurrency black market, 99.999%
| of that is scams too...
|
| I don't think it's recovered from the silk road and
| alphabay era?
| int_19h wrote:
| I don't think Silk Road etc constitute the actual
| majority of the black and grey markets enabled by
| cryptocurrency. It's just where most of the media
| attention is because of stuff like "assassination
| brokers" etc. Most of it is really mundane stuff, mostly
| drugs (of either kind). Which is also where long-term
| repeat customers are valuable, so sellers are hesitant to
| lose reputation through outright scams.
| rchaud wrote:
| It isn't just that though. Anything crypto coin related
| attracts scammers, and changes people's posting
| incentives. Instead of pandering to the userbase for
| likes and upvotes, it'll now be for crypto coins.
| thewataccount wrote:
| > As long as you can't trade real goods and services for
| crypto coins it is absolutely worthless.
|
| As long as you can sell it for USD it's not worthless -
| you don't other goods/services - although that said the
| list of those is still growing.
|
| The fact that I can send money (liquid fiat) to a friend
| without going through paypall/zello/etc. is valuable.
|
| The only thing that could make it a "scam" is the promise
| of money, which I 100% agree that using crypto to "make
| money" is stupid and is a massive problem.
| stiltzkin wrote:
| How is Bitcoin a scam.
| evilspammer wrote:
| I said "cryptocurrency projects" not "bitcoin." it's
| things that use bitcoin that are scams.
| unboxingelf wrote:
| agreed.
|
| full disclosure: I'm a bitcoiner.
| DJBunnies wrote:
| And Bitcoin will roll on, uncaring.
| Entinel wrote:
| Great response that will help people join in on your
| cause.
| infotogivenm wrote:
| I am neutral on cryptocurrencies, but I agree that whenever I
| see people lumping cryptocurrency and cryptographically-
| secure messaging together it's a huge red flag.
|
| The UX for key management should be monstrously different
| between shitposting and the instantaneous loss of money, for
| starters.
| hospitalJail wrote:
| I'm with you on every crypto except Bitcoin, but nothing
| about bitcoin should make you nervous.
|
| Its nice you live in a country with a stable currency that
| doesnt hyperinflate. Not everyone has this luxury. Zimbabwe
| and Venezuela come to mind.
| sleepybrett wrote:
| Look at all that virtue.
|
| Bitcoin started a literal tsunami of financial crimes, I
| feel bad for hyperinflated countries and if they find some
| use in bitcoin that's great for them, but I for one will
| stay the fuck away from anything blockchain related if I
| can help it.
| hospitalJail wrote:
| On a similar note, cellphones/internet allow all sorts of
| crime. Cars, make it easy to commit crimes. Food, allows
| people to use energy to fuel themselves to commit crimes.
| Water/boats/international trade: huge for crime. Cash,
| great for crime. Government, could be complicit in crime.
|
| ChatGPT says you used "hasty generalization" fallacy, but
| I'm not sure that is the correct fallacy. You have a
| fallacy here.
| tsuujin wrote:
| Nah, that's not the hasty generalization fallacy. They
| didn't say "bitcoin allows for crime to happen", they
| said bitcoin has been the center of a huge amount of
| actual financial crime.
|
| I think that's the observation fallacy, where you look at
| what's happening and then state it out loud.
| ipaddr wrote:
| That's how my grandmother feels about the internet.
| pcthrowaway wrote:
| > but nothing about bitcoin should make you nervous.
|
| The energy consumption of bitcoin does in fact make me very
| nervous.
| stiltzkin wrote:
| Any ETA for Damus on Android?
| p-o wrote:
| Today, we have a lot more bandwidth at home. I always wondered if
| having a "social network" device at home would make sense in the
| future.
|
| I imagine a device like a router or an Apple TV, that you connect
| at home. Then, you own it, everything you post is on your little
| device. Maybe you pay a few bucks a months so you can upload an
| encrypted backup in the cloud somewhere.
|
| There's obviously downsides to it, but I think I would buy such a
| device.
| password4321 wrote:
| Sounds like a good app for an old phone!
| brethna wrote:
| So, I am surprised the Fediverse is not mentioned. Already bigger
| and better than anything Nostr is trying to do. Why reinvent the
| wheel? Or why not join the wheel?
| wedesoft wrote:
| distributed > federated
| roribolden wrote:
| [dead]
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