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Fiatjaf/nostr – a censorship-resistant alternative to Twitter

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Re: Fiatjaf/nostr – a censorship-resistant alternative to Twitter

#31
post #9

I like the intent of these types of projects but a serious question I have is: How do you get the majority of people to switch to something like this? There are many examples but the most recent ones that come to mind are people trying to get their friends to use Murmur/Mumble instead of Discord with basically near-zero success. I've seen this in a few gaming forums. Anyone attempting this is basically laughed off th…

Takes time, a lot of marketing money, more time, more money. Look at what is happening with Telegram globally. It is used as a serious alternative to WhatsApp in some countries, but far from being a real global competitor still.

UI/UX also needs to be buttery smooth and non-technical, especially where setup/onboarding is concerned. The more you stray from that the more difficult it's going to be to bring in a significant population of users.

Re: Fiatjaf/nostr – a censorship-resistant alternative to Twitter

#32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Another nitpick this -> "A relay can block a user from publishing anything there, " sounds like censorship to me We need to realize our problem is not with censoring people, it's with who does the censoring. We don't like it to be the gov, because we don't feel like the gov is 'by and for the people' We don't like it being large corporations because that's doubly the case.

>We need to realize our problem is not with censoring people, it's with who does the censoring. No, the problem is with censoring people. You make it seem like censorship is a given. I disagree and feel no need to have a third party prune unwanted ideas for me. This will seem like a strange idea for some but I don't need a priest in between myself and God. I don't need a doctor in between myself and good health. Why…

Censorship is a given for large online platforms. You can and should try to allow free propagation of ideas, but you also have to protect the forum from people who are determined to fill it with hateful commentary and pornography. 4chan isn’t a crazy special case, it’s the default destination of a forum where everyone knows there are no rules.

Re: Fiatjaf/nostr – a censorship-resistant alternative to Twitter

#33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Another nitpick this -> "A relay can block a user from publishing anything there, " sounds like censorship to me We need to realize our problem is not with censoring people, it's with who does the censoring. We don't like it to be the gov, because we don't feel like the gov is 'by and for the people' We don't like it being large corporations because that's doubly the case.

>We need to realize our problem is not with censoring people, it's with who does the censoring. No, the problem is with censoring people. You make it seem like censorship is a given. I disagree and feel no need to have a third party prune unwanted ideas for me. This will seem like a strange idea for some but I don't need a priest in between myself and God. I don't need a doctor in between myself and good health. Why…

You're your own censor in this situation and that's probably what the sentence was getting at.

I censor myself all the time. There's numerous things I simply don't want to read or see, but I've made and own that decision for myself.

Here's a devil's advocate point of view:

Free speech/free press is an asset within a group when the following are true: A) members are acting in good faith which typically requires value systems to be not too divergent, B) members agree on how to arrive at the truth, and C) members are not confusing science (designed to be true), opinion (designed to be neither true nor false), and entertainment (designed to be false).

When one of these is not true, it creates liabilities that need to be managed. Social breakdown is the result of not managing these liabilities.

Probably an initial response will be: "well who decides X" ... if we've figured this out for engineering problems where lives are phyisically on the line we can figure it out for this. Any authoritative action whether it be laws or standards make some portion of people unhappy.

Re: Fiatjaf/nostr – a censorship-resistant alternative to Twitter

#34

I like the intent of these types of projects but a serious question I have is: How do you get the majority of people to switch to something like this? There are many examples but the most recent ones that come to mind are people trying to get their friends to use Murmur/Mumble instead of Discord with basically near-zero success. I've seen this in a few gaming forums. Anyone attempting this is basically laughed off th…

Well, I feel like your example goes the other way. Discord does feel like it’s always been the default, but many of us old timers remember the days of 2015, when everyone was using Mumble and Teamspeak except a few people trying to push this Discord app that had just launched.

Re: Fiatjaf/nostr – a censorship-resistant alternative to Twitter

#35

I like the intent of these types of projects but a serious question I have is: How do you get the majority of people to switch to something like this? There are many examples but the most recent ones that come to mind are people trying to get their friends to use Murmur/Mumble instead of Discord with basically near-zero success. I've seen this in a few gaming forums. Anyone attempting this is basically laughed off th…

> How do you get the majority of people to switch to something like this?

This is really the wrong focus.

Everyone should be focused on how to "mainstream" this in the minds of content creators, organizations, institutions, and media. The audience will find these subjects because they have a certain gravity to attract followers.

This is why, in my mind, if the federated open web wants to "succeed" (spoilers, it hasn't failed at all and it's a spectacularly organic ecosystem. Everyone's just using the wrong definition of success), it needs to start demanding for these mainstream content creators to publish to the open web by way of standardized protocols. Especially any groups that take public money or hold special permission to use public airwaves (licensing).

Re: Fiatjaf/nostr – a censorship-resistant alternative to Twitter

#36
post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I'm using branle ( https://branle.fiatjaf.com/ ) as my client and you can follow me with my pubkey: 22e804d26ed16b68db5259e78449e96dab5d464c8f470bda3eb1a70467f2c793. It isn't too hard to improve upon the status quo in various ways when you just drop a key usability requirement (in this case, the need for human-memorable 'handles'). It is worth reading 'Why Johnny Can't Encrypt' (1999) [0], 'Why Johnny Still Can't E…

That's true, but you can disconnect those requirements on the server side. E.g. a "name/profile to key/value" service would be useful for more than this. If people want mastodon style handles, for example, it's easy enough to create a mapping that can leverage DNS for example to let you query for a matching pubkey in a cacheable and easily scalable way and without the need for that to be built into the messaging prot…

> That's true, but you can disconnect those requirements on the server side.

> E.g. a "name/profile to key/value" service would be useful for more than this.

At which point you've reintroduced a global namespace SPOF that is vulnerable to censorship, etc.

You can push the complexity around like food on a plate, but getting rid of it is another matter entirely.

Re: Fiatjaf/nostr – a censorship-resistant alternative to Twitter

#37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Another nitpick this -> "A relay can block a user from publishing anything there, " sounds like censorship to me We need to realize our problem is not with censoring people, it's with who does the censoring. We don't like it to be the gov, because we don't feel like the gov is 'by and for the people' We don't like it being large corporations because that's doubly the case.

>We need to realize our problem is not with censoring people, it's with who does the censoring. No, the problem is with censoring people. You make it seem like censorship is a given. I disagree and feel no need to have a third party prune unwanted ideas for me. This will seem like a strange idea for some but I don't need a priest in between myself and God. I don't need a doctor in between myself and good health. Why…

So you don't want doctors (or presumably any form of expertise,) or governments, or corporations. Just you and your brain thinkin' thinks.

I'm wondering where exactly you think all of this "information" you would be digesting would be coming from, absent the "censorship" of structures and systems needed to collect, validate and disseminate it?

Good luck reconstructing the last 8000 years of human progress and knowledge from first principles, naked and alone in nature with some crystals and potions before you fucking die of parasites and tetanus I guess.

Re: Fiatjaf/nostr – a censorship-resistant alternative to Twitter

#38

I like the intent of these types of projects but a serious question I have is: How do you get the majority of people to switch to something like this? There are many examples but the most recent ones that come to mind are people trying to get their friends to use Murmur/Mumble instead of Discord with basically near-zero success. I've seen this in a few gaming forums. Anyone attempting this is basically laughed off th…

Being decentralized can't be the only reason (unless you're a part of a group actively being wiped from a centralized platform).

You need to do something better that makes people go "oh, this is neat". I had never heard of Murmur/mumble before, so I spent about 5 seconds checking it out. Nothing about the home page appealed to me... so I closed it.

Re: Fiatjaf/nostr – a censorship-resistant alternative to Twitter

#39
post #22

Censorship is not that big of a problem in this age. That exact info will be available on someone’s server God knows where. Hell, moderation is very fundamental so any project not thinking about that is prone to fail due to low-quality/illegal content, driving away intelligent users. Obstructing the truth by misinformation, spamming, etc is the actual problem. It is a much more effective way to target uncomfortable i…

Agreed. What we need is a 21st century web of trust for reliability of information. This way those you trust could help you find others you trust. And if somebody you trust starts to trust people you don't, you can cut them out of your news sources. This might even be a way to validate trust in anonymous sources, without leaking their identity. Just, please, no more keysharing parties.

[deleted]

Re: Fiatjaf/nostr – a censorship-resistant alternative to Twitter

#40
post #35

I like the intent of these types of projects but a serious question I have is: How do you get the majority of people to switch to something like this? There are many examples but the most recent ones that come to mind are people trying to get their friends to use Murmur/Mumble instead of Discord with basically near-zero success. I've seen this in a few gaming forums. Anyone attempting this is basically laughed off th…

> How do you get the majority of people to switch to something like this? This is really the wrong focus. Everyone should be focused on how to "mainstream" this in the minds of content creators, organizations, institutions, and media. The audience will find these subjects because they have a certain gravity to attract followers. This is why, in my mind, if the federated open web wants to "succeed" (spoilers, it hasn'…

Focus on small communities, not lots of large communities.
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