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Nostr (“Notes and Other Stuff Transmitted by Relays”) – An Introduction

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Re: Nostr (“Notes and Other Stuff Transmitted by Relays”) – An Introduction

#21

Post by CrampusDestrus »

apsurd wrote: post #16

> Software for chatting on the Internet should be small and fun. Small and fun is the magic here. There's immense product insight in building a product experience that feels really small, intimate. It's the counterbalance to the unwieldy scale of Big Tech. We're in the natural cycle of things, I'm just saying I seem to really get the feeling "the future is small", if that makes sense. It's quite stressful to navigate…

what is this obsession with products being "fun" to use?

you know what makes chatting fun? the people I'm chatting with.

you know what makes chatting not fun? being impeded from chatting with the fun people.

a chat program that has fun people and always works is the most fun to use!

Re: Nostr (“Notes and Other Stuff Transmitted by Relays”) – An Introduction

#22

Post by leesalminen »

apsurd wrote: post #16

> Software for chatting on the Internet should be small and fun. Small and fun is the magic here. There's immense product insight in building a product experience that feels really small, intimate. It's the counterbalance to the unwieldy scale of Big Tech. We're in the natural cycle of things, I'm just saying I seem to really get the feeling "the future is small", if that makes sense. It's quite stressful to navigate…

I feel the same way. I don’t feel the need or desire to be connected to every single person on earth through some app. I left almost all social platforms a couple years ago (except HN).

I got into nostr and feel like it’s almost exactly what I want from social media. Just a reverse chronological feed of the people I follow.

Re: Nostr (“Notes and Other Stuff Transmitted by Relays”) – An Introduction

#23

Post by leesalminen »

blueberrychpstx wrote: post #4
eykanal wrote: post #3

Saying "I don't want censorship" is equivalent to saying "I'm fine with people using my tool for coffee meetups, genocide planning, bridge club, and drug deals." It's an attempted handwashing of moral responsibility under the cover of software purity. At this point, it's pretty well documented that social media _as a tool_ has increased young female mental illness; the question is only "how much" [1]. To try to wave…

Social media as a tool strikes me as the same kind of argument as “REAL socialism hasn’t been tried yet” It doesn’t feel at all to me that there are any social media platforms that function at all like tools but rather data vampires attempting to addict at any cost” and so Haidt’s mention of increased suicide rate is unfortunately not at all a surprise. Sorry if this sounds harsh but calling platforms in the zeitgeis…

nostr isn't a platform though, it's a protocol. Something closer to SMTP than to Facebook. Go build a little something on it (there are decent libraries for popular languages at this point which makes it easy) and see for yourself. It doesn't feel like a platform, it feels like a tool.

Re: Nostr (“Notes and Other Stuff Transmitted by Relays”) – An Introduction

#24

Post by irusensei »

neilk wrote: post #12

> Resilience is provided by the protocol being simple enough to implement in a weekend, in your language of choice. Platform lock-in is impossible, since any client can republish any note to a different relay if one misbehaves or enacts a disagreeable policy. That's a wonderful sentiment but we said the same thing about the web and email and both are effectively controlled by large companies. Twitter is centralized d…

The identity is controlled by a cryptographic key on the client side so even if you get kicked of a server you and whoever is in contact with you can just grab your data from other relays.

Re: Nostr (“Notes and Other Stuff Transmitted by Relays”) – An Introduction

#25

Post by dangoor »

neilk wrote: post #12

> Resilience is provided by the protocol being simple enough to implement in a weekend, in your language of choice. Platform lock-in is impossible, since any client can republish any note to a different relay if one misbehaves or enacts a disagreeable policy. That's a wonderful sentiment but we said the same thing about the web and email and both are effectively controlled by large companies. Twitter is centralized d…

> The web and email got effectively centralized…

Woah there. I don't agree with this. The web is certainly not centralized (this is on Hacker News and not Facebook, right?) It follows a power law distribution where you have some players getting lots of traffic and then there are lots and lots of small traffic sites. But it's definitely decentralized.

_Google_ is something of a monopoly providing some of the features you list for the web at large, but there are others (Duck Duck Go, Bing) that are just a click away.

Gmail took a huge share of the email market by being a better product for the first several years of its existence (and being free also helped). That doesn't mean email is centralized: I've been using Fastmail for the last several years and it works _just fine_. I don't have the problems you list.

Anyhow, I agree with your point that a decentralized _social network_ needs to solve the problems you're listing. I just think the web and email are actually examples of technologies that remain decentralized.

Re: Nostr (“Notes and Other Stuff Transmitted by Relays”) – An Introduction

#26

Post by irusensei »

eykanal wrote: post #3

Saying "I don't want censorship" is equivalent to saying "I'm fine with people using my tool for coffee meetups, genocide planning, bridge club, and drug deals." It's an attempted handwashing of moral responsibility under the cover of software purity. At this point, it's pretty well documented that social media _as a tool_ has increased young female mental illness; the question is only "how much" [1]. To try to wave…

Bad take. Good software has to be used by anti-abortion activists and abortion clinics.

Re: Nostr (“Notes and Other Stuff Transmitted by Relays”) – An Introduction

#27

Post by leesalminen »

meibo wrote: post #20
leesalminen wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> how his judgement failed so spectacularly with the Twitter deal A CEO doesn’t approve an acquisition in a publicly traded company. The Board of Directors decide. > or has full control over the protocol and the app. Jack does not have any control over the nostr protocol. He may arguably have some control over one of the iOS client apps (due to him finding the dev), but that’s about it. I was an organizer of nostrica…

> A CEO doesn’t approve an acquisition in a publicly traded company. The Board of Directors decide. Don't put words in my mouth. It may not entirely have been his decision, but nobody forced him to go on Twitter to say that he "chose him" and that he "believes it with all his heart"[0]. You cannot possibly tell me that you think that he was uninvolved in setting up the deal. Him being friends with Elon for ages is pu…

The recipient of that donation (@fiatjaf) immediately split it 50/50 with the developer of Damus (@jb55). All distributions have been done in public. At last check, fiatjaf has already dispersed 70% of the donation to other people/groups.

fiatjaf has been a prominent developer in the Bitcoin community for many years. Think what you may about crypto bros, fiatjaf is not that. I've had the pleasure of working with him a bit & have been on the receiving end of debates with him. I've always found him to be an upstanding person with deeply rooted ethics, even if I regularly disagree with him. If $240k were enough to sway him to do something he thought was wrong, Bitcoin would've been destroyed already.

I understand where you're coming from, though. If I didn't know the players and hadn't followed along (on nostr) intently throughout, I would likely have the same concerns as you. I still do, to some extent. Though my personal experiences and interactions with these people has helped assuage most of it.

Re: Nostr (“Notes and Other Stuff Transmitted by Relays”) – An Introduction

#29

Post by leesalminen »

dekervin wrote: post #28

I've tried using snort.social , dog testing it with the intent of recommanding it, but it's basically unusable. Would someone have a good web interface to recommand?

https://www.nostr.net maintains a list of all known clients. I am a bit partial to astral, though it is resource intensive. You could try coracle, snort, or iris to see if they're more your fancy.

Re: Nostr (“Notes and Other Stuff Transmitted by Relays”) – An Introduction

#30

Post by irusensei »

meibo wrote: post #20
leesalminen wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> how his judgement failed so spectacularly with the Twitter deal A CEO doesn’t approve an acquisition in a publicly traded company. The Board of Directors decide. > or has full control over the protocol and the app. Jack does not have any control over the nostr protocol. He may arguably have some control over one of the iOS client apps (due to him finding the dev), but that’s about it. I was an organizer of nostrica…

> A CEO doesn’t approve an acquisition in a publicly traded company. The Board of Directors decide. Don't put words in my mouth. It may not entirely have been his decision, but nobody forced him to go on Twitter to say that he "chose him" and that he "believes it with all his heart"[0]. You cannot possibly tell me that you think that he was uninvolved in setting up the deal. Him being friends with Elon for ages is pu…

> If you have any evidence that that doesn't give him any control, I'd be happy to see it

Here you go: https://github.com/nostr-protocol/nostr/nips

Not joking it’s a protocol and clients decide what standards they want to implement.

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