111–120 of 148 posts
Intrigued by the protocol, and have been lurking on Damus for some months. But ultimately I worry it has been tainted too much by Bitcoin cultism, and its ties with Bitcoin will prevent it from being trusted by the mainstream.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Here's a good write-up comparing SSB and Nostr. https://mattlorentz.com/weblog/2023/01/18/nostr-v-ssb.html
In my mind, key rotation is foundational, and neither system appears to support that.
If you lose your keys, that is your problem. Same thing for any other crypto wallet worthy of that name.
I have to repeat my most important concern about Nostr from ~3 months ago[1]: Nostr makes you forward data from strangers unencrypted. If anything unlawful which you forward for Nostr is ever found on your computer, or found transmitted from your computer, you'd have fun time to explain to the authorities how it even ended up on your machine, and why are you disseminating it. Encryption is not trivially easy to intro…
That can only happen if you are running a Nostr relay. Nostr clients don't forward anything.
I have to repeat my most important concern about Nostr from ~3 months ago[1]: Nostr makes you forward data from strangers unencrypted. If anything unlawful which you forward for Nostr is ever found on your computer, or found transmitted from your computer, you'd have fun time to explain to the authorities how it even ended up on your machine, and why are you disseminating it. Encryption is not trivially easy to intro…
The problem is that you get the Tor exit node problem with this approach - being a relay means becoming the toxic sewage plant of the network in this way. Running a Tor exit node basically means arranging for the authorities to try and bust you down because someone tried to get unencrypted CP over your exit node. (Running between nodes over Tor is marginally safer since you'll only be handling partial requests but still not recommended for much of the same reasons.)
Now, Tor is perfectly functional since some countries have relaxed laws for that sorta thing, but Tors data transfer is also transient - an exit node does not store anything long-term. Nostr's relays on the other hand need to do long-term data retention. I wonder how long that will last outside of flagship/VC-backed instances.
What makes social network work is the diverse range of people and it currently doesn’t have that at all.
In a similar vain, I'm curious how Bluesky[0] will pan out. The protocol looks very cool with how much it separates and distributes the different concerns[1] (storage, recommendations, clients, etc.) as opposed to something "federated but fairly monolithic" like Mastodon. [0]: https://blueskyweb.xyz/ [1]: https://atproto.com/docs
Mastodon itself is a rails beast (lending credence to the tendency for the Fediverse to seem fairly monolithic), but that's hardly necessary. There's many other options out there (as much as the lead dev of Mastodon has been on a spree to try and hide this fact lately).
Intrigued by the protocol, and have been lurking on Damus for some months. But ultimately I worry it has been tainted too much by Bitcoin cultism, and its ties with Bitcoin will prevent it from being trusted by the mainstream.
> Telegram Group - where development chat happens Telegram has stuck with me as a red flag. Mostly because Signal, which emerged around the same time, apparently had the better tech and was open. Not sure whether that changed.
Signal development came from an ex-Twitter director that was initially sponsored by the CIA (through Radio Free Europe) and then developed with experts on the backyard of the NSA (Hawaii). Eventually this relatively unknown messenger algorithm got adopted by a messenger company own by Facebook (a privacy loving group) for over a billion users. It ain't no surprise that just about everyone relevant in the crypto world…
I‘m left with the impression that both our descriptions of these protocols and services are in need of some more substantial backing.
In a similar vain, I'm curious how Bluesky[0] will pan out. The protocol looks very cool with how much it separates and distributes the different concerns[1] (storage, recommendations, clients, etc.) as opposed to something "federated but fairly monolithic" like Mastodon. [0]: https://blueskyweb.xyz/ [1]: https://atproto.com/docs
So far it has been very friendly and wholesome, hope that will work out in the long term!