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Nostr is an inclusive communication commons

nostr.org

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Re: Nostr is an inclusive communication commons

#61

Post by lxgr »

exabyte wrote: post #48
FreeTrade wrote: post #34

I tried very hard to develop for Nostr with the idea it was an inclusive communication commons. Turns out it was a Lightning Network payments promotion project. All of its users (aside from its creator) were very much more interested in Lightning than in Nostr. Dismal experience, still bitter about the effort I wasted on it.

NOSTR is a protocol so there's no entity for you to be bitter with... You can be annoyed at the people who were on there, but that's a different subject. There's probably a better analogy than this, but what you're describing would be like playing soccer and being annoyed that your teammates are furries. Go find another team to play with.

But now imagine that the regulating body of your favorite hobby sport is deeply corrupt and fundamentally profit driven, so while playing with your friends is still fun, just thinking about ever competing at the regional level makes you shiver. [1]

Sure, you can always fork a protocol/not federate with who you dislike etc., but you might find yourself fighting an uphill battle against other people’s experiences and preconceptions. Protocols are ultimately always designed by people too.

[1] Note that I have no experience with either Nostr or professional football, so take this as a purely hypothetical analogy with no relation to real organizations. I have to assume both are lovely passion projects by people that just share a common passion.

Re: Nostr is an inclusive communication commons

#62

Post by teekert »

kinakomochidayo wrote: post #45
FreeTrade wrote: post #34

I tried very hard to develop for Nostr with the idea it was an inclusive communication commons. Turns out it was a Lightning Network payments promotion project. All of its users (aside from its creator) were very much more interested in Lightning than in Nostr. Dismal experience, still bitter about the effort I wasted on it.

Yup, it’s basically a gigantic bitcoin maxi lightning promotion project.

That is really not doing it justice. Some people say the same about podcasting 2.0, but it is so much more, even Apple is starting to pick up features from it (chapters, artwork, transcripts). Not the Lighthing/boosting no. But that's ok right?

Many people get all emotional around crypto and blow it out of proportions imho. Sure there are many bad things about it, but to let your opinion of crypto taint so many nice tings is sad imho.

Re: Nostr is an inclusive communication commons

#63

Post by jillesvangurp »

maelito wrote: post #51

The homepage could be a description of ATProto. Except lots of people around me already use ATproto, and a successful European instance has just been launched, Eurosky, focusing on expanding the protocol with apps doing other things than micro-messages (Bluesky). Why should I care ? Honest question.

The nice thing about open, federated protocols is that it is relatively easy to connect them together. There actually is a Mastodon to Bluesky bridge already for example. These protocols should compete on merit. There's no good fundamental reason for them to not federate each other's content. But there are lots of non technical reasons. For example mastodon users particularly are quite picky about how their content is filtered and used. Even implementing a search engine is something that gets a lot of pushback.

The reason people might care is taking ownership of how they filter and curate their feed. Instead of outsourcing that to some algorithm owned by a company, having a federated network allows you to pick and choose or even implement your own filtering if you self host. It also gets advertising as the primary revenue mechanism out of the way and that removes a conflict of interest between what users want to see and what advertisers want them to see.

Of course the drooling masses on Tik Tok, Instagram, etc. seem to be perfectly happy to have their endocrine system manipulated by self tuning algorithms. But there are some legitimate concerns about whether that's actually healthy for them. Federated social networks provide an alternative to this.

Re: Nostr is an inclusive communication commons

#64

Post by teekert »

siwatanejo wrote: post #57
sharperguy wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I honestly think it would be completely legit to build a completely separate ecosystem on top of the same protocol. A separate set of relays, separate apps which connect to those relays by default, no lighting payments, different defaults, marketed to a different audience. Ultimately it is not just a single network. If users need interoperability eventually they can easily add other relays. But it's true that many pe…

> no lighting payments Nah, you didn't understand it. Lightning is a layer-2 protocol on top of bitcoin. Nostr is the so-called layer-3. Good luck trying to build Nostr without Lightning.

False. Nostr is not “Layer 3” in any standard technical sense. Nostr is an open, decentralized protocol for exchanging and publishing messages/events. It doesn't sit on top of Bitcoin or Lightning in the way Lightning sits on Bitcoin. You absolutely can build/use Nostr without Lightning. Stop with this (anti-crypto)-bro fear mongering (yes anti-crypto in brackets as 1 thing). It's not helping FOSS, it's doing big-tech's work.

You're just lying because you hate crypto. That is as bad as the blind evangelizing of cryptocurrencies.

Re: Nostr is an inclusive communication commons

#65

Post by lost_1256 »

maelito wrote: post #51

The homepage could be a description of ATProto. Except lots of people around me already use ATproto, and a successful European instance has just been launched, Eurosky, focusing on expanding the protocol with apps doing other things than micro-messages (Bluesky). Why should I care ? Honest question.

to tell the world GM

Re: Nostr is an inclusive communication commons

#66

Post by lez »

maelito wrote: post #51

The homepage could be a description of ATProto. Except lots of people around me already use ATproto, and a successful European instance has just been launched, Eurosky, focusing on expanding the protocol with apps doing other things than micro-messages (Bluesky). Why should I care ? Honest question.

Because Eurosky can ban you.

Re: Nostr is an inclusive communication commons

#67

Post by madeofpalk »

teekert wrote: post #62
kinakomochidayo wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yup, it’s basically a gigantic bitcoin maxi lightning promotion project.

That is really not doing it justice. Some people say the same about podcasting 2.0, but it is so much more, even Apple is starting to pick up features from it (chapters, artwork, transcripts). Not the Lighthing/boosting no. But that's ok right? Many people get all emotional around crypto and blow it out of proportions imho. Sure there are many bad things about it, but to let your opinion of crypto taint so many nice…

Chapters and artwork have been features of podcasting since the very beginning. They've been supported in mp3 for like over 20 years.

Re: Nostr is an inclusive communication commons

#68

Post by pjc50 »

no_time wrote: post #58
littlecranky67 wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can't blame the protocol for the user it attracts. It is in early development. Just imagine the year is 1996 and you are complaining that WWW, IRC and the USENET is full of male tech nerds with a STEM background and a taste in SciFi/Fantasy culture. It will take some a while for the evolution to happen until you can get your beauty and makeup styling content.

>full of male tech nerds with a STEM background and a taste in SciFi/Fantasy culture. Anything like this in 2026?

You're on hacker news.

Re: Nostr is an inclusive communication commons

#69

Post by nunobrito »

maelito wrote: post #51

The homepage could be a description of ATProto. Except lots of people around me already use ATproto, and a successful European instance has just been launched, Eurosky, focusing on expanding the protocol with apps doing other things than micro-messages (Bluesky). Why should I care ? Honest question.

ATproto is defacto not decentralized and the protocol is about 50x more complicated to get working than NOSTR.

Whereas in ATproto you have to find a place to register an account, say a domain for yourself or use someone else's domain, in NOSTR creating an account is nothing more than a public/private key that is generated on the fly.

Then is the storage of information. Whereas in ATproto information is stored in plenty of different formats and specific folder configurations which are easy to miss, in NOSTR is all JSON from a single base template file.

Third is the absence of global moderation and islands. Whereas in ATproto only a few (I think 3 main providers) exist, you can be kicked out from them and effectively stop reaching your audience. In NOSTR if a relay stops receiving your texts it is a bummer but there are hundreds of other volunteer-based servers to where you can send your texts, so it is very difficult to block people from reading texts of the authors they are interested.

Simplicity is the key. NOSTR is the first and only network that I've seen so far where content/authors are truly disconnected from the servers hosting their data.

Re: Nostr is an inclusive communication commons

#70

Post by pjc50 »

lez wrote: post #66
maelito wrote: post #51

The homepage could be a description of ATProto. Except lots of people around me already use ATproto, and a successful European instance has just been launched, Eurosky, focusing on expanding the protocol with apps doing other things than micro-messages (Bluesky). Why should I care ? Honest question.

Because Eurosky can ban you.

The ability to ban people, and the choice of who is banned, is actually the defining feature of social networks.
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