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Nature's many attempts to evolve a Nostr

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Re: Nature's many attempts to evolve a Nostr

#31
post #24

Nostr will always be a fringe network. The normies do not want to manage their own keys.

Hopefully some day we will get state-managed PKI, and citizens will get used to handling their keys appropriately. It's crazy that some functionality on e.g. the IRS website requires me to verify my identity using a private company (ID.me).

That also goes to the other extreme.

For all the faults of current Fediverse software implementations, it at least gives more options than nostr. If you don't care about controlling your own identity, you can use someone else's server. Nostr doesn't give you that, it's all or nothing.

Re: Nature's many attempts to evolve a Nostr

#32
post #28
post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

By the “sewage” analogy you are expressing the assumption that the vast majority of what people write is outright toxic and that being exposed to it is actively hurtful. My experience on the internet does not reflect this, this is a very pessimistic view of people, bordering on perl-clutching. Most raw user generated feeds are not great sure, but it’s mostly mediocre jokes and mildly provocative takes from bored trol…

My experience is that most forum style social media has been devoured into the reddit world, and furthermore that any attempt at making an offsite version of reddit or similar forum-like functionality is either locked down with rules that would make the Stasi blush or quickly converges on a new Stormfront forum. The problem with reddit's panopticon moderation, with its ill defined, nebulously (and now AI) enforcement…

Repressing rather than refuting pretty closely models real life though.

Usually if you violate social norms people just push you out of the group and not bother explaining it to you. Not always, but usually. Yes if it is so bad it gets violent or something you will find out for sure why, but if you just show up to a friend function and start spouting off about gassing the jews or something most likely people just won't invite you back and never explain why.

Actually finding out why you were violating social norms I've found is mainly found either on the internet or from your parents when young. Hardly anyone in real life is going to bother telling you why, especially when some people are liable to act violently and there is no upside to them for bothering to explain it to you.

Re: Nature's many attempts to evolve a Nostr

#34
post #22

The presentation of blockchains as some kind of historical imperative would be downright Marx-like if it weren't for the primary difference that Marx put some thought into justifying his position. It's eminently possible to cryptographically secure software without lugging around an immutable distributed database because you're emotionally invested in the idea.

the blockchain is useful in solving double-spending problems in purely p2p applications. Aside from cryptocurrency, take for example name systems like namecoin or ENS: these systems need a way of reconciling who owns what, which involves synchronizing some data across the whole network.

It is inefficient, but the inefficiency seems to lie at some fundamental problem with p2p. Centralized systems need to do the same synchronization, but between fewer actors, and may outsource some of the verification for an exponential increase in speed.

Re: Nature's many attempts to evolve a Nostr

#35

With millions of daily users Mainline DHT is the most successful truly decentralized social network. Successful decentralization is about incentives, and Mainline DHT's incentive is downloading digital media for free.

Yeah I think this nostr stuff is a dead end. Social media should be bittorrent-like

Re: Nature's many attempts to evolve a Nostr

#37
post #10

I feel projects like nostr ignore inherent human requirements for social networks. This is a striking quote from their landing page: "Nostr doesn't subscribe to political ideals of "free speech" — it simply recognizes that different people have different morals and preferences and each server, being privately owned, can follow their own criteria for rejecting content as they please and users are free to choose what t…

"Each server, being privately owned, can follow their own criteria for rejecting content as they please and users are free to choose what to read and from where."

Doesn't this same line of thinking apply to the Internet as a whole? Couldn't your question of "Why would anyone use Nostr?" equally be asked for "Why would anyone use a web browser?"

Re: Nature's many attempts to evolve a Nostr

#40

For who might be pulled in by the vague title, not knowing what a nostr is, thinking this article has anything to do with evolution - it has nothing to do with evolution or nature. Not one example of nature trying to evolve a nostr is descibed. Maybe like... the author thought a nostr is similar to, I dunno, a pack or tribe or something?

I mean, i thought it was pretty clear - its a using convergent evolution as a metaphor for recenr developments in distributed apps.

(Whether the author is convincing on the other hand...)

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