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Nostr – Decentralized social network

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Re: Nostr – Decentralized social network

#41

Post by natural219 »

I had the chance to speak to some Nostr devs this weekend. My impression (like other mentions below) is that it seems less like a social network than it does a messaging protocol.

As with all tech protocols, there's potential for more sophisticated things to be built on top of them, but I didn't get a clear sense that Nostr people are interested or serious about product engineering to make this a "Twitter killer" or some other popular buzzword.

There was an interesting discussion on how to limit spam in distributed networks, the primordial problem of any social web endeavor. The two poles seem to be relying on "financial incentives" vs "identity gatekeeping". For those that believe in the power of the free market to regulate tricky social problems, I think Nostr has a lot of promise.

Re: Nostr – Decentralized social network

#43

Post by JTyQZSnP3cQGa8B »

jb55 wrote: post #5

Author of damus[1] here. We’ve seen a crazy growth in nostr in the past couple of months. Damus itself sees about 1000 to 10,000 download per week, and we’re up to about 500k to 1mil+ users (hard to get exact numbers on a decentralized network). Exciting times for social networking protocols! [1] https://damus.io

I like alternatives to big sites but this sentence makes me nervous: "Bitcoin & , the native currency of the internet." Is there a need for this?

Re: Nostr – Decentralized social network

#44

Post by volkk »

orbital-decay wrote: post #31
sigmoid10 wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All these projects don't understand that it's not the principle of free communication or the idea of sharing content that made networks like twitter and facebook so successful. It was an army of engineers and designers working closely together with marketing people and even psychologists to maximise user engagement and retention. Heck, you could just endlessly recycle the same algorithmic content mixed with camouflag…

What makes you think their goal is succeeding on the broader scale, though?

right. was going to ask the same thing. i'm okay with it being a relative niche. that is to say, writers, economists, artists, etc with a lean towards tech. i'm completely fine with Nostr not becoming the worldwide phenom so that it doesn't attract the spam and the types of people that comes along with popularity.

Re: Nostr – Decentralized social network

#45

Post by cube2222 »

javier123454321 wrote: post #32
cube2222 wrote: post #22

On the last HN thread about Nostr I've mentioned Bluesky, and talked about its qualities, including the separation of various duties, like the feed, moderation, storage, etc. into different entities that can be pluggable. Since that I got an invite (thank you, Sam!) and I'm even more bullish now (though I'm not much of a social media poster myself). Compared to Nostr it seems like there's a first-party "base" app tha…

Download amethyst on Android or Damus on IOS. You're onboarded. Set up a lightning wallet to receive tips for valuable content. No wait list for this decentralized protocol. No native app, no dev team, no terms of service.

Thanks, I might check it out then!

> No wait list for this decentralized protocol.

This should soon be the case with Bluesky as well, iirc, since federation seems to be the main thing they're ironing out right now (alongside moderation).

Re: Nostr – Decentralized social network

#46

Post by DJBunnies »

JTyQZSnP3cQGa8B wrote: post #43
jb55 wrote: post #5

Author of damus[1] here. We’ve seen a crazy growth in nostr in the past couple of months. Damus itself sees about 1000 to 10,000 download per week, and we’re up to about 500k to 1mil+ users (hard to get exact numbers on a decentralized network). Exciting times for social networking protocols! [1] https://damus.io

I like alternatives to big sites but this sentence makes me nervous: "Bitcoin & , the native currency of the internet." Is there a need for this?

Why does it make you nervous?

Re: Nostr – Decentralized social network

#47

Post by cube2222 »

haarts wrote: post #17
pharmakom wrote: post #4

Nothing about the Nostr protocol struck me as particularly interesting. Spam control, moderation and anonymity are not really dealt with. Why the hype?

There's little spam at the moment. There will be. But at that time the relays (pieces of server software that relay nostr messages) can step in and implement spam control via whatever they see fit. Perhaps some smart filtering, perhaps pay a few sats to have a message relayed or perhaps some real name policy. Clients can pick a (set of) relay(s) which fit their preference best. Or not, and accept the default. The pro…

Could you expand on how relays differ (mostly conceptually) from something like Mastodon instances?

Adding because Nostr seems to be marketed as something more decentralized than that, and I'd like to get a deeper understanding.

Re: Nostr – Decentralized social network

#48

Post by throwaway4837 »

JTyQZSnP3cQGa8B wrote: post #43
jb55 wrote: post #5

Author of damus[1] here. We’ve seen a crazy growth in nostr in the past couple of months. Damus itself sees about 1000 to 10,000 download per week, and we’re up to about 500k to 1mil+ users (hard to get exact numbers on a decentralized network). Exciting times for social networking protocols! [1] https://damus.io

I like alternatives to big sites but this sentence makes me nervous: "Bitcoin & , the native currency of the internet." Is there a need for this?

If you don't like Bitcoin, you could always just get an address and if you get tipped, sell immediately. I don't see how this is any different than an app with "gems" you can buy and re-sell back to the app. Some games like Entropia[0] have a fixed exchange rate with the dollar, allowing you to "cash out" of the game, if holding game currency isn't your thing.

It's just game currency essentially for the social app. When I think about it like that, it makes me less nervous.

[0] https://account.entropiauniverse.com/account/deposits/#:~:te....

Re: Nostr – Decentralized social network

#49

Post by jb55 »

JTyQZSnP3cQGa8B wrote: post #43
jb55 wrote: post #5

Author of damus[1] here. We’ve seen a crazy growth in nostr in the past couple of months. Damus itself sees about 1000 to 10,000 download per week, and we’re up to about 500k to 1mil+ users (hard to get exact numbers on a decentralized network). Exciting times for social networking protocols! [1] https://damus.io

I like alternatives to big sites but this sentence makes me nervous: "Bitcoin & , the native currency of the internet." Is there a need for this?

Its optional, you don’t need to attach a lightning address to your profile and you will receive no bitcoin for your posts.

Re: Nostr – Decentralized social network

#50

Post by javier123454321 »

colesantiago wrote: post #42

This 'Nostr' thing will never take off, it has too much 'cryptocurrency' laden features that nobody asked for. yuck.

A culture of tipping for content you find valuable at the click of a button that works for people to cash out regardless of their jurisdiction is yucky to you? I guess, i see it as one of it's biggest selling points, however you can turn it off in some clients
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