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.<p>Encryption is not trivially easy to introduce into this scheme, and it can't be too seamless. It's possible though, and I encourage the developers to work on that.<p>[1]: <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34529931" rel="nofollow">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34529931</a>
> 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.<p>That's a wonderful sentiment but we said the same thing about the web and email and both are effectively controlled by large companies.<p>Twitter is centralized due to being the creation of a single company, but that's not the fundamental problem.<p>The web and email got effectively centralized because distributed protocols create problems of search, filtering, abuse, identity, community continuity, etc. You can't easily solve them in a distributed way, and even if you _can_, you can't easily get everyone in the network to upgrade. Hence, providers arise that say "We're Nostr, only better!(tm)" or "We're the best way to find what you want on Nostr!" and they work on locking in their customers.<p>If you want to be resilient to monopolization you have to show how you're going to solve those other problems.
As a crypto-skeptic (lol), I <i>really</i> like Nostr. Unfortunately, I don't think it will catch on until someone takes the time to shave off the sharp technical edges and figure out spam + identity verification. The current Nostr network is full of cult-like bitcoin cryptobros, racist Twitter/Fediverse refugees, and spam. Lots, and <i>lots</i> of spam. But the technology is cool af and could be made into something more.
I see a problem. I'd say a majority of the posts on Nostr are media posts (mostly images) and the network relies on Imgur and other image hosting services for all content. Not very decentralized in practice.
> Software for chatting on the Internet should be small and fun.<p>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.<p>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 the entire planet's information and inventory.
Anything Jack is involved in is tainted for me until further notice. I wouldn't even dare to touch any of his new platforms, seeing his connections with Elon and how his judgement failed so spectacularly with the Twitter deal - it's not worth it, just to be sold out again when he gets bored of it or it doesn't end up being a business. At least he admitted to it.<p>I'm not saying Mastodon is the solution, but at least no one can take it away from me at a whim or has full control over the protocol and the app.
I have played with this a bit lately and my conclusion thus far is: The idea of trying to bind <i>everything</i> to a single private key is such a bad idea for the average person. In order to <i>truly</i> secure a private key you have to go to pretty extraordinary lengths. It is not easy. It is not, "common sense."<p>Like most of crypto, the basic immutable nature of things is simply bad for humans. Here, your private key is eventually going to get stolen because you have to type in your private key for every login. It creates a phishing/key-logging jackpot. And once the attacker gets you private key there is no recourse. No password reset. No way to regain access. Your accounts are forever compromised. This is the problem with "decentralization" in general. All of the benefits it brings are completely washed away by the mundane daily activities of being human.
Nice (blog author here); just heard this showed up on the frontpage from someone on Nostr.<p>If I was writing an update to this, I'd probably point out how much better the clients (especially mobile) have gotten, in such a short span of time. As well as how lightning integration (zaps) are letting us build new capabilities (instead of just cloning twitter) that don't exist anywhere else.
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.<p>[0]: <a href="https://blueskyweb.xyz/" rel="nofollow">https://blueskyweb.xyz/</a><p>[1]: <a href="https://atproto.com/docs" rel="nofollow">https://atproto.com/docs</a>
I wish Nostr were invented 30 years ago because it seems like a elegant protocol with room for extensions that could have served as the backend language for Twitter, IRC, FB, and more. But network effects are just so powerful and people post to be seen. Twitter isn't going to willingly open the door to competitors, and so I hope Nostr can find a few unique use cases and communities to let it blossom.
Other than the tech, one big thing that’s kept me away from Nostr is the people on it. I’d rather not have my feed spammed and have Bitcoin maxis endlessly talking about how stacking Bitcoin is great.<p>What makes social network work is the diverse range of people and it currently doesn’t have that at all.
I'm all for the best solution winning but here's the perspective of a regular end user.<p>When I read about nostr I see code examples and cryptography charts.<p>When I read about Mastodon (fediverse) I just run docker-compose up and I'm in business. That is what made the fediverse breakthrough and nostr not.<p>It needs to be user friendly for both end users and sysadmins for it to catch on.<p>Also unrelated to all that, I'm kinda skeptical about any system that claims to be resistant to censorship because it will become a hotbed of racists and bigots online. On one hand certain parts of the fediverse take moderation too far, but on the other hand you can't have a platform with zero moderation. It would be chaos.
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.
Between this new tool and <a href="https://github.com/simplex-chat/simplex-chat">https://github.com/simplex-chat/simplex-chat</a> I am starting to feel like (at least from my filter bubble) that the web may be slightly starting to think about maybe someday turning the corner on centralized-by-default model for building new applications.<p>And/or it's just my first time seeing a complete pendulum swing on the apocryphal mainframe-pc-mainframe-pc cycle.
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?
How is this different than Secure Scuttlebutt? I remember following that for a while. Dominic Tarr invented that.<p>Also Dat / Hypercore from Matthias Mullie, powering Beaker Browser
> Telegram Group - where development chat happens<p>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.
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.<p>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 away responsibility for this by saying "but I'm just making a tool!" is beyond irresponsible at this point; it's morally reprehensible.<p>[1]: <a href="https://jonathanhaidt.substack.com/p/social-media-mental-illness-epidemic" rel="nofollow">https://jonathanhaidt.substack.com/p/social-media-mental-ill...</a>