Thread
It's funny to see how non-Amethyst users react to our "complicated" relay settings. They think users are stupid and can't figure it out.
We are now a few days in and I am very proud of how our actual users reacted to it. Our UI being quite rudimentary for relay selections but that didn't scare anyone. People asked questions, changed things, and generally kept going.
There was a chance Amethyst Outbox would crash and burn. But it didn't. People are not stupid. You give them the tools, they will figure it out.
Empowering users is a hard thing to do. But it is way better than letting an app hide things from them so much that they don't even know where their content is.
As we move forward, those tools will get better and better.
Replies (35)
And with a dev that responds everyone is way easier
Frankly, I didn't even participate much. Lots of uses were replying to each other and their answers were great.
you might as well remove the blocked relays list as it does not work, at least that'll be one less relay list to worry about
wen ios version
When I finish with the Android version. :)
Default settings seem fine.
I really admire your work and your attitude.
I wish there was an iOS version to use!
Real talk: I treat relays like "infrastructure." I honestly don't care which ones I'm on or not on, I just want my notes to be spread to people who might want to see them.
I suspect this is going to be the "default" approach for most new users...
Yep, but if you don't know which relays are doing that, you are just feeding the same algorithms and sales platforms of big tech. Hopefully we can make people aware and empower them to pick and easily move between relays.
I guess I'd rather get "all of the notes" server-side and then decide what I do or don't want client-side.
Then just use Twitter :) the beauty of Nostr is to not rely on any server doing that. Otherwise, there are alfar better protocols out there if the server is allowed to assemble your feed.
What I'm talking about is using the *client* to decide the algorithm, or perhaps open-source DVMs, not the server. Twitter is everything decided by black-box algo.
I.e. Coracle with advanced filtering methods, etc.
But these models still just say "give me all the notes", and then filter (by my own choice) what comes through at the client level.
amethyst users > cattle
technology was meant for learning
you'll also only ever attract a very small percentage of the population though. if we want everyone to use nostr this approach ain't gonna work
The old way is way more complicated. People need to keep tracking where their follows are posting to update their pull lists. On this one, you just inform where your posts are, where you want to receive notifications and after that is done and thats it. There is no need to setup which relays you want to use in the app to download posts from. Much easier.
typically when people refuse to learn, I find it's because they don't want to. that's when it's best not to force it on them by making choices for them, because that just leads to you (the developer in this case) doing it all for them. is that the responsibility you want? nostr i think is about user choice, how hard is that? not very..
I'm using Amethyst. Is it supposed to be broken?
A mistake I made when building an app was assuming users are dumb, they're not
People like nice things, not dumb things.
3 of your replies on this post look like youre talking to yourself and i have no idea y
Yeah, it's one of the bugs I am trying to hunt down.
Coming back, all the original replies are there, so maybe a spinner would just make the ux more obvious if its juat that your reply loaded prior to the note its in reply to
The reason it didn't crash and burn for me was, that it just worked without me needing to touch anything after the update. The Relay-Ui definitely needs to be a lot streamlined/simplified tough, any non overly technical user will run for the hills when he encounters the first problem... Btw. I like your innovative ideas a lot, lot, lot ...so don't read that as criticism please, it's work in progress of course!
I don't understand the Amethyst relay system. It's working so I don't touch it. The only annoying thing is some wine relay asking for money all the time.
Fico muito empolgado com a melhora, mas lhe pergunto e o suporte a comunidades?
Yeah i was pretty puzzled about the fbi.gov default relay but it seems to work
I do software sales and software testing along with some UI/UX. Perhaps your audience is not meant to be normal users. But you definitely need to be a strong Nostr user to remotely understand what is happening.
It’s really complicated for normal users. Far too many settings and options. You shouldn’t have to learn about this stuff just to install and use an app.
But benefit of the doubt. Perhaps you’re only looking to serve power users.
It's better than what it was before on a non-outbox client, where users need to constantly check the relays their follows are using and update their lists accordily. In this one, it is set and forget. Just make sure your posts are there. The app does the rest.
Wow. Ok. If you’re hopping to onboard “normal” users. keep pushing for seamless startup experience. We as experienced users (and devs) understand the importance of relays. But new users should not have to understand what they are the first time they open a Nostr app. Most normal people aren’t going to want to learn. They just want their app to work. That’s what it is going to take for more adoption. Barriers to entry just means people will get frustrated and leave.
All this is intended to be constructive. You’ve built a ton of functionality, but it isn’t as easy as you make it sound. Remember not everyone has your life experience.
Makes sense. But if they don't understand which relays are hosting their content, there is absolutely no point on nostr. If they come to nostr just to use default servers of an app, that is not any different from a Twitter or Facebook. You only get any freedom if you control your posts, where they are. Otherwise, we didn't change anything. We can obviously hide these things away, but then we are not doing anything new here.
It's like using Bitcoin with custodial wallets. It's not that different from regular fiat.
I agree. But I think we can do like a Crawl. Walk. Run. Approach. Not everyone needs to know everything immediately.
I didn’t learn multi-sig wallets with mini-script restrictions first.
I learn how to buy. Then send to a hot wallet. Then how to generate cold wallets etc.
We need to build a path to sovereignty.
Yes but why would these "I don't need to know about relays early on" users even come to nostr in the first place?
You can't bring new users to nostr without a sales pitch, and as far as I can see there is no effective sales pitch that doesn't involve relays and the awareness of them. They're just so fundamental to nostr. Nothing is more fundamental. It's in the name.
Relays are to nostr what wallets are to bitcoin, not what multi-sig scripts are to bitcoin. Leaving the discovery of relays until later would be like bringing people to bitcoin but leaving the discover of wallets until later. ("I'll just keep it for you myself, my friend, until you ask where it is, and then at that point we can talk about what a wallet is").
