Thread

Nostr has lost the battle for censorship resistance. While WE all know that Nostr is superior because it’s a protocol, people do NOT care enough. They are more interested in what’s written ON the box, not what’s necessarily inside the box. The people who did care about “free speech” are now placated enough with Rumble for Video, X for short form, Substack for long form. With Meta now throwing their weight behind the movement, it’s game over for this narrative - at least for the foreseeable future. There is no way Nostr as a brand can claim that space in people’s minds, especially against multiple established brands. That ‘censorship resistance’ and ‘free speeech’ ships have sailed (even though they were fake), and the people who cared enough boarded. The normies who never cared, still don’t care, or they found their way to the anti-platforms, like Threads, BlueSky or Pornhub. The small minority of us still here on Nostr…are well…still here. We’re building, which is great - that MUST happen before anything else. But if the goal is to grow the network effect here and bring in more people, then we need to find a new angle. Something more compelling that is a “running towards” value, not a “running away from” value. I’m not 100% sure what that is. My instinct is that a “network of incredible applications”, that don’t necessarliy or explicitly brand themselves as Nostr, but have it under the hood is the right direction, but it needs more experimentation. Also needs more really well-build apps for non-sovereignty minded people (especially content creators) and people who don’t necessarly care about the reasons Nostr was first built. We’ve been working away at this Satlantis thing for almost a year now and it’s coming along - albeit WAY slower than I would’ve liked. We’ve made a whole bunch of mistakes and at times I feel like a LARP considering the state of non-delivery. BUT…we made some big changes in the last 2mths since missing a couple key deadlines, and I’m pretty confident we’ll have something cool to show in a month or two. Let’s see if this approach starts to bring new interest andn activity here. Or if I’m full of shit. Either way, I’m going to keep looking for a better ngle than “free speech” because I no longer think that’s a battle we can win (we can come back and fight that battle when the time is more right, and when the winds have shifted in our favor once more). image

Replies (40)

I haven’t fully formed out my ultimate thoughts about this but and I think that Nostr’s strength can be in the form of the portable identity. In terms of end users that’s even too technical or meaningless. It will be “I made a profile for this app or service and I am connecting to the app, my friends are on there. Cool” I guess what I’m also saying is that it’s probably going to work best behind the scenes and maybe the social media aspect we have presently was a good enough bootstrap for that. It’s going to be apps that use nostr rather than “nostr apps”.
Nostr is the answer 💪
User's avatar npub1dtgg...up6m
Nostr has lost the battle for censorship resistance. While WE all know that Nostr is superior because it’s a protocol, people do NOT care enough. They are more interested in what’s written ON the box, not what’s necessarily inside the box. The people who did care about “free speech” are now placated enough with Rumble for Video, X for short form, Substack for long form. With Meta now throwing their weight behind the movement, it’s game over for this narrative - at least for the foreseeable future. There is no way Nostr as a brand can claim that space in people’s minds, especially against multiple established brands. That ‘censorship resistance’ and ‘free speeech’ ships have sailed (even though they were fake), and the people who cared enough boarded. The normies who never cared, still don’t care, or they found their way to the anti-platforms, like Threads, BlueSky or Pornhub. The small minority of us still here on Nostr…are well…still here. We’re building, which is great - that MUST happen before anything else. But if the goal is to grow the network effect here and bring in more people, then we need to find a new angle. Something more compelling that is a “running towards” value, not a “running away from” value. I’m not 100% sure what that is. My instinct is that a “network of incredible applications”, that don’t necessarliy or explicitly brand themselves as Nostr, but have it under the hood is the right direction, but it needs more experimentation. Also needs more really well-build apps for non-sovereignty minded people (especially content creators) and people who don’t necessarly care about the reasons Nostr was first built. We’ve been working away at this Satlantis thing for almost a year now and it’s coming along - albeit WAY slower than I would’ve liked. We’ve made a whole bunch of mistakes and at times I feel like a LARP considering the state of non-delivery. BUT…we made some big changes in the last 2mths since missing a couple key deadlines, and I’m pretty confident we’ll have something cool to show in a month or two. Let’s see if this approach starts to bring new interest andn activity here. Or if I’m full of shit. Either way, I’m going to keep looking for a better ngle than “free speech” because I no longer think that’s a battle we can win (we can come back and fight that battle when the time is more right, and when the winds have shifted in our favor once more). image
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It's not just about censorship, it's about both censorship, ownership AND flexibility. We need to own the internet and Nostr will reprice the internet (or data) basically. Just like Bitcoin is repricing the world, Nostr will reprice data (or internet) in itself. We always are/have the data but we never really own the data because we've never really found a way to do that in scale. And that's what it Nostr really is. A way to reprice data so that it benefits all.
↩ replying to npub1dtgg...up6m
You can own your own data very easily in many ways, either by posting to your own relay or having a local copy of it, there's a couple of clients that have that functionality AND more importantly there's the incentives, because of the NIP architecture, and the whole Nostr architecture in general, for relays to just be data servers. It's all open, we can create everything. The game is open and forces data to just be data, and clients to just be clients. There can't be data silos on Nostr basically. All of this combined turns the incentive around. It's the people and the posts that matter. If people have good content, relays will always want to have that content. This combined means in pratice that we have all the opportunities to own the data, than ever before.
↩ replying to npub1dtgg...up6m
And then there's NIP-65 which defines the preferred relays in the note itself. That turns the focus even more on the peer to peer relationship. If I follow someone, my client already knows that person's private relay because of NIP-65. Which then makes it easier for me to have access to that person's data. I think Nostr will change the world just like Bitcoin is doing :)
🛡️
This is a stupid take. It will be all of 5 minutes until it is clear they are censoring like mad and lying. The only people who won't see through it are American Republican cultists because they are getting free run while their opposition is censored. Also because they are dumb as fuck.
User's avatar npub1dtgg...up6m
Nostr has lost the battle for censorship resistance. While WE all know that Nostr is superior because it’s a protocol, people do NOT care enough. They are more interested in what’s written ON the box, not what’s necessarily inside the box. The people who did care about “free speech” are now placated enough with Rumble for Video, X for short form, Substack for long form. With Meta now throwing their weight behind the movement, it’s game over for this narrative - at least for the foreseeable future. There is no way Nostr as a brand can claim that space in people’s minds, especially against multiple established brands. That ‘censorship resistance’ and ‘free speeech’ ships have sailed (even though they were fake), and the people who cared enough boarded. The normies who never cared, still don’t care, or they found their way to the anti-platforms, like Threads, BlueSky or Pornhub. The small minority of us still here on Nostr…are well…still here. We’re building, which is great - that MUST happen before anything else. But if the goal is to grow the network effect here and bring in more people, then we need to find a new angle. Something more compelling that is a “running towards” value, not a “running away from” value. I’m not 100% sure what that is. My instinct is that a “network of incredible applications”, that don’t necessarliy or explicitly brand themselves as Nostr, but have it under the hood is the right direction, but it needs more experimentation. Also needs more really well-build apps for non-sovereignty minded people (especially content creators) and people who don’t necessarly care about the reasons Nostr was first built. We’ve been working away at this Satlantis thing for almost a year now and it’s coming along - albeit WAY slower than I would’ve liked. We’ve made a whole bunch of mistakes and at times I feel like a LARP considering the state of non-delivery. BUT…we made some big changes in the last 2mths since missing a couple key deadlines, and I’m pretty confident we’ll have something cool to show in a month or two. Let’s see if this approach starts to bring new interest andn activity here. Or if I’m full of shit. Either way, I’m going to keep looking for a better ngle than “free speech” because I no longer think that’s a battle we can win (we can come back and fight that battle when the time is more right, and when the winds have shifted in our favor once more). image
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Nostr did not lose anything. We are not thinking a couple of months or years, it's a game played over decdes maybe centuries. Nostr is winning BIG time even if no one knows about it yet. It's like bitcoin in 2010, it was winning big but so early no one saw it
↩ replying to TeslaLiberty
Losing a battle doesn’t mean losing a war. But it’s important to recognise when a battle is lost, so that you can find new terrain to fight on, such that the larger war may be won. That’s the essence of the post. It’s a call to find a better message for NOW, and the near term. Longer term, censorship resistance may be a battlefield worth re-engaging on.
🛡️
↩ replying to SatsMcD.ai
I rmemeber ICQ was invite only too at first!!! I think this adds one more layer of user quality even if very minimal its worth it. Better than charging everyone that's for sure. But the invite will make sure that nouns are not treated as disposable marriages but something of value whether its SATs or an invite from a limited or fluctuating supply. When you open a hedonist amusement park, you still install turn styles at the entrance....