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Been watching the anthropological experiment that is Nostr unfold since 2022-23. It’s been fascinating to observe the great sorting mechanism at work. Scrolled through my follow list today, a bit of digital archaeology. Thousands of followers, zero notes in over a year. The pattern is unmistakable: they’ve returned to the algorithmic plantation, trading sovereignty for synthetic validation. What remains on Nostr are the philosophical descendants of the cypherpunks. Those who understand that protocols > platforms, sovereignty > followers, signal > noise. We’re not here for the dopamine drip of algorithmic amplification. We’re here because we believe ideas should compete on merit, not on how well they serve the attention merchants. Every abandoned profile is a quiet confession: “I never really believed in the thing I claimed to support.” The irony? By filtering out those who prioritize growth over principle, Nostr becomes exactly what it was meant to be, a signal rich environment for those who value truth over virality. The medium is the message. Your choice of medium reveals your message

Replies (32)

I’ve experienced both ends of this. First attempt on Nostr, if you can even call it that, was pathetically short lived and just came to experiment and passively consume content like I did on Twitter. It didn’t work and I quickly left. But coming around the second time motivated by a much deeper dedication to contributing to freedom technologies and protocols in whatever way I can, it is a completely different experience. One forced habit that I’ve committed to but found so unnatural is to “post content” or try to “build a following.” Even typing those words felt gross. I think many of us who are on here naturally feel that way. But once you start to experience the positive feedback loops from the effort you put in in terms of both deep connections with substantive people and a much more creative, attentive posture towards the world, the controlled networks become less and less appealing. View quoted note →
This condescending speech instead of acknowledging that there might be other reasons why people leave is part of what makes nostr unappealing The UX is so bad sometimes I'm basically only seeing people like you in my feed because everybody else left You want to circle-jerk how great your protocol is, while my notifications aren’t loading or when they load, they aren’t consistent across clients or straight-up inconsistent within the same client, the note to which someone is replying isn’t loading, I need to click for each reply I want to read because no client can render a whole tree of replies at once, SSR isn’t possible on nostr because the client fetches the content (else it’s not a nostr client), devs are telling users they need to configure more, less or different relays? Cool, do it without me These also aren’t just “client issues.” The protocol makes it hard to provide a good UX without Primal-style centralization (and Primal still suffers from very similar issues.)
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↩ replying to ek
You’re proving my point beautifully. Yes, the UX is rough. Yes, the protocol has trade offs. But notice what you’re really saying: “I’ll sacrifice censorship resistance for smoother notifications.” This is precisely the revealed preference I’m describing. You want the benefits of sovereignty without the costs of sovereignty. But sovereignty has never been convenient, ask any revolutionary, any founder, any builder of new systems. The “condescending speech” critique is fascinating. You’re offended that someone would suggest your choices reveal your values. But they do. Everyone’s do. Twitter’s UX is “better” because you’re the product being optimized for engagement farming. Nostr’s UX is “worse” because you’re a sovereign user, not a data point. The protocol makes good UX hard because good UX under centralization requires surrendering control. That’s not a bug, it’s the fundamental tension. You can choose smooth notifications and algorithmic feeds. That’s fine. But don’t pretend it’s anything other than trading sovereignty for convenience. The builders who stay are solving these problems because they believe the trade-off is worth it. Those who leave reveal they don’t. Your frustration is valid. Your priorities are just different.
↩ replying to ek
Amethyst renders entire threads, yakihonne will eventually. I think everyone in this discussion is missing the actual point, which is that perhaps the most difficult part irt Nostr is that it is reinventing the wheel. The web already exists; most of what Nostr has to offer is basically the same thing you can find elsewhere that already had decades of developtment behind it. So this chaotic mishmash of a "we" have to figure out this new paradigm (crypto-key-centric, relay based), which is something we are figuring out as we go; And in that context stumble our way into competing with fully fleshed out incumbents (and this is not just a dev/UX thing, but the fact its some of the largest mega-ultra-turbo-mega corps this planet has currently, lol, so its build up infra on a 1000 different levels/axis/dimensions). And looking at it that way, both of you are right: yes its an avant-garde frontier settler group of people with associated mindset that will have to bootstrap and carry this thing for the foreseeable future; and yes its a continuous failing in living up the the demands of "regular" users. The a precarious situation, but i remain both hopefull and vigilant. I agree with you that i dislike the tone of the OP, its a bit of a LARP if you ask me...perhaps its (self)motivating speech some people need to talk some courage into themselves and others, even if it is at the cost of the normies; which frankly is not the end of the world, atleast at the current stage we are in. At the end of the day the point of Nostr is freedom of association, which means that there is no real reason why the current userbase should constitute any hold-up for others to embrace the protocol. And i don't think it is, things just have not progressed enough for other types of groups to start doing their own thing.
I'm still here because I believe in the principle, but I will admit that I am getting frustrated that every time I find a client that works well for me, I get used to it, and enjoy it, and then it will suddenly stop working completely. How does every client become 100% nonfunctional at some point? I understand someone might stop adding features, but they completely stop working. It is so frustrating. Since Coracle failed, I haven't found a client that works as well or gives me as good a feed and interaction with others.
↩ replying to Liberty Gal
I know what you mean. I first got involved over 3 years ago with a Client called astal ninja.. Had a link to the Global feed which I liked. All of a sudden, poof..... nothing.. nothing but an inoperable home page.. (Haven't been back to check. Maybe it's up and running again! Hm..) For a while now, I've had success with Primal, and IRIS... noStrudel too. I guess you've always gotta hold your breath that each day, all will still be operable.. Kind of like using a jailbroken Amazon firestick. Finding links/clients that work can be a moving target, but it seems if one goes away, another comes along to take it's place.
↩ replying to idsera
That's what I'm using. It has all of the basic function I need, but it doesn't handle threads as well as Coracle (unless I'm just using it wrong), so I feel like I spend most of my time entering in the middle of a conversation. There are also some people that used to regularly be in my feed that aren't. I'm trying to figure what is wrong, if I'm missing the right relay or something. I don't know. Hopefully I will eventually get it working to my liking. Coracle wasn't perfect at first either when I lost the previous client that stopped working.