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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 (30)

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 →
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.