Thread

Nostr will forever fight a losing battle of user acquisition because the other places pull all the tricks to get people to stay as long as possible. Since this user base is virtuous and won’t go down that terrible path, we’ll always struggle against the massively addictive platforms with cemented walled gardens and network effects. Only new and interesting use cases and approaches might work. Otherwise you’re limited to a tiny drip of disgruntled users who eventually come here.

Replies (37)

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Maybe Nostr fixes this with a New Users Timeline option 🤔. Keeping, and Retaining New Users is the most critical time frame, instead of promoting the 100,000+ followers elites with 50 podcasts, and books maybe we should cause small accounts to gravitate towards each other, make Nostr a self propelling engine, rather than a grifty echo-chamber for wealthy wholecoiners. Nostr needs a Follow Pack + Topic Relays combination that helps reduce the friction of discovering the ecosystem initially. Once they've learned how the protocol works then they can explore through trial and error of different follows, and relay, etc. combinations that will further refine, and finetune their experience.
No idea why anyone would be disgruntled. Nostr equals freedom from the social addiction economy. Sure, you spend less time on Nostr and get less attention, but isn’t that a good thing? Centralized social media is excoriating societies around the globe, polarizing and enraging people who drool for their next dopamine hit. While here we are on Nostr with our own tight, genuine little communities talking, for the large part, in a humane and civilized fashion. I’ll take the latter any day of the week.
It’s been a long game for sure. I sometimes have to remind myself to take a breath and just appreciate that all of this exists. So many puzzle pieces coming together to get here. These will be the good old days.
The use case is being able to speak without risk of censorship. We just need more important people saying more important things here. Journalists breaking big stories that otherwise would be shut down on centralized platforms for instance. The problem isn’t so much the protocol, it’s the people using it. If you want more people to use NOSTR, create an environment for people who would otherwise be silenced to be free. And I’m not talking about niche Devs. How Reasearchstr, a place where academic papers can be published that maybe aren’t going to make the lancet because the findings aren’t to the fancy of proctor and gamble or unilever. Or Teachstr, a place where teachers can get together and form real curriculums outside of the confines of what federally funded public schools can provide. The value is rules but no rulers right? The natural product-market fit is to cater to environments that thrive with minimal oversight.
Wow. This is as “fiat” a lens as I could imagine. More users isn’t “winning” if it’s all noise and nonsense. If people value the benefits of this protocol, they will use it. If they don’t, they will stay captured in clown world. 🤡 All freedom tech is opt-in by design, so I don’t see what the problem is. Unless, narcissistic “follower count” is one’s primary goal (instead of high signal engagement). Then it sucks here 😝
↩ replying to Chris
Users are the lifeblood of any social application. All social media has attrition. Eventually you get to a point where you have no users left. It's not rocket science and has nothing to do with fiat. Yes this tech is opt-in, requires proof of work, and can be made better (it already is in many cases), but we're still competing with personalized algos coming from centrally curated data -- something we don't really have in nostr unless you have a massive caching server that mimics a behemoth server. Nothing fiat about this - just stating facts. Maybe think before you try to insult next time.
↩ replying to Chris
That wasn’t the point of the note but I can see how it can be interpreted that way. The point is that we should not try to compete on that which we’re disadvantaged at, and focus on things that set this protocol apart. It’s a cup half full type of note unless one has a cup half empty type of attitude or mood at the time of reading it. 🤷‍♂️
↩ replying to Karnage
“Nostr will forever fight a losing battle….” Sorry brother. Thats not a “cup half full” kinda note beginning. However, I FULLY agree that it is futile to expend energy competing where “we are disadvantaged”. I just don’t see Nostr development as a global competition for SM users. I see Nostr (and Bitcoin) as high signal tools for the co-ordination of building a new secure and decentralised civilisation from the bottom up. As should be obvious to anyone paying attention, our current centralised, control systems (globally) are in their final stages of complete collapse. IMO, we will need all these “freedom tech” tools (and more) to begin to build this new, infinitely more coherent and co-operative world. Yet, we won’t need the whole world using them. At first. Far from it. Anyway….my responses were pretty low-vibe to start. Sorry for that….🙏🏻
If the craze about ID and age verification keeps going, and doesn't spill over too much to Nostr clients, we might get some more privacy oriented people here. But given what I've seen so far since the internet surveillance insanity started about two decades ago, it won't be too many, unfortunately.
Don’t worry — Nostr is like a final refuge. Until governments start showing truly repressive behavior, it will inevitably remain a niche platform with a small market share. But it will never disappear, and when the time comes, it’ll be ready to deliver a decisive blow.