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I've had a LOT of conversations with people about Nostr, really people who are aware of Nostr but don't use it. There are a few things that come up. * General admiration for Nostr and how it does tons of interesting things in terms of tech. It's way more flexible than ATprotocol or ActivityPub. * Frustration with the way user accounts / logins / keys work. It's very confusing if you're not somebody who already understands crypto. Mostly it's confusing because of how we talk about it. If we tell people, here's your magic user text, paste this in places and you'll be magically logged in, they love it. If we try and explain custody and wallets and keys and browser extensions and all the ways you can login with Nostr, their eyes glaze over. * Not feeling like it's a place for them. Everybody is talking about Bitcoin and Nostr. Most folks don't care very much about the underlying tools or how payments work. They want to talk about their interests, surfing, food, travel, their friends. or ten million other things. They see Nostr as a bitcoin place. Most people have either no opinion or a negative opinion of bitcoin because somebody tried to evangelize it too hard. * Zaps, folks love zaps. I've heard from board members and the executives of Bluesky that they want zaps. Folks don't like bitcoin and bitcoin content but they do want the functionality. The problem is when creators come to Nostr, they only get zaps for content that is about nostr or bitcoin. There's no good way to build and sustain themselves with other content. * Algorithms - we all have a love hate relationship with algorithms. We say we don't want them, but we choose to use systems with algorithms. We have them in nostr with DVM's and it works. But it's not well integrated in to the apps and most feed services via DVM's are way too slow. The algorithm helps people be seen, grow an audience, find their people, keep being engaged. We built the proof of concept but didn't make it in to a good product. These things that keep people from Nostr are fixable. What i'm going at with my podcast is to build a larger movement, Nostr is a solution, but people on Nostr aren't my intended audience. ;-D

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@rabble It seems like two things. The platform and the people. My husband is a product designer web dev person and I watched him set up his accounts. He was crawling with anxiety. I just did it... but as I watched him, it did seem like a total ephemeral mess of mystery logins and a feeling of loss of control. He even built a Nostr app to work through it. But he can't get past all the extensions and spread out auth things. So, that was strange since I didn't feel as insecure about the setup. But you're going to get a specific type of people and probably not a diverse group. There's also tons of trouble with all the "freedom" because then you get a bunch of child porn and people having sex with dogs... and you can never delete a post.
After doing the Nostr stand and talk at FOSDEM 2025, we’ve now applied for a devroom for FOSDEM 2026. Your note was really inspiring for the proposal, especially since FOSDEM is going for more cross-domain devrooms this time. I totally agree, Nostr isn’t just a solution, it’s one of the most flexible protocols for a bigger movement. Hope to collaborate if the proposal gets approved. Thanks @rabble Proposal "Trustless Protocols for Cross-Domain Interoperability" The Trustless Protocols for Cross-Domain Interoperability devroom focuses on how open-source systems can work together through cryptographic identity and verifiable event exchange. It looks at what happens when trust is built through signatures and reproducibility instead of accounts, APIs, or centralized services. In most open ecosystems, interoperability still depends on federation or external identity providers. A new generation of protocols shows that collaboration can happen in a simpler and more direct way. By using lightweight, key-based architectures, applications can share information, verify each other’s actions, and stay independent at the same time. This devroom will bring together developers who want to explore how existing FOSS tools can connect through such trustless protocols. Examples include integrating key-based authentication into operating systems authentication, signing and verifying commits in Git workflows, or adding verifiable event exchange between local and self-hosted applications. The focus is on hands-on experimentation and collaboration between different communities. We want to highlight projects that push beyond their own domain, connecting systems for communication, identity, and coordination. The goal is to learn from each other and see what a shared, verifiable foundation could look like for future FOSS development. We expect a full-day schedule with around eight sessions, including talks and short demos. The program will be streamed and recorded under the CC-BY license. A small team of volunteers will manage the room and technical setup throughout the day. https://pretalx.fosdem.org/fosdem-2026-call-for-devrooms/talk/review/UYQ9V89CVKTM8A98W7NPVAKHYUW739UC