I just got two people to install Nostr clients. One is a developer that has submitted large swaths of commits to Tcl. The build and user experience was so frustrating for this person that despite getting them to try 3 clients he gave up.
Another is an international media personality. She tried one client and gave up.
Honestly, even people who are eager to hear from me and willing to give something a shot that I recommend are turned off by the user experience. Every client seems idiosyncratic or has glaring problems. I myself have settled on Nostur.com — a client whose navigation icons obscure typing in DMs (screenshot attached) because it is the client with the *least frustrating* user experience for me.
Point being almost nobody is seriously approaching any Nostr client with a lot of thought and QA. Gossip is listed as a suggested client on every single page when I do a web search for “Nostr client”. On Mac, to get it working, you have to read the documentation and then open up a Terminal and paste a command from the documentation. Virtually zero people are going to do this. The developer is openly hostile to the suggestion that a minor build tweak to make it conform with the install process for other unsigned apps on Mac is prudent. And yet this is, by search, one of the most prominently featured clients to new eyeballs.
I do support the idea that this should be like email and there shouldn’t be a singular client. But I also think that there should be a client that does not seek to communicate a personal message form the developers, but that should be committed to 1:1 replicating the UI/UX of the Twitter app circa 2010. And that the community’s efforts and funding should crowd around this app.
I would say that 'nostr' is in the same state as Linux, now it does not feel easy to use and many of its advantages are out of reach of someone who has never touched a text editor.
so that's something I've said since I first tried this, it's necessary to make its use more comfortable for the average user, because many are surely going to be overwhelmed when they first hear that they are relays, servers mirror, nips, pay with zaps understand how clients work.
I also think the focus on zaps is incredibly foolhardy. Most people using social media applications are not expecting to get financially compensated for posting. They are there to either connect with their friends or find sexual partners.
I say this as a relatively early Bitcoiner — both my entire net worth and income were Bitcoin in 2014. ( In case someone an observer thinks I am exaggerating, here is an article from 2015 mentioning me:
比特币“淘金”简史-挖币网
曾几何时，经历了大起大落的比特币，已经慢慢淡出了人们视野。它像是一个先天不足的孩子，怀揣美好的希望...
)
But Bitcoiners are subject to a specific kind of myopia these days, where every bit of software has to orbit around Bitcoin. I think it not only makes the software in question less relevant and usable, but it gives Bitcoin an Amway kind of varnish socially.
You sound like me 2 years ago 🤣
sounds like you just grew content with the fact that all this software is fucking trash lol
It’s much better now than it was before. If you have some criticisms, please be specific.
Most criticisms people here make are comparing to a centralized system and don’t understand how nostr can’t be that and shouldn’t be that.
I'm not comparing it to a centralized system at all. I’m saying that every post being accompanied by a tipping button is innately terrible UI that does not exist on any centralized service anywhere. It would be *easier* to implement on a centralized service. It is not because that is not a feature that normal people would use. It fails the multivariate test every time. It is not in line with how social media is used anywhere. Large swaths of Nostr are inherently poisoned by the idea of “how can we put Bitcoin in this?” instead of “how can we make this attractive and useful to real people?”
There are and were clients that never had zaps but they didn’t see any adoption either. I was in exact same camp as you until I realized this is not the issue.
Sure. There are even more halfassed clients that don’t have zaps. But there’s still been monumentous effort put towards zapping and not much effort put towards “just make the simple old Twitter iPhone app from 2010 when people loved it.”
I want a usable and uncensorable microblogging platform I can convince my friends to use. They aren’t going to be sending me Bitcoin, but even if they intended to they wouldn’t get past the basic onboarding and user experience being so fucking bad that they give up.
See, you want a twitter and Nostr can’t be that for many reasons.
You can disable all zap features by default and your friends won’t stay.
"you want software that doesn’t have glaring UI issues. Nostr can’t be that!”
There’s no reason why there has to be completely incoherent user interfaces, or majorly promoted clients asking people to open up terminals to get them running. This is solvable if people accept that it should be solved.
I don’t know of any client that asks you to open a terminal. Like I said, disable zaps and it won’t matter. Try it for yourself, clone jumble, remove zaps and try to get people to come and stay. Won’t happen.
What are glaring UI issues here besides zaps? Name them.
Copying and pasting myself from upthread:
> Gossip is listed as a suggested client on every single page when I do a web search for “Nostr client”. On Mac, to get it working, you have to read the documentation and then open up a Terminal and paste a command from the documentation. Virtually zero people are going to do this. The developer is openly hostile to the suggestion that a minor build tweak to make it conform with the install process for other unsigned apps on Mac is prudent. And yet this is, by search, one of the most prominently featured clients to new eyeballs.
That’s not a UI issue lol … just dont use gossip. I haven’t used it once
This is exactly like fat Linux nerds in 1995 that were like, “your sound doesn’t work because you are still using Obongo. You need to install Blumpkin!” As if the solution to a giant ecosystem problem was to try installing another distro.
If normal people are given a large list of clients they are not going to iterate through all of them. Maybe they’ll try one. If 3 of them are bad, they are likely never going to use Nostr ever again.
There are a million and a half ways to onboard to nostr. You’re referring to your personal experience which won’t be everyone’s personal experience. You can’t draw conclusions on one person’s generalization.
okay. I posted a screenshot upthread of a glaring issue in a client I am currently using because it is the least bad on Mac desktop and my networking situation. Navigation icons over the DM input field that makes seeing what you are typing impossible. And this is the least bad thing! It’s better than Damus!
Everything seems halfassed to me. I hear a lot of people being like “Nostr is still being actively developed” but people make sexy apps with nice feel in a matter of months. It’s been years now. But you are acting like all these problems are nonexistent, and condescending to the concerns of normal people about it. It is completely not true. I love Nostr and the protocol is good, but the experience for normal people is currently hot garbage. I would like it to be better, but saying “they’re not using the right client” is basically saying “Nostr is only for crypto nerds or people whose time has no value.”
Where is it?
If there’s a glaring issue it’s likely that there are limitations you’re not aware of. I’m happy to take a look if you point out on a non-garbage client 🤣
I just woke up and I’m super busy and typing short responses on mobile. Wish I could write a more thoughtful response - don’t mean to be condescending.
