Thread

Nostr has lost the battle for censorship resistance. While WE all know that Nostr is superior because it’s a protocol, people do NOT care enough. They are more interested in what’s written ON the box, not what’s necessarily inside the box. The people who did care about “free speech” are now placated enough with Rumble for Video, X for short form, Substack for long form. With Meta now throwing their weight behind the movement, it’s game over for this narrative - at least for the foreseeable future. There is no way Nostr as a brand can claim that space in people’s minds, especially against multiple established brands. That ‘censorship resistance’ and ‘free speeech’ ships have sailed (even though they were fake), and the people who cared enough boarded. The normies who never cared, still don’t care, or they found their way to the anti-platforms, like Threads, BlueSky or Pornhub. The small minority of us still here on Nostr…are well…still here. We’re building, which is great - that MUST happen before anything else. But if the goal is to grow the network effect here and bring in more people, then we need to find a new angle. Something more compelling that is a “running towards” value, not a “running away from” value. I’m not 100% sure what that is. My instinct is that a “network of incredible applications”, that don’t necessarliy or explicitly brand themselves as Nostr, but have it under the hood is the right direction, but it needs more experimentation. Also needs more really well-build apps for non-sovereignty minded people (especially content creators) and people who don’t necessarly care about the reasons Nostr was first built. We’ve been working away at this Satlantis thing for almost a year now and it’s coming along - albeit WAY slower than I would’ve liked. We’ve made a whole bunch of mistakes and at times I feel like a LARP considering the state of non-delivery. BUT…we made some big changes in the last 2mths since missing a couple key deadlines, and I’m pretty confident we’ll have something cool to show in a month or two. Let’s see if this approach starts to bring new interest andn activity here. Or if I’m full of shit. Either way, I’m going to keep looking for a better ngle than “free speech” because I no longer think that’s a battle we can win (we can come back and fight that battle when the time is more right, and when the winds have shifted in our favor once more). image

Replies (57)

↩ replying to npub13zcm...rl2q
I have two things for us to combine yet I am not tech enough to understand exactly how they fit. I just know that they do. one is a protocol...Bitcoin and VERUS ID, social tokens that include Bitcoin as the reserve asset - like having treasuries, and the other is the video/social platform, Plotaverse.com. I they should use Nostr for payments. The question is how to maintain audiences when they go to other clients.
Nostr is not a brand, nor does or make sense for it to have branding. Nostr is also not a platform. Nostr is a protocol. To say a protocol needs to have branding is like saying TCP/IP needs to have branding. Branding is a marketing term for products and services not protocols. If you’re talking about branding, and scaling, and on boarding users, then you need to be talking about companies and systems and services built on top of the Nostr protocol. Delivering on Satlantis would be a good use case to showcase.
I’ve realized over the past few months of only using nostr that what makes it so unique is that it forces authenticity. Content creators here are not the same as content creators on any other platform because they’re not trying to sell anything. They’re just being themselves. updating us about their lives, their personal struggles, their progress, their thoughts. And because it’s so natural for humans to gravitate towards authentic communication, our “content creators” here receive a lot of feedback from the community via a more true form of exchange. be it reply or btc. I came here for the freedom, but I stayed for the heartfelt connections via the Internet, which I never believed was possible. just my two sats 🤷🏻‍♀️
↩ replying to limitlesslaurel
Yeah the heartfelt connections are here. And that’s cool. Gives a homely feel. And maybe it’s just the stage we’re at. But remember - if/when it grows, that homely feeling will go away. Like any social network (in cyber or meatspace) - the larger it grows and more successful it becomes the more it changes. This means we have to be careful what we wish for. Do we want mainstream growth? If so, we have to form a new relationship with it. Do want the homely feel? Then maybe we shouldn’t focus on growing it. Could we have both? Hmm…interesting thought experiment. Is that even possible? More questions than answers…
↩ replying to Svetski
i let that one simmer on my ride home and what comes to mind is the bare truth of nostr being a protocol. because of this, it can be anything. it can be everything. but it can never be ruled, which i think will forever maintain that homey feeling. the fact that each individual nostrich is the ruler of their own platform and who they choose to follow, allows for the protocol to always feel safe for them- like home. as mainstream folk begin to adapt, they too find a new safe place to grow and learn from. for so many of us, nostr has been revolutionary in our personal lives because of this newfound interweb safe, sovereign feeling. a major problem with mainstream culture is that we are fed a narrative that each of us are not safe alone and should not take up space to be ourselves. that’s why it’s so easy to fall into a habit of giving up autonomy in mainstream communities. when we’re here in a V4V ecosystem, we’re rewarded by being more truthful, joyous, and productive. the current clients are quite limited, so i definitely understand the mainstream holt from widely accepting nostr, but i have no doubt that as we develop more niche clients there will be no competition for nostr. maybe this makes no sense, maybe not. i’m hopeful and see no downfall in nostr as a whole. but i do agree, someone’s gotta work on that branding to be more non-computer savvy friendly. 😂
Let me give you a bit of optimism. While I don't like to say it again and again, it seems necessary. I'm a blue-collar immigrant, working in construction sites, with only 12 years in school, and now I'm 46. I've been on Nostr since the end of July 2024, and even a Bitcoiner since about a month later. I don't code or anything and I don't even completely understand Nostr and Bitcoin, nor I ever will. It doesn't mean that I'm the last idiot, but I have to play the cards at hand, and this is my reality. Nostr will propagate like Bitcoin, slowly then suddenly, when it can't be ignored anymore. Do you know how the Bitcoin's early adopters felt? I guess that Nostr's early adopters feel the same. 💜
↩ replying to Constantin
I disagree with this. Bitcoin and Nostr are completely different and their adoption will also be different. Bitcoin has an in built economic model that grows like a ponzi (without being a ponzi). Nostr doesn’t have & never will have that. It’s a false equivalence which will only get us in trouble
Nostr should be pitched as Freedom of Economy. Those of us that are using Nostr are networking and transacting in ways that these centralized platforms don't allow. Freedom of Reach is also important and given that it's Mr. Musk's retaliation phrase it should be something plebs on Nostr should focus on to peacefully combat these technocrats. Nostr has Freedom of Reach. It doesn't mean you will reach everyone. It just means that you possibly could. Which goes brings us back to Freedom of Economy. With the Freedom to Reach and the ability to use Nostr as a Payment Directory plebs can now find services directly rather than relying on the intermediary services of centralized platforms. This doesn't just refer to the standardized platforms whose brands we have become used to as the norm. It applies to all online services. It is easily possible that years from now Primal, Damus, Ameythst, and many other clients may no longer be around. But, by using the protocol are the proof-of-work we still be accessible. Last of all, as projects like Bluesky, Ethereum, and many others continue to use the term "decentralized" to promote themselves this term will become unusable for the masses on the outside of these terms similar to how the phrase "Freedom of Speech" is currently being abused.
↩ replying to Pickle Dan 🥒
I like freedom of economy. Not sure about freedom of reach. Probably too early for that. One of the double edged swords is the “optionality” one gets with Nostr. Sure, you can “choose your own algo” but most people don’t know what to choose, and prefer to just default to what’s best. In many ways, this is the true benefit of instagram, X, TikTok. They ‘serve’ you things - and you didn’t even have to go looking. WoT seems to be an interesting alternative to that. It’s something we’re exploring over at Satlantis for travel-related things. But that also has a way to go. A WoT requires a lot of depth in the social graph. But I like this line of thought. More of this needed
I haven’t fully formed out my ultimate thoughts about this but and I think that Nostr’s strength can be in the form of the portable identity. In terms of end users that’s even too technical or meaningless. It will be “I made a profile for this app or service and I am connecting to the app, my friends are on there. Cool” I guess what I’m also saying is that it’s probably going to work best behind the scenes and maybe the social media aspect we have presently was a good enough bootstrap for that. It’s going to be apps that use nostr rather than “nostr apps”.
Nostr is the answer 💪
Svetski's avatar Svetski
Nostr has lost the battle for censorship resistance. While WE all know that Nostr is superior because it’s a protocol, people do NOT care enough. They are more interested in what’s written ON the box, not what’s necessarily inside the box. The people who did care about “free speech” are now placated enough with Rumble for Video, X for short form, Substack for long form. With Meta now throwing their weight behind the movement, it’s game over for this narrative - at least for the foreseeable future. There is no way Nostr as a brand can claim that space in people’s minds, especially against multiple established brands. That ‘censorship resistance’ and ‘free speeech’ ships have sailed (even though they were fake), and the people who cared enough boarded. The normies who never cared, still don’t care, or they found their way to the anti-platforms, like Threads, BlueSky or Pornhub. The small minority of us still here on Nostr…are well…still here. We’re building, which is great - that MUST happen before anything else. But if the goal is to grow the network effect here and bring in more people, then we need to find a new angle. Something more compelling that is a “running towards” value, not a “running away from” value. I’m not 100% sure what that is. My instinct is that a “network of incredible applications”, that don’t necessarliy or explicitly brand themselves as Nostr, but have it under the hood is the right direction, but it needs more experimentation. Also needs more really well-build apps for non-sovereignty minded people (especially content creators) and people who don’t necessarly care about the reasons Nostr was first built. We’ve been working away at this Satlantis thing for almost a year now and it’s coming along - albeit WAY slower than I would’ve liked. We’ve made a whole bunch of mistakes and at times I feel like a LARP considering the state of non-delivery. BUT…we made some big changes in the last 2mths since missing a couple key deadlines, and I’m pretty confident we’ll have something cool to show in a month or two. Let’s see if this approach starts to bring new interest andn activity here. Or if I’m full of shit. Either way, I’m going to keep looking for a better ngle than “free speech” because I no longer think that’s a battle we can win (we can come back and fight that battle when the time is more right, and when the winds have shifted in our favor once more). image
View quoted note →
It's not just about censorship, it's about both censorship, ownership AND flexibility. We need to own the internet and Nostr will reprice the internet (or data) basically. Just like Bitcoin is repricing the world, Nostr will reprice data (or internet) in itself. We always are/have the data but we never really own the data because we've never really found a way to do that in scale. And that's what it Nostr really is. A way to reprice data so that it benefits all.
↩ replying to Svetski
You can own your own data very easily in many ways, either by posting to your own relay or having a local copy of it, there's a couple of clients that have that functionality AND more importantly there's the incentives, because of the NIP architecture, and the whole Nostr architecture in general, for relays to just be data servers. It's all open, we can create everything. The game is open and forces data to just be data, and clients to just be clients. There can't be data silos on Nostr basically. All of this combined turns the incentive around. It's the people and the posts that matter. If people have good content, relays will always want to have that content. This combined means in pratice that we have all the opportunities to own the data, than ever before.
↩ replying to Svetski
And then there's NIP-65 which defines the preferred relays in the note itself. That turns the focus even more on the peer to peer relationship. If I follow someone, my client already knows that person's private relay because of NIP-65. Which then makes it easier for me to have access to that person's data. I think Nostr will change the world just like Bitcoin is doing :)
🛡️
This is a stupid take. It will be all of 5 minutes until it is clear they are censoring like mad and lying. The only people who won't see through it are American Republican cultists because they are getting free run while their opposition is censored. Also because they are dumb as fuck.
Svetski's avatar Svetski
Nostr has lost the battle for censorship resistance. While WE all know that Nostr is superior because it’s a protocol, people do NOT care enough. They are more interested in what’s written ON the box, not what’s necessarily inside the box. The people who did care about “free speech” are now placated enough with Rumble for Video, X for short form, Substack for long form. With Meta now throwing their weight behind the movement, it’s game over for this narrative - at least for the foreseeable future. There is no way Nostr as a brand can claim that space in people’s minds, especially against multiple established brands. That ‘censorship resistance’ and ‘free speeech’ ships have sailed (even though they were fake), and the people who cared enough boarded. The normies who never cared, still don’t care, or they found their way to the anti-platforms, like Threads, BlueSky or Pornhub. The small minority of us still here on Nostr…are well…still here. We’re building, which is great - that MUST happen before anything else. But if the goal is to grow the network effect here and bring in more people, then we need to find a new angle. Something more compelling that is a “running towards” value, not a “running away from” value. I’m not 100% sure what that is. My instinct is that a “network of incredible applications”, that don’t necessarliy or explicitly brand themselves as Nostr, but have it under the hood is the right direction, but it needs more experimentation. Also needs more really well-build apps for non-sovereignty minded people (especially content creators) and people who don’t necessarly care about the reasons Nostr was first built. We’ve been working away at this Satlantis thing for almost a year now and it’s coming along - albeit WAY slower than I would’ve liked. We’ve made a whole bunch of mistakes and at times I feel like a LARP considering the state of non-delivery. BUT…we made some big changes in the last 2mths since missing a couple key deadlines, and I’m pretty confident we’ll have something cool to show in a month or two. Let’s see if this approach starts to bring new interest andn activity here. Or if I’m full of shit. Either way, I’m going to keep looking for a better ngle than “free speech” because I no longer think that’s a battle we can win (we can come back and fight that battle when the time is more right, and when the winds have shifted in our favor once more). image
View quoted note →
Nostr did not lose anything. We are not thinking a couple of months or years, it's a game played over decdes maybe centuries. Nostr is winning BIG time even if no one knows about it yet. It's like bitcoin in 2010, it was winning big but so early no one saw it
↩ replying to npub1j44n...xp9h
Losing a battle doesn’t mean losing a war. But it’s important to recognise when a battle is lost, so that you can find new terrain to fight on, such that the larger war may be won. That’s the essence of the post. It’s a call to find a better message for NOW, and the near term. Longer term, censorship resistance may be a battlefield worth re-engaging on.
🛡️
↩ replying to SatsMcD.ai
I rmemeber ICQ was invite only too at first!!! I think this adds one more layer of user quality even if very minimal its worth it. Better than charging everyone that's for sure. But the invite will make sure that nouns are not treated as disposable marriages but something of value whether its SATs or an invite from a limited or fluctuating supply. When you open a hedonist amusement park, you still install turn styles at the entrance....