Thread

Nostr is better than Xitter, but it still favors narcissism over merit. V4V doesn't reward the best builders, it rewards the best salesmen. There is no centralized algorithm pushing a narrative from a continuum of a billion options, but neither is there a defense against constructed consent. The protocol can't stop the manufacturing of "hero figures" because we are biologically wired to seek leaders and follow them. I liked Reddit because it was about ideas, not people. You followed a topic and the design almost hid the author. This gave a sense of "Message, not messenger". Nostr is the opposite. It is entirely messenger-centric. This is evidenced by the flood of "GM" and "GN" posts, which would be completely void of value if it wasn't about who was posting them. How could we nudge Nostr away from this? Some clients allow you to hide authors, but that is just self-constraint. I think we need a protocol layer that constrains participants to focus on ideas but without getting drowned by AI slop. How would a "late reveal" of authorship work? Authors could prove group membership - being one of my follows and only after a week or so reveal their identity. Fundamentally I wonder if people want to be heard for who they are, or for what they say? Do I want to be famous, or do I want my ideas to be recognized? I think the latter comes first. We want to be recognized as authors of great ideas.

Replies (25)

↩ replying to Silberengel
... that means one relay per person. Not at all the vision of relays I have. Relays to me are the ether through which we broadcast events. If the broadcast doesn't have enough reach, add more or better relays. End of story. To filter at the relay level - unless it's my personal relay that I use to receive events - is only enabling censorship by limiting reach.
↩ replying to paul keating
I care about follower counts actually. But not in this intransparent way it's implemented in some clients right now. I want to see the back-follower count of first, second and third degree. On nostr it's relatively quick to find all my follows, their follows and their follows. That's what I would consider most relevant accounts. If they all follow me, awesome! If a million others follow me? I couldn't care less. I want a client that surfaces first what my follows authored and then what they re-posted/liked/zapped/commented but when things get crowded, I wouldn't want to see reactions or replies from people outside of this circle.
↩ replying to paul keating
Follower counts should stay for multiple reasons: - Proof of Identity Indicator (Fake Paul Keating vs Real Paul Keating indicator) - Proof of Interest. Do others listen to what this person has to say - Proof of History. Has this person been around for a while? - Proof of Work. This person has something worth listening to and the follow count is an indicator. Follow count used in conjunction with note count and reply count is powerful. Caveat: The above are INDICATORS not CAUSALITY FACTS Stay humble and zap sats ⚡️
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We're all guilty of seeking leaders to different extents. It's honestly embarrassing at my age when I catch myself doing it. I like the idea of hiding authors a bit more, could be interesting. Wouldn't really work well for my follow feed, the way I use it, as I often look for who. Is posting or replying to find interesting things quickly. And not necessarily popular people, just those I identified as good filters for topics mostly.
This is precisely the kind of thinking that makes me love Nostr even more “There’s an app for that” comes to mind as a slogan Ie you can curate the experience that you want Nostr is so versatile, it can create whatever people want it to be I welcome thinkers such as you Leo Keep it up If we don’t try it, we’ll never find out!
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There's a few approaches that could be taken here, including hashtag based following (clumsy) and an LLM based DVM fed the heuristics you're looking for. Nothing says a client has to display the npub of the user who posted a note. It's not totally trivial but it's also quite doable to build what you're after.
After discussing it with @npub1wp2l...hpv0 in the past I think there's a pretty simple recipe for a nostr reddit. Just let hashtags act as subreddits, and use WoT (possibly with PoW) for moderation. The WoT system could be as simple as just letting people group up into "mod teams" that each user can opt in or out of allowing to filter their feed, like how subreddits have "mod teams." You could take it further by having a filter mode that only shows content from ephemeral keys.