Nostr Web Client

Nostr is a great technology but when people post stuff that isn’t related to bitcoin or nostr itself they struggle to get traction and build an audience.

Other platforms have algorithms or tools to cultivate multiple communities of users and interest. We’re a bit stuck with just one at the moment. Solving this is essential for Nostr’s future.

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fiatjaf 11mo ago 💬 5

I think it may be just because Bitcoin people brought part of their audiences and contacts from X, so they still get interactions even when they post non-Bitcoin stuff.

Completely new people are alone and they probably wouldn't get traction in any other platform either, no matter how good their content is. That was always my experience and is the experience of most people, and also the experience of many Bitcoiners here on Nostr that for whatever reason do not have many "followers".

I heard TikTok has this magic algorithm that enables anyone to be seen, but I have no experience with that, and honestly it's very hard to believe we are not just suffering from survivorship bias: "oh, this person came from nowhere and got traction thanks to the algorithm!" -- meanwhile thousands of others were "better" but didn't gain any traction even with the algorithm (or because of it).

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Discussion

fiatjaf 11mo ago

I'm not saying there aren't things we can do to improve on this, but I don't think there is any straightforward thing everybody is doing that we are refusing to do because we're dumb or even because Nostr is limited.

7fqx 11mo ago 💬 1

Primal sidebar is the worst example of what is going on here, and it reinforces the situation. Bitcointwitter 'celebs' are basically the tone and taste setters on here atm.

New users are sort of forced to pay their rent in bitcoin posts if they want to get reach, whether they want to or not.

I'd quite like to see the nostr meta totally change. It's been like this for ages.

For starters you could have a client with a sidebar which downgrades or totally ignores bitcoin 'content' (usually an unfunny meme or slogan). Perhaps taking into account the follower numbers for what is deemed 'trending' ie a post with 70 likes from an account with 30k followers would not be 'trending'. This is why you have banal 'trending' posts on primal, these are read-receipts ( and zaps).

Hans Karlsborn 11mo ago

Yep. NOSTR is hopelessly boring.😵‍💫 (But I still haven’t lost all hope after 2 years🤷🏼‍♂️)

mister_monster 11mo ago

Discovery is hard.

But I'll say, I'm not a fan of follower count chasers. I don't have a ton and I don't need a ton. I understand most of them are bots or dead accounts. I don't want people to follow me unless they care about what I have to say.

I've found, the only way to have a good, meaningful experience on any social media is to poke around for a while, find some people that you really like what they have to say and would like to talk to them, start doing that, then follow the social graph a little and continue to do that. If you also have interesting things to say people will follow you, and eventually it snowballs. I think, out of all social media I've tried, nostr-as-mocroblogging has been the most rewarding. Meaningful conversations, consequential ones, thoughtful ones that I learn something from, genuine people, an all round great place.

ariondir 11mo ago

The TikTok algorithm is indeed magical (which I can say from experience). It is by far the most user interest-aligned platform of any I have ever experienced and I say that as someone who was in high school when facebook was created and has used every social media app since then enough to understand its strengths and weaknesses as a platform.

That said, most of these platforms are designed to be addictive to users to feed the ad-based revenue model so while there is a lot to learn with respect to creating a more engaging and welcoming user experience, it’s important to keep lessons learned in mind and not make similar mistakes at the expense of users

There is definitely room for improvement here on nostr, but as long as we are having these conversations and continuously building in response I think we are headed in the right direction 🧡

Eric FJ 🪬⚡️ 11mo ago

Tiktok algo wasn’t too magic from what I heard.

Used a sampling and boosting mechanism: test a post with 10 viewers, scores well then tests with 100 users, scores well then 1000 users etc etc. Good scoring in sample size x gets you a new sample 10x until you fail.

Much harder to do decentralized, but probably worth exploring a similar model.