What if we replaced follower counts with some other addictive metric in Nostr clients -- but one that was specific to Nostr and could actually work reliably and not be gamed?
(No, I am not talking about zaps, these can also be gamed, and this is not a trivia question, I don't have any answers.)
An interactivity metric? How much one npub interacts with others? Following doesn't mean a lot, but repeated comments, zaps, likes could.
Most answered questions on the #asknostr hashtag
Number of gm posts, only one per day measured in UTC time will count to the total đ
As someone who doesnt even want to partake in GM, I mean⌠youâre not wrong.
Then you can just use the gm WoT measurement to filter out users from your timeline!
This.
Age of npub in days
In all seriousness: any meaningful measure has to be multi-dimensional, if we want to evolve beyond the eternal chasing of followers and likes.
GM...
gm
It would be good for mental health. But might remove the incentive that keeps some people engaging - mostly people who are still stuck in that mindset or use vanity metrics to bolster image
I wish⌠web of trust-based follower count seems like the only way?
Would be cool if we could prove follows with recursive ZKPs somehow so we donât have to verify the signature for every follow.
maybe something like coracles WoT score? Idk either, def an interesting question
Amount zapped to fiatjaf?
A social credit score? đ
To have or not to have followers-counter is the kind of design decision that every client need to figure out itself.
There is a non-questionable absolute metric to mesoure the value of a npub: the value you as a free individual arbitrarly assign to it.
There is a surrogated to that, and it is something like a ponderated median of followers-zaps-interactions-andsoon...
There is a non-questionable and cool way to choose what NPUBs show up first as "suggested": it's doing advertising. Who pays is publicized. nostr:npub1xnf02f60r9v0e5kty33a404dm79zr7z2eepyrk5gsq3m7pwvsz2sazlpr5 does something like that in his website promoting and ranking its contributors.
Simple answer: PoW. It's the only metric that can't be gamed and for which there is no need for consensus.
kind event1/ kind events total
I don't even know my follower count and I don't care. Not being shadow banned is worth more than any number of people not seeing the content because of said sb.
Got to be something revolving around web of trust. Thatâs the only way I can see building something thatâs truly hard to game
I dunno, but I think it will rhyme with âproof of workâ
*s
WoT score makes more sense than follower count on Nostr imo
Maybe based on how many time your post are shared by users? Crossed with a WOT score based on your followers? Something like WOT is already implemented? đ¤
What if it was # of people I follow that follow you?
"46 Friends following"
Echo chamber network is the name
There's a lot of value in echo chambers but that phrase only has a negative connotation. As an example, I can immediately have a different conversation with bitcoiners than I can with my neighbors.
Knowing the extent of the echo chamber is a lot more useful than the current "followers" number
Number of people you follow who follow them.
What if...
We measure followers based on reactions? The bots aren't zapping, reposting, liking, or doing anything human other then creating hits. So unless they change it base it on interactions?? Even chats could count if the users have done it at least 5x?
We have an addictive serotonin shot here- its called zapping people sats
Fk follower counts idc
Gotta take it easy on the addiction cowboy but good to understand how it works.
Dopamaine hit is pretty powerful. The feeling of success makes a diff. Wordle is a simple game that got millions of people in - easy to solve, gives quick dopamine hit, keeps people coming back for more. In Walter Isaacsonâs book, when Steve Jobs started the apps, gamers were the initial user magnet.
Seratonin is powerful too - thatâs why people love giving, love learning. And why informative content creation is a hit. Pair this with zaps, wham. And just the right amount keeps away mania.
Oxytocin is wonderful, people who go to Nostr conferences have a different form of connection and gentleness with each other.
Using all this to create a satisfied user is wonderful. Using this to create monsters and zombies are not good.
People also would love platform they can advance themselves. Use cases enables this. 100 diff innovation has 100 diff niche users to start with.
For example, say an indie music platform developer creates his program on Nostr - he/she canât just assume people will miraculously start using it. He/she needs to go out there and knock on doors and reach out to as many artist.
Am I fabricating this shit ? This actually happened during Punk / Hacker era in 70s and 80s post beatnik. Thatâs how mix tape started - and more and more independent musicians broke away from labels. Imagine if they had zaps.
But devs cannot keep building stuff and then stay on this platform and whine that no users show up lah. My eyes, ears can bleed from the whining. Obviously users are not gonna show up. Have to go hunt for them.
And no, you don't need some fancy marketing. Just figure out who your target market is and reach out them.
Itâs the same for bitcoin as well. Bitcoin has all the potential to be global currency but can only be it, if users use it.
And the same for all innovation. All entrepreneurs have this problem. I do too. No users, no business
And out of everyone they hunt, 90% will fade away but the 10% early adopters will remain and are precious. Keep hunting, keep fine tuning target market, keep growing. Eventually Nostr will explode.
I didnât stop coming frequently to Nostr because men attack women (women attack men and other women just as nasty here). But I stop coming here frequently because of how privileged and spoilt devs are here. Maybe someday when Iâm at a better state myself and wonât feel so bad anymore, Iâll come back more frequently.
I know there are a lot of funds by nostr:npub1sg6plzptd64u62a878hep2kev88swjh3tw00gjsfl8f237lmu63q0uf63m because he genuinely believes in this. Quite honestly having Jack as safety net only means devs, innovators and entrepreneurs can try like mad to make Nostr work. But surprising its quite the opposite here and I don't understand why. I hope Nostr doesnât become a government agency-like establishment where everyone gets too comfortable and can get money until they retire.
Open source innovation is different. I think so far only Will has come close to understanding the ecosystem - and thatâs because he has guts to put himself out there, try and fail and try again. But if devs donât try to hunt for users, not wanting to learn beyond what they know, too damn egoistic, and think everyone should worship the ground they walk on, then no matter what drug you wanna infuse users into snorting, it just wonât work.
I briefly thought about it. Thinking out loud, what about just counting interactions? No public followers list at all
id love for nostr to turn into the place where social platforms don't show likes or follwer counts. we don't care about those things. we're just being social with one another.
But even without the popularity contest created by âlikesâ and âfollowsâ, Nostr still does need a reliable measure of âtrustâ. Establishing Webs of Trust between humans IS how Nostr (clients and relays and dvms) can help humans to discover more trusted humans and content on Nostr.
Such a measure of âtrustâ, pioneered by Nostr, could be what differentiates our social network from others.
A simple (and private) âIs trustedâ event should suffice.
Also related:
nostr:note1ta9gzmtewn7jnslhjd8ew9322qp3rnyc56e9a0rj9f0x2ftndxhqcy7dwt
Weighted 'zaps received' by people in webs of trust
The solution exists on nostr:npub1jlrs53pkdfjnts29kveljul2sm0actt6n8dxrrzqcersttvcuv3qdjynqn coracle: WOT score. cc nostr:npub1wf4pufsucer5va8g9p0rj5dnhvfeh6d8w0g6eayaep5dhps6rsgs43dgh9
Here is the meme
nostr:note1cucqjx7quxw5wwfstchazv66jwgkrcfztajmtm9jhxzptfx8aamscm3kp0
Active hours spent on nostr 
nostr:npub1vadcfln4ugt2h9ruwsuwu5vu5am4xaka7pw6m7axy79aqyhp6u5q9knuu7 built a cool new way to prove you own X btc without doxxing the UTXO. Let's gamify the size of your stack. You know...for science.
Nah
POW
Web of trust is what makes the most sense to me.
Verification and followers donât matter.
A trust score that is relevant to the accumulated of the vouchers/connections in the network makes the most sense imo
a bunch of llms decide how 'full of knowledge' our accounts are
How feasible is implementing web of trust based on NFTs in #nostr
& weighted zaps as Proof of Reputation (PoR),.
Decentralized Society (DeSoc)
1/ A first sketch of Decentralized Society (DeSoc): https://t.co/rdTSL8QpJPâŚ
Honored to have collaborated with @glenweyl and @vitalikbuterin on what will hopefully become a novel field of research, inquiry, and co-creation across our technological stack.
â Puja Ohlhaver (@pujaohlhaver) May 11, 2022
Within a DeSoc context, SBTs are issued by and held within accounts known as âSoulsâ. Souls are contract addresses in a wallet that hold SBTs and are used to establish provenance and reputation. Souls can be associated with individuals, organizations, or other entities.
1/ A first sketch of Decentralized Society (DeSoc): https://t.co/rdTSL8QpJP
User reviews from other users..
A #NostrAdvisor review, that of course takes consideration only the reviews/vote/scores made by user and #noatriches you already follow. If they game the reviews or you don't like them, mute their reviews.
I believe wot is the solution, and global state/metrics/algos have limited future. We don't use 'number of links' to measure the popularity of a website. We don't really even have a concept of such a metric on the web (that normal people would understand), that should tell us something.
That said, the only hard-to-game metric that worked reliably at huge scale is pagerank. But it's costly to calc, and thus only a few would run it, and results depend on the inputs which will differ, and so competing ranks would always differ, even if they were based on the same algo. And then it's just a meaningless number to most people, only usable for algos.
Also there's a difference btw knowing how many people follow you (you know whether you cheated or not), and how many people follow others (when you want to compare yourself just for fun), and a reliable metric usable for algos.
In short: follower count of yours is a fine metric most of the time (to estimate how many people might hear you), follower count of others to compare to yours can be manipulated but that's unlikely and harmless, follower count for algos is a very very bad idea - pagerank for global, wot for personalized.
hive.one was making something that looked like pagerank for social networks. I think they shut down because Twitter started charging a million bucks for API access. nostr:npub1c3765rxjrfc8jllfgp8clcxr7euu9drpfpug6y54uepyyvsxfuwslj9ezu had promised me he would do it for Nostr, but he has vanished.
We had to pivot the company. I still want to do a score like this for Nostr, but we need to get the company on a stable financial footing first.
Very good point about number of links not being a thing that exists for webpages.
Tags? Of most posted content. Make it apparent what type of content the notes have, so it gives you a sense of what a user talks about.
I think the most interesting data, if there isn't already a NIP for this, would be a way of synthesizing the reputation of that hash. This would be very useful in implementations with commercial purposes, such as delivery/ride-sharing apps and marketplaces.
(when I say hash, I mean the npub and derivatives)
Note count of preceding 24 hours, or daily regardless of kind. Could be a way to show activity level vs lurker
also quickly identify bots. cool idea
I don't know if this relates to that, but it might.
I have been thinking about a verification system for Nostr (no, NIP-05 is not verification).
Maybe the amount of verified followers would be a better metric?
So nostr:nprofile1qqstq4j6pk2sgaupru6l7ah9nq0dueafq356jllwcy7uzlek9yx7hlspz4mhxue69uhhyetvv9ujuerpd46hxtnfduhsz9mhwden5te0wfjkccte9ec8y6tdv9kzumn9wshsz9mhwden5te0wfjkccte9ehx7um5wghxyctwvshs4kprv3
This is how I am for distinguishing web of (minimal) trust from Reputation:
- Web of trust is the basic filter that can tap into multiple sources of trust (e.g. social follows, some sort of bootstrap list, nip51 lists, nip29 member lists) and sources are CONFIGURABLE by the user, with sane defaults.
- Reputation gives meaning to this by scoring people based on reviews and other possible metrics. Reviews are filtered through WoT and can be used to help the user make important decisions e.g. in SatShoot to select the right counterparty for a freelance deal.
The key is to understand your users' needs and use the types of events and UX that will help in whatever problem your app solves.
Generic, globalist views of this matter lead nowhere.
THIS:
nostr:nevent1qqsgt9hxvc95n8j5fcc3pgg9peday23amzq0wuwyk276ahu4rffk96g5mxvyd
INSTEAD OF THIS:
