Playing around on Nostr reminds me of finally giving in and joining Twitter but even more it means reclaiming what was lost. After much deliberation and people I was locally influenced by when I was into the Vancouver startup scene, I finally signed up. That was back in May 2008. It was raw and I used to text my updates from my Palm Treo 700W. It had a community that was growing and excited to be part of this different crowd. We had Tweetups and global 24hr Twestivals (that raised money for clean drinking water in Africa, Charity Water). We thought we were cutting edge. There were people hooking into the network to make it better, like TweetDeck and these other services.

Then came the politicians, journalists, salesmen, bots, and all manner of poison. yeah, the service grew but the culture died. Now Twitter/X is a cesspool of shit posting. yes there's good to be found but so much joy is gone. This happens with every service, it seems.

But Nostr, for now, is different. It takes me back to UseNet days and 9600 baud modems, before search engines and browsers, where some technical proficiency was the barrier and the signal was pure. Back then and for much of the 90's we were concerned about our privacy and were super sketch at the idea of giving out our credit card. We went by anonymous names but met IRL (as the kids say these days). We hosted our own sites and feared no algorythm.

There are those who think Social Media became a thing with Twitter. or FaceBook, or MySpace, or Friendster... I've met those SM agency folk. They miss that the internet IS social media from the get go. They confuse the term SM with what they really mean as ROI, KPMs, data mining, user harvesting, clicks, views, and other commercial nonsense. It's the friends you meet along the way... that's the real value.

I have very little doubt that as Nostr grows so too will it silo and large commercial ventures will eye it for its riches BUT as it is a protocol we have the ability to really keep some semblance of sovereignty alive and I honestly haven't seen that in... nearly 30 years.