Replying to Avatar Tauri

Yeah, you’re missing the point again. The Core example was off topic, sure, but I used an extreme one to make the point clearer. I’ve tried a bunch of Nostr clients, and Damus is by far the most unfriendly to beginners imo. I just don’t see how appealing to decentralisation helps Damus justify its inferior product when users can switch between dozens of other clients without losing any Nostr data.

If Primal, for example, decides to fuck their users — leaks my burner email, fake name, or rugs a couple hundred sats in their built-in wallet — what’s really at stake? I can still move to another client that’s just as decentralised, supposedly doesn’t harvest my data, and looks and feels better than Damus in its current state. So when you say Primal is “harming decentralisation,” what exactly is the harm in practice? If a user can migrate instantly without friction or loss, then that’s not centralisation — that’s just bad trust in one interface. Damus being ugly and unusable doesn’t somehow make it more virtuous.
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vinney...axkl 2mo ago

Let me take a step back here, maybe we're not on the same page. First, are you aware of and understand the situation I'm referring to (below)?

nostr:nevent1qvzqqqqqqypzqth65u2mhdrd6klxkldg6acqyek3ze6tjyacz79dmdwzuc7esue3qy2hwumn8ghj7un9d3shjtnyv9kh2uewd9hj7qghwaehxw309aex2mrp0yh8qunfd4skctnwv46z7qpq3xt9s3jhspt4jjwta2h7qtqjeyp6t73ghcqkxwx0mgh6453ueyxsvcya3n

It's not about having your wallet rugged or "losing nostr data". It's about the content you - and thousands of other newly-onboarded users - see being manipulated, re-ordered, hidden, filtered, by a central curator with no way to turn the setting off. Perhaps you want that, and that's fine - but are you aware of it?

Talk about Core making changing settings difficult... Primal doesn't even have an "off" switch for this.

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Tauri 2mo ago

Thanks for this explainer. The answer is no, I didn’t know that, and I only have a surface-level understanding of what you’re describing — which is kind of the issue. As a user, I don’t need or want to understand it. And it’s much easier for me to assess the implications if the actors behind it turn malicious. Most users won’t even think twice about it. If the goal is to protect normies from curated or possibly manipulative content, appealing to their understanding of the risks won’t get you super far. The opportunity cost of trying probably isn’t worth it.

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vinney...axkl 2mo ago

Is the implication here basically that "those who are doing real decentralization" can only hope to "protect users" by building a client prettier and slicker than all the other "potentially harmful" clients out there? More or less that users shouldn't be expected to look beyond that veneer, so the best you can do to "protect their interests", as a principled freedom tech developer, is to make sure they're attracted to your product than to the "evil competitor"?

I'm not even necessarily disagreeing with that. I'm just trying to get to the last page in the book faster.

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Tauri 2mo ago

If you want wider adoption, yes, more or less it’s what I’m saying. If you’re targeting cypherpunk mentality, you will probably have success appealing to them with technical details and strong code fundamentals, but when it comes to normies (mainstream adoption), priories shift rapidly. You can argue that’s why the “crypto” industry has been successfully attracting dumb people with shiny toys for many years, while Bitcoin is more popular among critical thinkers or people that have the ability to learn from past mistakes. What initially attracted people to Bitcoin wasn’t its solid fundamentals, it was the potential for outsized returns. They only had to learn the fundamentals after some got burned by the shiny alternatives. Nostr users are still early on the journey. Almost no normies use the protocol right now. But if that changes in the future, would you bet that most of them will be onboarded by the cypherpunk clients or with the Primal-likes?

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vinney...axkl 2mo ago

> would you bet that most of them will be onboarded by the cypherpunk clients or with the Primal-likes?

I see where you're going with that, but I would go further, sadly... I don't even think the Primal-likes are enough to attract the normie at the moment. Their brains are too fucking cooked with megacorp social media garbage and they are frogs-in-boiling-water wrt realizing how dangerous their situation is.

I don't talk about this much.. but I think the most durable - and unfortunately very, very slow - adoption curve is community-specific software (sure, social feeds, but also "Other Stuff" apps that achieve local goals) that serves hyper-local needs, at low-cost, low friction, and while preserving sovereignty (ie. "why should we host our town message board with Zuck or Elon? and while we're at it, lets include community payments and a job board for local babysitters, I can just fork this repo and point it at our relays...!"). That will have to bake-in for a while, and then one day these communities will realize they can actually opt to "federate" with other communities who are doing something slightly similar; communicate and make payments across communities without permission or restriction, etc.

Depending on what else is going on in the world at that moment, eyes may finally open.

Simply: what normie X user is going to switch off of X for something even 100x prettier than Primal?

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Tauri 2mo ago

It’s crazy that you mention that — just yesterday a colleague of mine (not a Bitcoiner) pitched me basically the *same* app idea. I told her she could build it on Nostr. She had no idea what that was, so I gave her a 15-minute rundown and showed her how it works, lightning payments and all. She got it immediately and was actually excited. Today she told me she slept on it and thinks it’s a genius idea that could totally work.

So yeah, normies can figure this stuff out with a bit of direction. We just need to get them into the community using the best tools available and let them take it from there. Freedom doesn’t need coordination — it happens naturally. Normies stick to platforms because their friends and heroes are still there. Once that changes, they’ll move too. They’re followers by nature.

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vinney...axkl 2mo ago

LFG buddy

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Tauri 2mo ago

I’m showing her this conversation on Monday. Really wild.

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vinney...axkl 2mo ago

looking forward to that :)

hell, let's get it built for her. there are enough software developers here.

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Tauri 2mo ago

Stay tuned 🫡