The only thing the oppressor has is pessimism.
There is no advantage to SMS over encrypted messengers, other than the network effect.
Windows over Linux.
Fiat over Crypto.
Twitter over Nostr.
It's all network effect.
The network effect is nothing more than pessimism. The person says "Yes that solution is better, but it's unlikely to succeed"
I may not have a lot of money. I may have failed a lot in the past.
But I got optimism. And as long as you have a little as well, we can win
I never looked at it that way, but yeah that is the internal motivator that leads people away from better alternatives in anything social. "Nobody will use it", self fulfilling prophecy, there's a good definition of network effects right there.
Very well put, I hear a lot that kind of things and worst like "Yeah, we need more state regulation" and such. They never see the possibility of being in charge of their money or digital life. I konw, it's hard, but if never start... 🤷♂️
For Twitter (or any centralized platform) over Nostr, another problem is the plethora of perfectly good federated/decentralized existing protocols. From SMTP (with a decent client like Deltachat) to Matrix to AP (not encrypted) to XMPP (no common message store) SSB to Retroshare to Nostr to ... the problem is guessing which will end up with the most market share.
I currently use (and self host) XMPP, Matrix,SSB,Retroshare,SMTP (with alpine client) and use (with 3rd party hosting) Nostr, AP (qoto.org and llamarific.social).
But they are all fragmented as to contacts. People glaze over when I try to explain why SMS is only for emergencies in a weak signal area.
Forgot to mention: SIP. Can use with a cryptomesh like Cjdns to fully decentralize with encryption on any device.
Yes, and the pessimism presumes only one network and no other...
