do both 🤝

share more personally

where you control your data

and go more anon

where you don’t

I have one account here. My real name is on it, for better or for worse. I'm not active on any other social media except to follow some artists on twitter.

I put a lot of care into being self-sovereign over my data, self-hosting what I can and encrypting what I can't. For operational security, I learned a lot from Mitnick's The Art of Invisibility. It may seem less convenient every day, but owning your data when no one else will and staying private when no one else will is worth it.

I avoid identifying details like ages/dates/names, but outside of that I am pretty transparent about myself and family things. I prefer to be honest and open in real life and carry that over here. As you more than likely feel, nostr has been a place where I don’t feel the need to grandstand like other traditional platforms. So because of that, it’s much easier to be myself, just with some redacted personal information.

First you realize there is no privacy with Nostr. Everything you post is essentially here forever.

Then you realize that’s how the entire internet works. Every server you interact with that isn’t ingesting E2E encrypted data could expose that data (if it doesn’t by default). Your Instagram DM could get exposed in a hack, or Instagram could be secretly sharing it with advertisers anyway.

I come here to share thoughts, and because of the permanence of the internet, I don’t necessarily what these thoughts associated with me forever. At least not yet. There are people I know and work with that have such a stigma about these topics that it could legitimately have a negative impact… and you can’t undox yourself.

Is that disingenuous and self-censoring bullshit? I mean… yeah probably.

But, this is one of the only places I share what I actually think without giving a shit what anyone thinks of it. In that way it feels like a super power.

I think eventually I’ll put my name on here… or maybe I’ll always be a dragon, it’s kinda fun. Either way - due to the nature of the internet, I don’t think there’s anything wrong with sharing anonymous thoughts.

Hm, also, here’s an additional thought:

On Nostr, anon accounts work better than any other social media, because of zaps.

You’re still incentivized to post good content, be respectful, build rapport, etc.

Being a belligerent jerk or a bot is way more of a waste on Nostr than on Twitter, for example.

I'm on the fence. I like the idea of privacy, but I also want to create relationships with people on social that also transfer IRL. So you meet me online and in person I'm the same person.

I try to think, act, react and most respect people on #nostr like I do IRL. The big difference is that for now the people here seem to share the same values.

Partition.

Just partition.

Be honest & don't lie, but never tell the whole story at once. Always just enlighten parts of truth about you, but never everything at the same time, in the same medium.

This way, you are quite anonymous or pseudonymous (depending on how much you hide), but to be able to use that information against you, people (or AI) would need to greatly research everything about you, to connect all the pieces, but by then you have proven that they put a lot of energy into making you seem bad, which lowers their own reputation, leading to you being able to counter them in a trustworthy way. :)

That said, the road to hell is paved with good intentions. Most people don't realise, that good intentions really suck.

What matters is what you do & how you do it.

If the wrong man uses the right means, the right means work in the wrong way.

Did you know, that everything that happens to you, is your doing?