Nostr Web Client

the tone of this is way over the top. And it clearly stems from the source being comcast owned nbc universal owned vox media owned editor in chief of the verge who frequents cnbc. We aren’t even talking about legacy new media, this source is transparently an attack piece from traditional legacy media who has successfully gas lit the escalation of this piece to headline with “NAZI!” It’s seriously wacko, and to claim that people need a safe space whilst bullying people with extremely non-serious allegations that they are tied to a modern nazi party is Hegelian double speak nonsense.

I think you genuinely want the best for nostr, but the fear approach is uncalled for. Go build a place for people to avoid the number one complain, “it’s just all ‘stack sats” and that same mechanism can help individuals avoid other things that would make their personal utopia worth trading for caring about what some irrelevant faceless person said in the global feed that probably shouldn’t exist, and doesn’t on centralized substack.

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Discussion

I think the primary barriers to nostr’s adoption are around getting enough momentum and experience so that people will join because they friends are here and that’s where the action is. And one major issue is that nostr is considered a bitcoiner thing. Lots of people have negative opinions about bitcoin, and cryptocurrencies in general. So to get nostr to grow, there needs a way for people to join and create communities of people who aren’t interested in bitcoin and don’t want to talk to bitcoiners.

For example, in Nos, we populate our explore tab with a bunch of npubs of people we think represent a diversity of views and communities.

RAM02 2y ago

💯 agreed

やトナ 2y ago

Idk what you all were talking about above this note but I really agree with this one. Nostr will never get widespread adoption if we don’t stop treating this as just one big orange pilling opportunity. I think the conversation is starting to diversify more but every time a new user gets here they’re hit with “set up your lightning wallet” right away. And every “introduction” website tells you about zaps before you even need to scroll down. To no coiners that’s annoying and to them probably sounds scammy. Yeah, zaps are a massive feature, but they’re just an add on to what nostr really is, and making nostr all about bitcoin is just going to get the same reaction from people that bitcoin itself does.

Yeah, if the first time somebody knows that nostr supports lightning or bitcoin or payments is: “hey I like your stuff, can you setup a lightning wallet so I can send you something to thank you for your contribution” then it’s about adopting the technology and not the ideology or culture.

Before nostrica my nostr experience had very little mentions of plebs, no-coiner, shitcoiner, and memes with glowing red eyes. Then I decided I needed to be part of a larger discussion of folks making parts of the Nostr ecosystem… Now I’ve got lots of maximalist content which I’d rather not wade through.

jimbocoin 🃏 2y ago

Respectfully disagree. Nostr—like any upstart—can’t win on content, at least not in the short term. For people swayed by content, the incumbent, walled gardens reign supreme.

To win in the short term, nostr has to take on legacy platforms by beating them at something other than content. Anonymous, rapid payments (zaps) are one such avenue.

Another is competition. By decoupling ID, protocol, client and content, nostr allows participation and flourishing that legacy systems can’t touch.

Curtailing #Bitcoin talk to woo no-coiners is doomed to fail because it takes the game back to the court of content. Instead, Nostr wins by focusing on its strengths—rapid, decentralized development and integrated anonymous micropayments.

I’m not saying you should talk less about #bitcoin. Just that there is a compelling need for new systems like nostr and many communities of folks are looking and not interested in bitcoin culture.

jimbocoin 🃏 2y ago

In that case, I’d recommend a custom client.

Legacy, walled garden, social media companies can’t afford to staff development for special interest groups. So instead they produce the same, bland, homogenized UX for everyone.

With nostr, there’s an opportunity to develop bespoke, targeted clients (and/or relays) that cater to specific groups with unique needs.

the talk has lead to the tech, and you gotta let that speak for itself. Winning results in this not being a unique interesting thing about your personality… it’s ironic in conversation about identity (that most are vehemently against) you desperately want to cling to listing your cryptonouns on your profile when you’ve already won here.

Rimbaud 2y ago

I appreciate these perspectives; I think the key might be to continue to build what 'bitcoin culture' means, implies, is immediately associated with. -- I do think there has been something of an effort to associate #bitcoin with a particular cultural leaning, and I agree that, that would certainly not be productive, nor I suspect, possible. Precisely because of the unbiased virtues of the protocol, distributed ledger, blockchain, and the potential. Bitcoin and its future will be written, manifested, and chosen by all - these are early days and 'interesting times.'

やトナ 2y ago

Nostr already beats the legacy system before it had zaps because of its general make up and its censorship resistance. Zaps are just an added feature.

We don’t need to curtail the bitcoin talk but we shouldn’t be shoving it down everyone’s throats right when they arrive and there should be a way for them to avoid being caught up in all the bitcoin talk. It’s a turn off to no coiners and I’m speaking from experience. I’ve tried to get several people on here but as soon as I mention bitcoin they’re out. If I explain it without mentioning bitcoin they’re more interested, but then they won’t come because the entire conversation is about bitcoin.

I think two easy solutions are to stop including zaps at the beginning of every single “introduction guide” and clients allowing people to mute words.

At some point a nostr user will learn about zaps just from being here, it doesn’t need to be the selling point that just scares people off.

I’m not saying don’t talk about bitcoin, but what I’m saying is there needs to be space for lots of communities who never want to near about bitcoin or encryption or monetary policy, etc… If you’re person who’s really in to knitting, you want to talk about knitting.

When Occupy Wallstreet started and as occupy grew, the core organizing and form of organizing was explicitly anarchist. Ideologically, an attempt to take the politics of the anti-globalization movement and make it relevant to local concerns as it were. The way of organizing was anarchist, the understanding of the problem and solutions were anarchist. Yet there was an intentional effort to NOT talk about anarchism. It was about the practice, the issues at hand, the people. Sure if you asked, people wouldn’t deny their ideology, but you didn’t join occupy because you had read political theory and decided that you were an anti-authoritarian leftist. You joined because the idea that 1% of the population shouldn’t control the economic and political system. Then in practice, you saw the politics play out and you could decide if you liked it.

If on the other hand Occupy had said, “we want to black pill you to become a true believer in the anarchist revolution and direct action.” Then a lot of people who might like the ideas and find value in participating in the movement would be turned off.

People should join and use nostr because it meets their needs, they can connect and create social space for themselves. Not because how the social software handles payments.

imma just leave this previous rant here

nostr:note1fa4q5vuedyf3e86jfc4g49882p9f6wmqcv6enpxek0psealk6k6sus9w2l

Some random thoughts on what you guys are discussing:

1. I agree that we need more than bitcoin conversations. I think this is an onboarding / discovery problem that needs to be solved. Ideally you’d sign up and be able to choose some topics to follow. Naturally this would reduce your exposure to bitcoin.

2. Nostr is and will be different things for different people and people will join for a variety of reasons not one. For some it will be the nature of the protocol. For others it may be just exploring something new and different. And for some it may actually be the payment stuff.

3. Zaps ARE a huge innovation on top of Nostr and for many will be the distinguishing factor that make it special. To say that zaps should be tucked away somewhere because it scares people off is incorrect IMO. In fact, I would argue it’s the “decentralization” talking points that scare people away. It sounds a lot like crypto / scam industry.

4. I think we’ll see different use cases and clients bring in different audiences who experience nostr differently. If @Zapstr ever comes to life, those people would have little to do with knitting or bitcoin. They’ll just stick to music and possibly general conversations. The same goes for Onlyzaps (not the hashtag but only fans clones and the likes). For these industries, how you handle payments IS the differentiator. It seems people forget these other use cases and only talk about social…

5. That’s all… give it time. Relax. Build. Talk about things other than bitcoin ;) Don’t ask people to set up a wallet. Let them explore on their own.

MadGrowr 2y ago

Also the blog platforms are really game changer.

All those gumroad and patreon like services might be replaced too.

Someone mentioned in a podcast recently, also, machine to machine exchange of messages and payment of services between them.

Yep, many possibilities! We are just very early and mature clients will exist later.

The Marie ⚡️🦂 2y ago

Well said 🫂

3. no one’s arguing that zaps should be tucked away… No one is scared of zaps. 🤦‍♀️

the reality is one can’t set up zaps with out seeing 100 absolutely substance-less “stack sats” posts, and every profile has cryptonouns, which is redundantly dumb if every profile and note has a zap button. This effort might still be needed, if you can stomach push back, out there, but here it’s an attack on zaps.

This is just a problem of discovery. In time it’ll be solved.

Yeah or don’t mention at all.

some are talented enough evangelists that their efforts here might be useful out there, others didn’t see success out there, and have found a circular economy of evangelicalism here that makes them feel successful, but it’s not accomplishing anything except for fulfilling the bad expectations of people who were willing to put their reservations aside and peek inside

I think even talking about making money from your social media posts isn’t a great pitch for most people. Because most people read and don’t post.

🤷‍♂️

…ever shrinking creator funds yada yada…

Heri Sim 2y ago

Is not always about making money. It's about assigning value to this worthless likes.

Maybe the community could create a bot service that will automatically like all your posts once you set it up via DM.

Real friends don't let friends not use Zaps.

Heri Sim 2y ago

I think for those folks who opt into #onlyzaps, Nostr clients could combine zaps and likes into one button. Afterall, it's a zap with 0 sat.

If you like something on nostr, you should repost it, so word gets around and the content has a chance to gain visibility. Since Nostr is not Twitter, it works on decentralized relays.

やトナ 2y ago

I agree with all of this. I don’t want zaps tucked away. Anyone who comes to nostr is going to organically learn about zaps, so I don’t think there’s a need to make that priority number 1 right when someone gets here.

Yeah I don’t even bother bringing it up. Also got rid of my laser eyes cat pfp. We might be scaring people away with that.

pam 2y ago

That poor kitty cat

He’s still pulling all the strings. I’m just the puppet. Who knows he may yank me away and make a comeback!

Tico 🇨🇷 2y ago

Agree. Specially point 5. I welcome users I see in global, and most respond fine, but got in a situation one called me spammer and scammer when I sent instructions on how to setup zaps... I got blocked and reported.

Now you mentioned that, I understand a little more why that happened likely

I see it more as, people aren’t giving the room for zaps to speak for itself, jumping in the way with meme terms and substance-less chains of content before anyone could have the time to set up a ln wallet.