After three years of Amethyst I switched to Primal a month ago or two. All your contra arguments are my pro arguments now and I say...
I am not being glib here, Primal is the number 1 argument against Nostr I come across. I don’t really have a response against the argument either, other than hoping that Primal changes or it eventually becomes a marginal client. But at this moment, all we have is promises while it probably is the most popular client out there.
For those not aware, Primal does not use relays on the input side, although it does on the output side. This means that it connects to a caching server, not a relay, and you will only see what is on there. If someone references an event that is not on that server, even though relay hints are included, tough luck; the only redeeming factor is that those outside of this primal box will see your complaint you can’t see the event.
These quirks resulting from Primal being Notes and other stuff transmitted by cashing-server, instead of relays are annoying, but the most worrying part is the fact that its a real manifestation of the biggest fragility Nostr has as a protocol: Clients ignoring the spec and the design philosophy of openness and interoperability while being in a dominant popular position. I can make arguments all day about the theoretical merits of Nostr, but they are easily undermined by pointing to Primal. What am I supposed to say in response? More theoretical notions like people being able to change software, even though we know that is just not going to happen?
I understand people will retain their profile, social graph, posts etc. if they move to another client, but as it stands those just become excuses for Primal to be a bad actor; how about just fixing your shit, so I don’t have to manually broadcast my stuff so people in the Primal-box can see it, but above all I can argue for Nostr without having to concede that the censorship resistant theory is not living up to practice. nostr:nevent1qqspy7pxqwk66dm46yxwetee0m2lrz5zeh2ldcwycrt6fuegyrllqlctrjx2f
Discussion
good 2 know - some i knew - but ONBOARDING DUMBS IDIOTS from tiktok / x / others - primal is best
I try primal occasionally and can never switch from Amethyst. I don't understand how a client with a caching server is so much slower to one without. Accessing the comments to a note has a noticeable lag, and I often notice comments on Amethyst that just aren't there on primal.
Yes that's odd when you think about it. But I don't think about it any more and I just accept it. Nostr is slow. I'm also not in a rush when I sit down and scroll through the 50 new posts that came in over the last 24 hours.
Primal is also constantly losing its connection, whatever that means. Just now again. But, whatever. After all these years of overthinking and trying to make devs understand, I deliberately underthink now.
If it sucks, it sucks and I just won't use their thing anymore.
So much here is coded in the wind. All this vibe code nonsense only makes me wonder whether people have nothing to do with their lives. But, then again, just like Satoshi's most famous album: Nevermind.
hahaha, to be fair, i have that issue with yakihonne and amethyst as well.
I can't say the same, though they each do have their own quirks.
Yes, this is my primal experience 😂
YakiHonne much better.
yeah same, that's why i've been switching between satellite and jumble lately.
That's really my main gripe, is the lag. It is where I'll go when something isn't rendering on Damus though. And I did notice superior performance on bad internet while traveling abroad a while ago.
I dumped Primal for Yakihonne today. Doesn't get any better or faster, speed will always be limited by the network itself
Maybe I'm just lucky to have fast Internet then. But the slowness remains with primal, comments take a few seconds to load, with a loading animation. Yakihonne is much better, a brief flash of a loading animation, less than a second. On Amethyst they are just there already when I click on a note, immediately ready for me to interact with.
Things like this matter. As load times increase, so does the bounce rate. Even a lag of 3 seconds will cause a lot of users to leave. It's why web developers spend so much time optimizing for it. It's why I cringe even I see people recommend primal for onboarding users, as it is a bad example of what Nostr can be.