Let me see if I can sum up my thoughts (this one is going to be long, apologies in advance).
The Fediverse is the bigger, older network. It’s really hard to reach all the right corners and instances, as a lot of them block each other and self-hosted instances like mine. I’ll try not to bash Mostr too hard, but the truth is… a lot of the good content I consume on Mastodon doesn’t make it across the bridge. Unfortunately, a lot of the content I want to avoid from the Fediverse does, to the point that I’m blocking all npubs with a NIP-05 from Mostr. This is not a statement against Mastodon or the author of the bridge. It’s just acknowledging that the ratio of crap to good content makes the bridge not worth it for me.
There’s a lot of great content on Mastodon, e.g., about Software Engineering, FOSS, Cyber Security, Retro Computing (even relatively niche things such as FPGA emulation communities, decompilations, etc). But you have to dig hard to find it, often by finding and impoting (not exactely up to date) follow lists externally.
And even on the political side of things, I like the balance of engaging with folks from different backgrounds and beliefs. I exist somewhere between the 25-year-old sovereign citizen with laser eyes on Nostr talking about privately building bridges (while barely able to assemble IKEA furniture by themselves) and the stereotypical 50-year-old self-declared communist working for IBM while trying to kickstart a revolution against the bourgeoisie on Mastodon. Having proper access to both sides helps me maintain some balance and cynicism about the state of things, while also connecting with the humans behind the BS. I do my best to understand both extremes and enjoy what they have to offer (and yes, folks on both extremes are still human and building interesting stuff).
Protocol-wise, I think Nostr has an edge. Not because it’s necessarily better designed (it isn’t), but because it’s relatively simple and approaches things from a best-effort, early-internet angle. Basically, anyone can teach themselves enough about WebSockets and JSON to build something on Nostr. Meanwhile, ActivityPub has a more “enterprisey” mindset, which feels great for folks like me but can be challenging for newcomers just trying to hack together something interesting. Also, mixing client and server in Mastodon, having a verbose protocol that can inadvertently DDoS legitimate instances, and binding user identity and content to specific instances are all architectural trade-offs that I dislike.
So, my take is that I still get more out of the Fediverse content-wise, but Nostr is the sort of protocol I’d like to see winning if we’re thinking of a web closer to what the early internet used to be.
Another important point is onboarding folks to decentralised socisl mefis. It’s certainly easier to convince the typical Java Champion, book author, PhD at Fancy University / Assistant Professor at another Fancy University who only posts on LinkedIn to join a “tame” Mastodon instance than to join Nostr. To be honest, I find it hard to onboard and retain anyone from my outside network here. The real proposition is that they’ll basically be posting to themselves using hashtags, surrounded by the whole BTC / carnivorous diet / right-wing pseudo-libertarian US-centred politics and all the scientific denial on Nostr. Very few people are willing to do that. Also, a lot of the content here simply doesn’t make sense from a European perspective (for example, nobody cares if you drink or sell raw milk).
Still, for all its advantages, Mastodon and the Fediverse have their problems: a particular brand of web moralism, tight moderation on major instances, cancel culture, and friendly fire against science. It can get boring and “sterile” pretty quickly. I find myself spending more and more time on Nostr... Again, not because of the content per se, but because I’ve made some proper human connections here. There's skme really cool people here behind the pseudonyms. Once you break into Nostr, you get genuine human engagement. Things feel more alive here, even though there’s less content to look at and much less engagement overall... It just feels more genuine... It's hard to explain. You know what I mean?
Hopefully, this gives a good overview of why I’m on both networks. A lot of people here on Nostr have had terrible experiences on the Fediverse; they were cancelled for their beliefs, blocked from big instances, etc. I have no reason not to believe what they are saying, and knowing the mechanics of Mastodon moderation and reading some of what they post on Nostr, I do believe them. Having said that, it isn’t my case at all. I still maintain healthy connections and a well-curated feeds on Fedi. I also have connections who are allergic to Nostr and anything even slightly related to “crypto.” There’s no convincing them otherwise, and I still love them regardless. So, I’m happy to maintain a presence on both networks; even though, development-wise, my focus has almost entirely shifted to Nostr.
