Unfortunately I am unable to use Primal. I disagree with their terms of service.
I tried nostr.band, and it doesn't seem to allow you to subscribe to hashtags or keywords. The "home feed" just seems to be follows.
Discussion
Nostr.band allows you to search people or posts by hashtag or keyword. I’m not sure what you mean by subscribe as opposed to search … ?
I mean that I'd have a single custom feed that has every post mixed together. It would have posts from every user I'm following and every post with any hashtag I'm following. Amethyst already has this, it's just missing the ability to also include every post matching any keyword searches I would follow.
I suppose there are two ways to think about keyword search, and it depends on how the results are organized and presented to the end user.
According to what I’ll call the nostr way, bc it seems like this is how it’s usually done, results are shown in reverse chronological order, and we call it a “feed.”
According to the other way - I guess I’ll call it the Google way - results are not presented chronologically. As users we don’t call it a “feed,” we just call it search results.
Is there a reason that nostr presents everything as a “feed” that’s organized chronologically, as opposed to search results that are ordered using some other method? Is there a demand among nostr users for search results that aren’t feeds? Or are we satisfied that chronological order is the best and only way?
For me I highly value the reverse cronological order because I've performed the same search dozens if not hundreds of times. I want to see the latest results. Additionally, feeds tend to "OR" the terms together. For example, the feed might show results that have "asknostr" OR "libertarian" OR "from:npub****". With search results on the other hand, people tend to want them to be "AND"ed together, such as with "Spongebob" AND "meme" AND "toilet".
Does that sound right?
Yeah, the AND vs OR distinction makes sense, and I think it fits well into the larger conceptual framework I have in mind.
So maybe there are two categories of keyword search:
1. feeds
- results arranged in reverse chronological order
- search criteria combined via OR
- examples from the fiat world: Twitter, fb, other social media
2. Non-feed search results
- results arranged by “importance scores”
- search criteria combined via AND
- examples from the fiat world: Google search
The first case, you’re basically engaged in conversations with other users, so a strong recency bias makes sense. In the second case, you’re looking for info that is not necessarily recent. There is no “conversation” per se.
What do you think?
In the first case, you’re looking outward, engaging in convo with other people.
In the second case, you’re looking inward, engaged in quiet contemplation. You’re harvesting info from outside sources but not necessarily doing so for the sake of conversation.
Two very different mindsets, requiring two very different user experiences.
As builders, perhaps it makes sense to appreciate the above two, quite distinct states of mind: outward looking versus inward looking.
There’s a reason that the Google search results page doesn’t have like buttons, doesn’t prompt you to leave comments, etc. It’s bc users adopt the inward looking state of mind, not the outward looking one. They are expecting to consume content without also producing it.
I don't think it makes sense to design a product for people who only consume and never contribute. Even Google goes to great lengths to sell their customers. Besides, what could a person even get out of Nostr if they refuse to engage?
So if I use Google search (without engaging or contributing) just one time, does that equal refusing to engage or contribute forever and ever?
As consumers we don’t just do the same thing all the time. There are distinct products for distinct purposes.
I don't know, but Google certainly wouldn't be too happy about wasting their servertime on you.
Could you give examples of useful AND based Nostr searchs?
I did a Google search the other day and I didn’t click the like button on a single search result! Didn’t leave any comments either. No upvotes, nothing. They haven’t banned me from their servers yet.
idk what you mean by a based search.
Google used the information from your search to build more of their profile of you, which they DO sell to people. Google records the links people click and uses that data as well. You can rest easy knowing that Google will do anything they can to take their pound of flesh from you.
I said an "AND based" search, meaning based on returning only notes matching every term rather than returning results matching any term. Does that clarify my question?
haha yes, I misread your question, my bad.
Although I suppose I still don’t understand your question. You want to know whether there are any nostr AND based search engines? Not that I know of. You want me to give an example of an AND based search that I’d actually like to run? How about a search I just ran on Google: “LMDB” + “neo4j” + “ETL pipeline”. Of course, nostr is too young and devoid of content to give anything useful for that search, but hopefully one day that won’t be the case.
How about if I want content authored by Alice AND containing some specific keyword.
Yes, I understand that Google records my searches and clicks and every piece of data they can lay their hands on about me, so they can monetize it. An insidious dynamic that I hope we can destroy. But that’s unrelated to the idea that there are two types of content: content that is intended to be part of a conversation and therefore loses its value as it ages and therefore should be displayed in reverse chronological order vs content that is intended to be durable, content that does not automatically lose its value just bc it’s 5 minutes old.