Twitter under Elobs's guidance is rebranding as X, the everything app. Elon intends verifying the identity of each user by making them send in copies of their ID. This may feel 'normal' in today's world but it leads to censorship, control and i think unintended consequences. A company in the states and other small groups with money and power can now control who sees what and who is banned. This can lead to negative outcomes and second order effects that you cannot protect. It leads to more targeted surveillance and less freedom. The internet itself is built upon TCP/IP, a language that is robust, proven and free for anyone to use. It makes the internet a free and powerful place where anyone can learn and develop. However, third parties like Paypal, Facebook, Apple, internet service providers, Telecoms companies now own and run their walled gardens, complete with user ccounts, built on top of TCP/IP. Hats off to them, they run such succesful businesses. But you know have much of the internet controlled by a small number of companies. So, to solve this you can build decentralised platforms, protocols (languages) that have permission less platforms. This I think is healthy. Nature is diverse, or perhaps you could say the more diverse a biological system is the more healthy it is.
So, their is a new kid on the block called NOSTR.
https://nostr.com/
It allows anyone to create an identity. It is decentralised. Anyone can build on it and use it.
Resilient, censorship resistant and available to all.
So have a look and learn about tools that allow you to chose, to be free, to decide what you do with your online life. Not Elon, not Apple, not any centralised body.
Elon has done lots of good things, but I think he does not respect or value user privacy. Or perhaps he doesn't see the negative consequences of mass online surveilance. His products like X can offer reach, some verifiability, the efficiencies gained with central control and a platform with a huge network effect. So it is a trade off. But I will no longer use Twitter.
Consider this, AI that is publically available can easily fake your voice and face data, it can solve those annoying captchas, it can even make fairly convincing deep fake movies. AI with hackers and the many data breaches make easy work of finding your personal details online. So fake accounts can be made easily that mimic you. Not the intended outcome, but this happens. So Elon may have good intentions, maybe he has gone mad, maybe power always corrupts. Who knows.
With Nostr, your identity is a number, actually a cryptographic key that you prove mathematically. You can be you, or any nym you want. But you cannot be copied or deleted or censored. This is old tech, been around since 1993. But applied now in a clever way to make a social media platform that is open and has no algorithmic bias.
nostr.com
Watch the short videos on the website, shorter and more entertainung than my 'article!'
