Nostr has destroyed the reward for effort expended by content creators, by focusing on following.
Following is self-perpetuating and only reflects _past effort_. It's a branding system, but worse than traditional social media because it's an ossified market. Nobody has to work to maintain the position of their brand, on here.
There's too little competition. Too little capitalism. Too little effort.
But I said good morning and everything… Is that why some always type in caps? #Effort.
Not sure I fully get what you mean regarding content creators. Are you saying we’re lazy?
No, I'm saying there is no punishment for laziness.
It's the same dynamic, as with the software quality. If you get paid, whether it works or not, making sure it works is just a personal habit or preference, and not something demanded by the market.
We've removed follows from our landing page and are focusing on the actual content, to counteract this effect.
You will have to actually publish something worth reading, to get to the top of the list. Simply being popular, or being known from elsewhere, will not be enough. And being unknown, but talented or industrious, will be enough.
I guess I'm prone to take things a little personally at the moment as I'm not moving forward with plans. So much of what I want to do involves setting up things in the real world but there's a lot of moving parts. January is a bit of a struggle, like wadding through mud. I should be providing some interesting content later in the year... Spent the last 3 days glued to a computer dealing with stuff I don't understand.
Anyway, onward and upwards...
If you took it personally, then it meant I'm not wrong. 😁
It's veeery easy to get comfortable and formulaic, on here -- even if you arrived hungry and ambitious -- because it's currently structured like real estate in Manhattan:
Show up, grab some prime property, retire, occasionally go for a walk around the block and nod to the neighbors, collect rents.
We need to invent a target 2% inflation rate of the attention market. Make everyone slaves on the treadmill. If you are not producing, then you go backwards. We can harvest the 2% to maintain the system we designed. We'll call it fiat attention.
Maybe harvest body parts from those that fall behind?
Nostrica was the beginning of proof of stake
Can you explain better? I can't understand.
On most social media, you have to constantly expend effort to maintain an audience and customers. It's hard work. You have to constantly create something new, which is why it's called "content creation".
On Nostr, you can just have one post go viral, because some gigantic npub boosted it, and then you get so many followers that you never have to post anything interesting ever again. And if you get added to a "recommended" list, that is doubled-down upon because everyone new also follows you.
You can just post "GM" every day, forever, and stay at the top of the list.
Someone arriving later, making much more effort, doesn't have a statistically-relevant chance of ever being in the same position, unless they are known from someplace else.
I'm that someone and I'm working hard to make my mark on Nostr 🫡
On Nostr a single post or link
Can make a thousand people
😉
So far it's never happened to me, but I'm working on it 🫡
are you trying to beat odell in most valuable person on primal?
Followers on Nostr is nice because they follow you everywhere, but it doesn't mean they always read you, and the latter thing is so everywhere.
So a post can go viral and increase your followers but you can't make a living without making interesting content.
I have worked and still work constantly to get quality followers, quantity does not interest me.
This is my opinion.
It's a chicken-egg problem, tho, as you can't get quality followers, without quantity followers. You have to get over a certain number, to create a dynamic impulse, depending upon your content, because discovery is _still_ primarily over followers.
I agree with you, in fact I think my number of followers is excessively high compared to how many I have ever had on other social networks. However, in this quantity I have fortunately also found quite a lot of quality, but I do not sit on my laurels and try to keep producing valuable content.
Is it a bad thing? Draw a parallel with bitcoin. Early adopters have more time in the market, and reap the benefits thereof. Firrt couple years on nostr, there was an opportunity cost to staying here...but those who believed tn the principles (embodied in the tech), and who had a lower time preference (in a manner of speaking) are reaping the behefits for having done so. I think it's simply the nature of the free market.
GM
GM
I think the demand for newer content isn't as frequent right now, or at least the systems (none) in place make fetching new content harder on Nostr.
That being said, I think maintaining a social media presence is work, and some content creators can get complacent.
However, I will say the game is slightly different on Nostr in a way but it can still fall victim to conventional social media problems due to the conversations function (which isn't inherently good, or bad, it just is).
if life is fair it would be boring
The GM cliche is garbage. Agreed.
this is very accurate.
It is ok if gaing follower is difficult on nostr. I don't have many people knocking on my physical front door demanding driblets of wisdom, if nostr is truer to life then it is truer full stop.
Some people are using Nostr to advertise their businesses, publish books, or preach the Gospel, sir.
We aren't all only shitposting or posting pics of our belly-button lint.
I understand that. But it is still ok. If everyone had immediate reach, it would require everyone else spend the majority of their time filtering through content.
You can either filter through slow organic growth or through algorithms. The available attention is fixed. Slow organic growth allows more people to have a small influence rather than a small number of people having a large influence.
I'd rather watch content from a local cabinet maker from whom I could buy physical goods than to have Mr Beast algorithm garbage sucking up the oxygen.
It is all what we want to incentivize.
You have it backward. The feed here is not at all organic. People are mostly being onboarded to a fixed list of npubs and lists, and they aren't seeing much beyond that.
Going back over the thread, you have made me think a bit more. You raise some points I haven't considered. The biggest being ossification of the social graph. That is a problem I haven't considered. Instead of a social web we kind of end up with social cobwebs.
The Cobweb of Trust? More thought required on how to make maintenance of relationships meaningful.
Yeah, in a natural environment, laziness is punished and effort is rewarded. This setup is completely unnatural.
People have built a shrine to themselves and we're all supposed to just come here and bow down in worship, but I kneel only for Christ and my husband.
Also, gaining followers here is not difficult. It is discouragingly difficult, revoltingly sycophantic, or bizarrely easy.
Or you can just do whatever tf you want and don't care about being viral. I take breaks often, because nostr is still—at its core, a social media network with a lot of the same stereotypes of users posting similar content as other places, and one can definitely get the same dopamine or depressive feeling from overuse, as they could from twitter, etc. ✌️
On the internet, this is quite common. Most people on Nostr are currently bitcoiners, and they have great respect for developers (who usually have the largest number of followers). This is what we call authority. Building a reputation and growing on the platform takes time. Being decentralized, Nostr has an initial network effect that can be challenging: it’s hard to get interactions at first, and that’s okay. The key is to keep creating content.
If people see value in what you post, you will eventually gain followers and, in turn, monetize your content. The main difference between Nostr and other social networks is that your content won’t be deleted (if you run your own relay), you’ll have control over what you want to see, and you won’t be demonetized or shadowbanned. So, stay focused and keep producing.
By the way, if you don’t want to build your own authority, you can simply create highlights of content from the authorities in this ecosystem. There are countless podcasts within this niche, and by making strategic highlights, you have a great chance of growing very quickly.
On the contrary
Might need to make a competition.
I understand what you mean when you say that some people just have to say GM to be on trend. But these people are the builders of Nostr and I respect them, they were here before us. I arrived last December and I know I have to work very hard to make my mark. I'm staying focused 🫡
Saying that the people with the most followers _deserve_ them because they are the only ones building and creating is a completely toxic message for newer builders and creators.
That's a literal cargo cult.
Make effort great again.
Valid points you’re making. I read through your other comments as well. Hopefully your product will be a better option for content creators developing content consistently.
Has the team created a monetization model other than zapping posts?
"Algo" built on # of followers is a ponzi.
But we are slowly getting better ones.
Some metric based on Zaps would be nice
It would have the same result, as zaps are more an effect of number of followers or getting boosted by the right person at the right moment, than some particular personal effort expended or creation of something with longer-lasting relevance.
lots of views within 24 hours = lots of zaps
Same problem we have with DVMs, to a lesser extent.
So what you’re saying is you want an algorithm to determine what is high quality content and what is not?
That's what we currently have. Recommended follows and trending are algorithms based upon being an influencer, being a gazillionaire, and/or having friends in high places, as those are the things that primarily determine what is high-quality content, currently.
I am saying that we should have an algorithm (including ones like manual curation, training your own positive and negative filters, and creating topical communities), that actually takes the quality and relevance of THE CONTENT ITSELF into account, when recommending content.
DVMs are the first attempt at this, but they seem to depend a lot on ranking by WoT, so the results are just a subset of trending.
Most social medias take into account the type of the content to recommend to a user. If you like football posts it’ll recommend football stuff. Reactions are only a measure of whether the content is liked or not. Look at TikTok for example, their algorithm is great. It’s easy to blow up if you post enough quality stuff. You don’t need to have money or famous friends to push your content.
That's why people don't want to move from there, to here. They know that their efforts here will not be duly rewarded. Even if they are successful, they will know that they were plucked out of obscurity by the Hand of Derek, or whatever, instead of it being a reflection of their personal effort.
Even some of the winners are losers, here, because they low-key know they didn't really do anything to deserve it.
Here it's like:
Hello and welcome to Nostr! We recommend you follow Odell, Lyn, and Carla. ☺️
Yeah, no thanks. Don't really care about Bitcoin. I would like to see posts about literature, history, and golf. 🫤
Here are posts written by Odell, Lyn, and Carla about how golf is stupid. ☺️
Okay... but like, what if I want to talk about golfing with someone who... you know... actually golfs? 🤨
Would you like to find out why Gigi thinks that life is like a bag of golfballs? ☺️
No, I would not. Okay, guess it's back to Tik-Tok. Bye. 🥴
You know, all this reminds me of something called bitcoin. If you have not heard of bitcoin you should look into it. It is a little like golf.
But TikToks algorithm is well known for promoting small accounts even more than big accounts
Yes, that's what I'm saying. Nostr is known for pushing large accounts really hard and burying small ones.
That's why Nostr retention rates are abysmal, and why the topics covered are expanding at such a glacial rate. Smaller npubs would create communities around new topics.
Life is like a bag of golf balls 😂 💀
HFSP
"Hand of Derek" sounds like a cool name for a nostr badge. thank you.
jokes aside, i try to do my part by sharing not only content that interests me, but content from brand new nostriches or welcoming brand new nostriches. anything to help boost new npubs, because, as i keep saying, we have to be the algorithms.
you know as well as i do that algorithmic feeds, bots, and more are getting better at surfacing content and users. it's just a matter of time until it's done very well across many clients - IF you choose to use said tools. and when that happens, im still going to continue to surface content and users, because that's what i like to do.
I also do that, with my Tiny Hand version of it, but I am against that being the main way someone gains followers or increases their reach. They shouldn't need our help to be discovered, if their content is interesting, useful, or appealing. Or, rather, our help shouldn't completely overwhelm the effect of their own effort.
Adding DVMs is not enough, to correct that. The clients have to be redesigned to focus on what is produced, rather than on who is producing it. That would prevent complacency because everyone would have to deliver, deliver, deliver to stay ahead. That would increase dynamism and make us more attractive for newcomers, as everyone could simply work hard, be consistent, find their niche, and get ahead.
I mostly agree. Everyone that wants to build their own community should have the tools to do so, but that also doesn't mean that it should be incredibly easy either. This would diminish the proof of work involved. I believe this proof of work is part of the appeal of nostr. This puts humans in charge of their attention and their content.
That said. We have technology available to us that can help here. I believe that we should have balance of proof of work and technology, a marriage that makes the task at hand easier to find your community and to build it. I don't believe going full algorithm is the way, but having them available for those to use if and when they choose isn't bad either.
I don't think it's personal lol, but the discovery/reach via large account reposts is a bit of a meta on nostr unfortunately, and this meta shapes the culture. And unfortunately it feels like this culture has somewhat petrified and not evolved past 'stuff big account from bitcointwitter like and endorse', and the meta of playing nostr becomes a thing unfortunately.
Discovery/recommendations definitely needs to be worked on. Your (or any other large accounts') tastes won't be for everyone. It feels a bit like a rigged system and not very open to a dynamic change.
I'm not having a go at you tho, rather this meta and how it has become just sort of accepted.
I didn't think it was personal? 🤣
But if you that it, that means it is! 🧐
Early adopters of any technology almost always benefit. I see Nostr as no different. Nostr has lots of room for growth and improvement. It's happening. While slow, it is happening. We just don't see it all that much since we're in the trenches here everyday. Just wait. Olas is gonna blow up. I'm making it my mission.
I think it's also worth mentioning this doesn't mean we need more professional influencers on nostr for everyone's brand of content, they should go back to craptok for that. Mass content consumerism is not what were after.
Do you like music? Here is a song about bitcoin!
Do you like art? Here is a painting of a bitcoin!
Do you like memes??? Here are memes about bitcoin!
Fucking grow up lol
I am of course exaggerating for comedic effect, but it can certainly feel a bit like this. Basically anyone making decisions about onboarding recommendations seems to be under the impression that all social media is just bitcointwitter and nothing exists outside of that stupid bubble lol.
Good morning fellow hodlers! When do you think Ethereum will hit 1 million?!
🤬MUTED!
😒Okay... back to Twitter
Zaps aren't all that different to read receipt likes here, the ideal that zaps are some sort of signal is just a slogan. (I think if nostr was a huge thriving place it may be different. For now it seems like wishfult honking and sloganeering).
It would also be quite difficult to have a ratio system of likes/zaps as a percentage of followers, because there are so many bot follow accounts on nostr. But that would be better imo. Perhaps it can be done with some sort of follower:likes system taking into account nip05 or WoT. Not sure. But a better trending system is needed.
Nostrband's trending accounts is better, and can be good for discovery.
Atm Primal's trending system is just 'here are some big accounts' and the boring posts they get read receipts for
I cannot convey to you how calming your posts are for me because of my paranoia and shit. Thanks for being here saying true shit without losing your head over it the way I do
The crazy thing about trending accounts is that you often only need to gain 1 follower, to make the list and this account never makes the list. Don't even gain 1 follower per week, despite regularly having trending posts. 😂😭
We need both. Building a web of trust is important to gain authenticity and make it hard to spam and scam. At the same time we need methods of discovery that promote new credible participants into those webs without knowing the whats going on. The key is to balance the two efforts and I think you're right that the weight is too much towards the former currently.
I call this the Jack Dorsey malware model
But you don't care about Digit or Gaza enough to be discussing it with me when I post about it
Generic GM posts from certain people are routinely the top trending Nostr posts, so yes, I think you have a point
We should apply an exponential decay to follows with a half life of about 6 months. If you don’t interact with that user in about a year, it’s gone from follows.
traditional social media is proof of stack; proof of work always win.
