Hey trying to talk to some people about Nostr and someone asked what it fixes and says that Mastadon has solved the censorship issue already.
Being that I never got fully into Mastadon and don’t know the ins and outs / pros and cons of it, why is Nostr different?
Genuine question as someone who hasn’t seen both sides fully.
Ask them what happens if they piss off their mastodon instance admin.
Best answer ever
Tell them to stay on mastadon, and ask when their admin will implement something like zaps 🫣
My understanding is that it is similar. Doesn't use relays but servers clients that one can take a different login to and from. I don't have a good understanding of this but this is how I have heard it explained. No lightning integration or anything like that.
Mastodon has no network effect. It’s mostly a twitter mirror.
Good breakdown of this on the nostr GitHub
“The problem with Mastodon and similar programs”
https://github.com/nostr-protocol/nostr#the-problem-with-mastodon-and-similar-programs
Couldn’t tell you. I don’t have a Mast acct.
A key difference is the ease with nostr that you can take your keys and thus your notes to other relays. I tried pretty hard to use mastadon and it was really hard to find people and interact with people on other servers. My understanding too was that if you joined a certain server and got banned by the server owner, you'd be pretty bummed because you'd need to start all over with making a new account, friending people again, finding them, etc (might not even be able to find them if they are all on that server you got banned from).
Nostr makes it really easy to pack up your things and leave a relay in comparison, and find your friends on other mutually shared relays if you got banned. This reality that people can easily move to the best relays will reduce censorship attempts, especially as relays try and monetize (in my opinion).
To me, it's kind of like the diff between ethereum staking and bitcoin mining. Ethereum staking is highly centralized, and if u have your ETH in a staked pool like coinbase, you can't move that stake you are completely captured and stuck. But with bitcoin mining, even though there are 3 pools responsible for generating more than 50% of the hash, it's just not the same because the people with the ASICs can point those miners at a different pool with a few clicks of a button.
Also this link has a good explanation of why Mastodon is still sucetible to censorship. https://nostr.how/
Mastodon (and similar)
User identities are attached to domain names which are controlled by third-parties.
These third-parties can ban you, just like centralized social media platforms. Server owners can also block other servers.
Migration between servers is difficult and can only be accomplished if servers cooperate.
There are no clear incentives to run servers, therefore they tend to be run by enthusiasts and people who want to have their name attached to a cool domain. Because of this, users are subject to the despotism of a single person, which is often worse than that of a big company like Twitter, and they can't migrate out.
Since servers tend to be run by amateurs, they are often abandoned. This effectively bans everybody that signed up via that server.
There are huge issues with data duplication across servers.
Thank you for educating me about Mastodon.
(Wall of text, sorry)
When a user hears about Mastodon they likely won't do too much research about a server that fits them best, and simply choose the default one. The majority of users will now be on this server making it privvy to the same amount of censorship as twitter.
While the default server is significantly more private than Twitter, if this server was somehow shutdown or blacked out-- almost all users would vanish. It would take a while for users to comeback and join another server, and creating a presence will be difficult.
Now if a user joins a smaller server, the user is still privvy to that server shutting down. Small servers are typically operated by one person, and as operating costs rise it will likely be harder to maintain, and it could too shut down effectivly losing all it's users.
If a server gets shut down on Nostr a user would still be connected to 10+ servers, and as would everyone else. So it's very easy to stay connected and maintain your presence without relying on one entity.
Mastodon is a far more closed off network. The value of a network is explicitly in how many people are connected.
Mastodon is like separate, large chat rooms with an interface that *looks* like social media. But connecting to the broader Mastodon network is horrible. I used it for a short time and it really felt like there was no global network at all. The likelihood that I could search and find any random user was extremely low.
#Nostr is actually a cohesive network. I can connect to as many relays as I want and reach essentially any user. It ends up feeling exactly like a single large network like Twitter (which is massively valuable because you can find practically anyone one it) even though it’s made up of dozens or maybe even hundreds of relays now, and likely a great many more in the future.
If I search for someone, I find them. I can take my feed and pubkey with me everywhere I go no matter what relays I want to use.
Nostr is nothing like Mastodon in practice.
👀
