One theme I’ve been hearing on a podcast is Nostr is dumb and pointless because ActivityPub exists.
- I’m not a developer, but I work with devs every day in my 9-5 so I understand a lot. I don’t believe the above statement is true because I feel like the devs here would have looked at that option before spending the last 2-3yrs working on this protocol.
- I’d love to either hear from someone that is familiar with both or get pointed towards documentation to help me understand.
The biggest difference for me is in censorship resistance.
On AP you have an account with a server and are at the mercy of the admins of that server. They can (and must) decide what gets deleted, and which other servers can peer with yours. E.g. many AP servers block Gab. The "community = server" model also let to some communities being shut down for being contraversial in some way.
With nostr your account is just a private key, meaning you are not tied to any relay, and your client even pulls from many simultaneously. This gives relays the freedom to block whatever content makes them uncomfortable without infringing on anyone's speech, since users can just pull it from somewhere else.
This is super helpful. I’m pretty set on the benefits and transparency and decentralized nature of Nostr. Just not informed about Activity Pub. AP seems still centralized to some extent. Thanks for helping me build the connections.
I just made the reconnection in my brain. I forgot that Mastodon was based on AP 🙄 duh. Yes, I knew that you had to have a specific account on a server. Thank you for the reminder. I can definitely see what they are missing on the podcast and why the devs here are so focused on making nostr work.
