I don’t think I did. You can make an instagram without revealing your identity (as far as I’m aware). In fact, without proper precautions, wouldn’t nostr be worse? Because anyone could run a honeypot relay and see your IP, as opposed to asking Instagram for it?
Discussion
Instagram is Meta/Facebook. It requires a phone number or email address to sign up and collects data on every user.
Listen to the women’s panel from Nostrica yesterday discussing how people in oppressive regimes are well-versed in using VPNs and other methods to protect their privacy.
Sure, anyone can slip up, but Nostr affords people much better anonymity and personal security than centralized platforms.
I feel like you’re mixing threat models. If you want privacy from surveillance capitalism, yes, obviously nostr is better than a centralized company service.
But if you’re under an oppressive regime, nostr on its own doesn’t strike me as that much of an improvement
I heard #[3]​ talking about the idea of Chinese citizens using satellites to circumvent domestic communication lines and #[4]​ talking about Iranians using VPNs to evade government internet blockades. We’ve seen how companies like Google and Apple cave to the demands of police states, which is something that can’t happen when there’s no company involved. I guess time will tell if this protocol is resistant to these types of scenarios, but if people want to speak freely and not be prosecuted for it, I’d place my bets on Nostr with added layers of privacy being the safer option.
All great stuff, to be sure.
I guess the heart of my point is in the last bit. Yes, companies cave to police states. But at least they’re there as a potential road block to police states. With nostr, all the data they could be looking for, with the exception of the tie to your identity, is sitting out in the open for them.
As long as there is no way to locate the person behind the speech, it would be a waste of time and resources for a regime to attempt it.
And nostr too! (I think, looking for feedback on this)
Nostr fixes censorship, not saying whatever you want anonymously
#[2]
And how is that worse? You still need to connect to that relay, not different from clicking random links in Instagram DMs, which would also reveal your IP