It’s the nature of relays and caching. Nostr will never give you accurate matching numbers across clients. If this js the day you’re waiting for, you’ll wait forever.
So, this is interesting. I have multiple posts going back over a month or more that I made via nostr:npub1nz64zngcqm8vj8nhrdkcjpfwn2rcaqysnxec88tqfclp5afrpglsqm0w5y that have never shown up in nostr:npub12vkcxr0luzwp8e673v29eqjhrr7p9vqq8asav85swaepclllj09sylpugg. Also, I was receiving zaps that I couldn't find the origin of. Opened Amethyst - a whole bunch of notifications on zaps, likes and comments, none of it ever showed up in Primal. It was similar with some stuff going Primal -> Amethyst.
I've been sitting on my username over on Bluesky with 2 followers for 8 months. In the last week that's ballooned to 100+ followers, all of them music friends/colleagues, fleeing the X dumpster fire. What most of them seem to want is an *old* twitter replacement, that simply works and has their tribe and connections, whichI totally get.
Even though I'm extolling the virtues of nostr:npub1yfg0d955c2jrj2080ew7pa4xrtj7x7s7umt28wh0zurwmxgpyj9shwv6vg over there, realistically, Nostr itself just isn't ready yet. These are working, professional musicians/songwriters, not developers or tech geeks. They don't have the time or brain space for "relays" and "nips". And I suspect that's the case for many fleeing X.
I think nostr:npub1gcxzte5zlkncx26j68ez60fzkvtkm9e0vrwdcvsjakxf9mu9qewqlfnj5z might be right; pushing apps instead of protocols might be the way. Abstract the backend away, unless you actively want to tinker. But if a bunch of your posts, likes, comments and zaps aren't populating across those apps, that's a UX nightmare that will drive users away.
At some point, this stuff with smooth out, but we're absolutely not there yet.
Discussion
If it was the occasional non-matching across apps, that's one thing, but we're talking multiple posts, likes, comments and zaps simply failing to propagate.
So if you're correct, Nostr will never be anything but niche. Which is fine. But it won't ever be anything I can, with a clear conscience, drive people to use. Especially people who might never see an important comment on their post, a journalist, say.
And to be clear: I love Nostr and what it offers. But I'm open-minded enough to understand why a lot of people are choosing Bluesky.