Nostr Web Client

Hey there, let's do #Zapathon I suppose lol

I'm pretty new here still, checked it out in March, and then kinda drifted away, but then came back again with an article about my impressions on Nostr.

A real intro: I'm into anime, currently almost exclusively play Mihoyo games lol, I make music and am working on a retro/vapor album, I'm old enough to be your parent, but young enough to join the military (been online since 1991 as a child), I like cyberpunk, Linux, webdev, old internet vibes, and have been dabbling in and out and back in again in crypto since forever.

What's up?

boston wine 1y ago

Delighted to see you came back 🤙

Drop a #plebchain or #asknostr into your posts if you have questions or need help with anything

I read your article - a bunch of us shared and reposted it the other day — and it made me think about a lot, especially some of the outward impressions nostr seems to give off.

It’s not great that there’s a “crypto degen gambler” impression — most of the people here have a strong aversions to the whole crypto “investment” nonsense, and look at Bitcoin as a boring (but world-changing) way to save money in a currency that governments and banks can’t violate.

I appreciate you “holding up a mirror” though, because the bitcoiner philosophy is perhaps easily missed through all the memes and shitposts.

Other than that, I’ve found many people with whom to discuss other topics - some tech stuff, yes, but also film, art, philosophy, personal growth, pets, work, food… the list goes on!

Try following the #grownostr hashtag to find discussions about other stuff.

Your points about it being “clunky” were also true. It’s early, and development/improvements are happening at an incredible speed, especially in relation to the amount of funding (or lack thereof) in this ecosystem. But nonetheless, it’s a bit technical and new users can easily be overwhelmed. It’s a known (but important) growth/improvement area.

Anyway, thanks for reading my unsolicited thoughts on your article 😉 I’m an avid nostr user and I sincerely appreciate when someone takes the time to kick all the tires and offer feedback, because I think this protocol has huge potential to add “goodness” to the world and I want t see it succeed.

Cheers 🥂 enjoy your time here!

Reply to this note

Please Login to reply.

Discussion

⸸ commander ░ nova ⸸ :~$ 1y ago

Well hey, I really appreciate that you read it and took seriously the things I said. When I wrote it I wasn’t really sure if I wanted to be on Nostr, and felt like it wasn’t the place for me. I have a lot of interests all over the place and my ideas about the world are also, all over the place lol but then I saw that a whole bunch of people were reading and sharing it, on almost exclusively on Nostr too

Felt that was a good enough reason to come back and check it out, and I think I might just change my opinion about some things

boston wine 1y ago

That’s a great reason!

One thing I’ve found is very refreshing here is that the dialogue amongst people - all around the world, with sometimes very different views on the world - is shockingly respectful and genuinely civil, as a general rule.

Of course there’s the occasional troll or bigot (it’s still the internet, after all) but I find myself repeatedly, pleasantly surprised by the way people engage with one another when they disagree.

More often than not, the conversations are respectful and thoughtful. When I find myself disagreeing with someone, we’re both usually able to see nuance, and operate on the assumption that the other person is probably a decent human being, with different views or a different background that shapes one’s opinions.

It’s refreshing, inspiring, and quite honestly has been restoring some of my faith in people, after at least a decade in which the dominant narrative has been, “everyone is deeply polarized and can’t see eye-to-eye with anyone on the other side of the red-blue divide”.

Compare it with Twitter, where the company’s revenue comes from ads, which are dependent on clicks/views/engagement, which are most effectively captured by content that makes people angry/upset/scared. It’s financially incentivized to implement specifically those algorithms that boost negative, divisive content, to the point that their bottom line depends on it!

Without this algorithm — without the broken incentives — users are free to post and engage with content that reflects [what I believe to be] the generally *good* nature of human thought and intention. In short, it leaves us free to be happy.

Then, tie in zaps, where other users can transmit value, voluntarily, to content that they enjoy seeing. Such a user-driven “algorithm” (for lack of a better word) actually incentivizes each of us to produce and engage with content that makes one another happy and fulfilled. Not exclusively, of course, but it’s a much more balanced scene, and much more reflective of the human condition than the ultra-polarized image of society that modern mainstream media creates and reports on.

And it’s far from perfect. The lack of censorship means there’s some nasty stuff out there. It flips the normal content moderation paradigm, where the user is responsible for curating their own feed. Picking the right relays, muting specific accounts (or keywords or hashtags, if the client supports this), and curating a follow list that reflects your own interests and values… it’s not a quick task or insignificant amount of effort - rather, something that takes shape and evolves over time. And different clients do different amounts of that work for you, ranging from a relatively well-configured starting point, to a complete free[dom]-for-all initiation into the raw unfiltered Global feed. It’s a work in progress, to be sure, but I *love* that the philosophy of it focuses on giving each individual user the choice, freedom, and responsibility of defining their own experience to align with their preferences and needs.

So again, more of my unsolicited reflections on nostr. But hey - I’m pretty transparent when I think or care deeply about something.

I hope you enjoy your time here and I look forward to hearing more of your own reflections, as time goes on!

⸸ commander ░ nova ⸸ :~$ 1y ago

I have to agree with you, like it's still kind of a problem on Mastodon where people aren't always civil, even though it's also an open protocol sort of deal, but I think when you strip out the algorithm and the incentive to be knee-jerk angry, it honestly does create a nicer environment. Something I think a lot of us kind of learned from Twitter where reacting quickly, and over-the-top got you follows, it got you views, and clicks, and it became this thing we were trained to do ... like digital dogs, almost? You know? And I also think transmitting value to others, in a real tangible way kind of even further dilutes that knee-jerk reaction. I agree that people should be responsible for curating their own feeds. Make your space what you want it to be. One of the things that drives me up the wall on Mastodon, even still today, is people demanding others censor their own content for people who don't want to see it ... when the tools to not see things you don't want, are always right in front of the user making demands of others.

boston wine 1y ago

Agreed on all counts. The average social media user has been trained by the red-notification-dot dopamine hits to behave generally unpleasantly! And behind screens and keyboards, there isn’t much of the social feedback we’d recieve if we actually behaved that way around people in the physical world.

So it combines addictive incentives and rewards, for negative and antisocial behavior, and then monetizes it all, for the profit of the companies providing the platforms.

On top of that, we’re coddled by paternalistic moderators to expect that someone else will do the work to ensure that the content we consume is palatable, while simultaneously self-censoring for fear that the platform mods (or other trigger-happy users) will take issue with a comment or point of view, and subsequently get de-platformed from the toxic digital relationship playground we’ve become so addicted to…

It’s no surprise that many of us are looking for a way to opt out!

Milo 1y ago

On one hand, it's an etiquette thing to content warn on posts of obscene or vulgar matter. same goes for including tags that are specific enough to be parsed. However, individual sensibilities vary wildly, and it's impossible to cater to everyone.

On the other hand, Mastodon/ActivityPub is stuck in that twitteresque culture, and never matured beyond that.

Now, at least with #Nostr and it's relay system, clients can choose to exclusively use restrictive relays like what's capable with #ditto to tailor their feed as they see fit, or include less restrictive relays when they choose.

I tailor my relay to remove a lot of detestable events, but in my own clients use more than just one relay.

⸸ commander ░ nova ⸸ :~$ 1y ago

I think the relay system is definitely something I need to explore some more and figure out how it can be used this way

I haven’t really encountered much of anything I object to on here besides maybe like 1 or 2 people, which isn’t that bad at all all things considered lol