We need more diversified content. It's not the fastest, but it's the more robust way to stop the reinforcement.
Maybe we can try spinning up "themed clients" (e.g. cooking, fishing, photography, art, DIY, eyc) with dedicated relays and use them as onboarding gateways.
Then people will find out that can use other clients and will start to explore other relays/content.
Trouble is it's not like there's a shortage of fishing or cooking or photography content on the internet. People won't be like "Aha, fishing content, I've found you!"
We're doing that, but we're mostly doing it for particular implementations, i.e. for distinct organisations, who want to add "social interactions" to private or protected data sets.
I haven't been able to find individual people looking for "a place to post pictures on the Internet". The Internet is drowning in such general-purpose websites.
I think Reddit-like communities and hashtags have more probability of success than themed clients because I think it's better if users don't have to think about clients much, if they "just work".
Note, however, that the two things can work together: communities can be attached to specialized relays (the use of which would be automatic, without users having to do anything) and specialized relays could mirror posts that use certain hashtags from other relays.
However, I think the most crucial kind of relay to have is the general, content-neutral, free speech, free of charge and privacy-preserving one. Nostr makes it possible because running a relay is much cheaper than running a classical centralized platform and it can be a good way of contributing to the core human right to freedom of speech. It'd be nice to see Nostr relays from relevant non-profit organizations.
I've been hanging around without doing very much, so far.
Motive for being here at all: escaping the Censors of the Left, and the Censors of the Establishment. _My_ Internet, the one that I joined in the 1990s, is dead and gone, partly through the usual course of eventual concentration of corporate power, and partly through the malice of powerful people who freaked out at the intolerable spectacle of mere plebeians daring to say unapproved things to large groups, in ways the powerful people couldn't (then) readily control.
I can cope with a lot of Bitcoin posts, but I never propose to join the congregation of Bitcoiners, nor to post about Bitcoin.
I rather like the homesteaders and do-it-yourselfers but, for various reasons, will probably never have anything useful to say there either, since I can't follow that path.
If I go forward, that means bootstrapping a community that discusses other subjects I'm interested in. Starting from scratch means:
1. Committing to post on the subject most days; and
2. Making the content publically available, but concentrated in one findable place, so it's possible to recruit non-nostriches by saying "if you're interested in Y, sign up for nostr and do such-and-such";
3. Some mechanism of pest control. A small enough group can get along without it for a while, being scarcely noticed; a successful group will eventually need it.
1. is personal: it means finding the free time and dedication.
2. & 3. are questions about what's technically doable with nostr, and how? which I have not yet adequately researched.
