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nostr:npub1xtscya34g58tk0z605fvr788k263gsu6cy9x0mhnm87echrgufzsevkk5s my apologies for reaching out directly. I have a question regarding Damus but I don't know which account is the official one.

Question: is there a way to secretly follow someone or a hashtag on Damus?

Replying to Avatar Gigi

It's at a point now where it's almost impossible for me to use the "regular" internet. I can't access half the sites. The reason? I care about my digital hygiene and thus use a VPN. Sometimes switching to a different VPN or switching the country of the VPN works; other times it does not. Oh well, I guess I'm not going to watch that video, or read that article, or look at that picture. Whatever.

In addition to that, if I'm not blocked completely, I have to prove that I'm human every step of the way. Captchas, re-captchas, Cloudflare checkboxes, the whole shebang. I am human. I promise. And I am very annoyed. Outright angry, even. I doubt that any robot will ever be as annoyed as I am right now about the current state of the internet.

What annoys me most, actually, is that all these measures don't really work. There's bots everywhere. Robots get access to the stuff anyway, using farms of humans, just like in the good old days of WoW gold farming. The centralized "safety" nets of Cloudflare et al brought down large swaths of the internet multiple times in the last couple of weeks alone, and as things centralize more and more these outages will happen more and more.

I'm very close to breaking up with the legacy internet. I'm human, I can cryptographically prove that I'm human, and I have sats to spend. But the legacy internet doesn't care about that. It cares about farming me and my data, while annoying me to no end. I've been nostr only for a while now, but that was only on the "social media" side. 2026 might be the year where I go nostr-only for everything, or to phrase it slightly differently: permissionless for everything.

No more "are you human?"

No more "I'm sorry, Dave. I'm afraid I can't do that."

No more cookie banners, paywalls, and AI slop.

No more being treated like a child.

Even if it means that I'll have to self-host everything.

Even if it means that I'll have to build & maintain stuff myself.

Even if it means that it's a lot of work and pain.

Nothing worth having ever comes easy.

But the easy stuff is not worth having in the first place.

Here's to the year to come, and the new corner of the internet, build on cryptography and webs-of-trust. Real value. Real connections. Real humans.

Here's to nostr.

I'm with you! Between the lockdown mode, the VPN and the adblocker, half the internet doesn't work.. I'm seriously considering getting a dumb phone next. The only thing I'd definitely miss for a while is the camera and Google Maps

Thanks for sharing the stories behind them! I really like the stary sky behind the truck.

It's gone from threading water at 58k to threading water at 103k. Bitcoin is pretty boring

Ideally, you'd want to use BTC as the collateral to secure the downpayment, and the real estate to collateralize the reminder of the mortgage. This way, you wouldn't part way with any of your BTC and unlock the value appreciation of both assets.

Today, this is difficult or expensive but I imagine this becomes realistic as soon as MSTR or XXI get a credit ranking.

Sure is! It's common practice for various tax reasons.

Right?! Where do these horrible response bots come from?

My main reason for browsing through the Universe tab is to block bots

What cheese did you use - that seems a little oilier than it has to.

My go to: 1/2 Gruyere, 1/2 Vacherin

Write correspondence and translate those to the local language.

nostr:npub10hpcheepez0fl5uz6yj4taz659l0ag7gn6gnpjquxg84kn6yqeksxkdxkr What is the rational behind needing to create an account? What is the most private way to use this on iOS?