wow... it works for me, right now.
Yes there is evidence, about 20y ago PoW for antispam was a huge research area. You can for instance read <<“Proof-of-Work” Proves Not to Work version 0.2>>, which is one of the most cited paper on this topic.
Defining an effective threshold for "as high as it needs to be" is the problem. And this is well known. PoW was abandoned as a spam deterrent in emails precisely because no threshold could simultaneously block spammers (especially those with access to server farms) and remain practical for legitimate users (particularly considering smartphone and low-powered devices).
And for emails it was actually easier (deterrence was against spamming millions of mails, not just sending few hundred events to saturate a relay).
For me it is really surprising to see PoW being tried again in Nostr: history shows it is not going to work.
Proof-of-Work is unlikely to be effective for deterring spammers. Spammers easily operate at massive scales (botnets, server farms, cheap cloud). They can absorb the PoW cost more easily than legitimate users because spamming is a numbers game.
The meet-in-person (like in the old PGP era) is even less likely to work.
The result of the culture of censorship in the collective west.
(from Glenn Diesen, X).
That's the narrative msm spin. So it means that Trump has already decided to bring the US to war against Iran with a ground invasion.
This seems to be the censorship-resistant s.n. that does not have the people who really need it.
Where is the AI-generated viberpunk manifesto?
Certo. La mia puntualizzazione era solo su fatto che non é proprio l'interlocutrice migliore, visto che é una guerrafondaia pro-censura e pro-repressione delle voci disallineate al potere, che però si atteggia a finta difensa delle "democrazie". Ma é giusto non farne un pregiudizio.
ps. pina pic é vicepresidente del parlamento eu e passa il suo tempo ad intimidire e censurare voci disallineate. Personaggio pessimo.
mastro bradipo su X. É una che straparla di autoritarismi contro democrazie, ma poi abbraccia opinioni guerrafondaie e paranoie antirusse estremiste. Una fervente guerrafondaia fino all'ultimo ucraino. Grande amicona della Pina Pic e della nuova ondata di censura in EU.
Nulla da eccepire su Disruption Lab.
La Tonia Mastrobuoni è una guerrafondaia fascio-libberale di primo livello.
É un "resisting the radical right by embracing it".
I also think Bluesky is quite intolerant, but calling it Marxist is laughable - if anything, it's (socially) more like a Dem-leaning clone of X. That said, science/academia are special domains. These are pros who communicate on technical topics and are generally uninterested in engaging bots/trolls. As a result, more controlled environments (like Bluesky or LinkedIn) are naturally more appealing.
Personally, I followed the so-called "EnergyTwitter" for several years. It was (for myself) a remarkable phenomenon: a large community of engineers, scientists, and technicians sharing insights and ideas about energy, and I learned a lot from that. Unfortunately, it has largely dissipated now. Roughly half of that community has moved to Mastodon.energy, and the other half to Bsky.
The problem with X isn’t outright suppression, but rather manipulation of the recommender system, which is subtler. That’s another reason why having control over the client-side feed, as in Nostr, is so desirable.
Peaceful waters.
VERY interesting research on how academic twitter migrated to #Bluesky.
Interesting topline takeaways for growing #nostr. No rocket science that's not been said before, but it's nice to have some data:
1- External shocks are key. Capitalize on them. >15% of transitions explained this way. Think geopolitical events, outages, Musk making a big disliked policy change etc.
2- Audiences move from incumbent platforms following influential voices that they follow. Focus on onboarding these influential voices. This is more impactful than just trying to bring the whole audience first.
This dynamic can build contagion. Find ways to more publicly highlight when influential accounts join.
And make it super easy for Nostr users to use clients to reconstruct followees & social graphs from incumbent platform. Trick will be to do this in a privacy respecting way.
(sidenote: that's way the follow packs were such a good idea. But we need much more of this)
(note: influential voices may experience a period of 'where's my audience?' So it's key to find ways to get the transitioning user from that to the reconstruction of their network. )
3- Multiple peers transitioning is key. Having local clusters develop is important (& probably helps with the dry period before an audience is rebuilt.)
Interesting nuance: transition rates to #bluesky were 25-30% in fields like arts/social sciences, but about half that in medical / physical sciences / engineering. Possible predictors include baseline political engagement & political values expressed.
This has an implication for Nostr: focus messaging on Nostr features that may align with people in incumbent platforms. There has to be desire.
Paper "Why Academics Are Leaving Twitter for Bluesky" https://arxiv.org/pdf/2505.24801
Bluesky is currently an excellent platform for the scientific/academic communities—but it is horrible for most other uses. I recall seeing several influential voices help drive the migration to Bluesky when MElon began altering X’s recommendation algorithm, effectively shadowbanning many science-related accounts (those with large followings whose posts were suddenly hidden from their followers).
Interestingly, Bluesky offers no formal guarantees that similar practices won’t happen there. However, its social and political environment is perceived as more tolerant—or at least less self-destructive—than Xitter, making it feel like a relatively safe space.
Nostr missed the boat. It’s now unlikely to attract academic/scientific voices unless something dramatic happens. That’s a missed opportunity, as this is one of the most valuable communities a social platform can have.
I also suspect that they would not move to Nostr.
By making Nostr less toxic. The quality of content on this platform is a major obstacle to any adoption effort.
Soon it will be impossible to write these things in any SN except Nostr.
Si, Nostr attraversa una fase discendente, non so dire se sia terminale. Ma in quanto a "social senza padroni", ha un design innovativo che va oltre alla federazione stile Mastodon, in quanto gli utenti non sono "intrappolati" su un server specifico.
Oltre alla natura open source che lo fa funzionare in simbiosi con il Fediverso, tant'è che stiamo interagendo tra mastodon.uno e Nostr.
"Alla ricerca di un social senza padroni": su Azione il mio articolo su Mastodon e gli altri. Grazie a nostr:nprofile1qy2hwumn8ghj7un9d3shjtnddaehgu3wwp6kyqpq9e2f89vx96rnz7f7halxr8jmafdazxcmkrkhnzh4gxp79q52qvwskgtqgu per la bella intervista.
#mastodon #socialmedia
https://issuu.com/azionemigrosticino/docs/azione_11_del_10_marzo_2025/3
Manca Nostr, che in quanto a decentralizzazione non ha rivali.