[HN Gopher] Nostr ("Notes and Other Stuff Transmitted by Relays"...
       ___________________________________________________________________
        
       Nostr ("Notes and Other Stuff Transmitted by Relays") - An
       Introduction
        
       Author : Logans_Run
       Score  : 113 points
       Date   : 2023-04-24 17:31 UTC (5 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (wiki.wellorder.net)
 (TXT) w3m dump (wiki.wellorder.net)
        
       | mikae1 wrote:
       | Can somebody recommend a free relay for kicking the tires?
        
         | leesalminen wrote:
         | wss://no.str.cr
        
           | mikae1 wrote:
           | Thanks!
        
         | djschnei wrote:
         | Ideally you'll connect to several relays
        
       | SnowProblem wrote:
       | I wish Nostr were invented 30 years ago because it seems like a
       | elegant protocol with room for extensions that could have served
       | as the backend language for Twitter, IRC, FB, and more. But
       | network effects are just so powerful and people post to be seen.
       | Twitter isn't going to willingly open the door to competitors,
       | and so I hope Nostr can find a few unique use cases and
       | communities to let it blossom.
        
         | klabb3 wrote:
         | I.. agree, but I don't think recreating existing platforms is a
         | good idea either in FOSS or commercial projects. As you say,
         | it's already there.
         | 
         | > Network effects are just so powerful and people post to be
         | seen.
         | 
         | Yeah, but those people aren't moving the needle anyway, so they
         | can be safely ignored, for now. They'll come when it gets
         | popular or trendy (see the recent mastodon influx).
         | 
         | Current gen social media is clearly not the end-all be-all.
         | It's riddled with problems, both because of the business model
         | which incentivizes short-termism like clickbait, but also
         | inherent problems in the social graph, feeds, etc. We've had at
         | least a decade of experience to learn from the mistakes of the
         | giants. Maybe this sounds elitist, but whenever I see a Twitter
         | clone (say current gen Mastodon or Substack Notes) all I see is
         | a lack of creativity and courage to face novel opportunities.
        
       | neilk wrote:
       | > Resilience is provided by the protocol being simple enough to
       | implement in a weekend, in your language of choice. Platform
       | lock-in is impossible, since any client can republish any note to
       | a different relay if one misbehaves or enacts a disagreeable
       | policy.
       | 
       | That's a wonderful sentiment but we said the same thing about the
       | web and email and both are effectively controlled by large
       | companies.
       | 
       | Twitter is centralized due to being the creation of a single
       | company, but that's not the fundamental problem.
       | 
       | The web and email got effectively centralized because distributed
       | protocols create problems of search, filtering, abuse, identity,
       | community continuity, etc. You can't easily solve them in a
       | distributed way, and even if you _can_, you can't easily get
       | everyone in the network to upgrade. Hence, providers arise that
       | say "We're Nostr, only better!(tm)" or "We're the best way to
       | find what you want on Nostr!" and they work on locking in their
       | customers.
       | 
       | If you want to be resilient to monopolization you have to show
       | how you're going to solve those other problems.
        
         | leesalminen wrote:
         | A big topic of conversation at nostrica (nostr's first
         | conference) last month was how to maintain decentralization.
         | One of the biggest concerns was having a client or relay
         | provider build features outside of the protocol to gain market
         | share and enable them to lock-in users.
         | 
         | You are correct that there is no easy solution to these
         | problems. There are draft NIPs that attempt to solve many of
         | the problems you've described. You're welcome to join us in the
         | conversation and work with us to try and solve these hard
         | problems!
         | 
         | https://github.com/nostr-protocol/nips/pulls
         | 
         | PS- I don't think the web is effectively controlled by large
         | companies. Email is a different story though. Hopefully we can
         | build nostr to be more like the web than email.
        
           | oh_sigh wrote:
           | Maybe nostr needs a Law of Jante/tall poppy lopper - any
           | client or relay that gets too special gets
           | blacklisted/punished by all the other clients/relays (to the
           | extent possible through the protocol). Sorry if that is in a
           | NIPS, there are 84 in that link and I can't read through them
           | all.
        
           | Logans_Run wrote:
           | To be clear: I am the submitter not the author. The link is
           | just something I stumbled across while browsing
           | ReclaimTheNet.
        
         | irusensei wrote:
         | The identity is controlled by a cryptographic key on the client
         | side so even if you get kicked of a server you and whoever is
         | in contact with you can just grab your data from other relays.
        
         | dangoor wrote:
         | > The web and email got effectively centralized...
         | 
         | Woah there. I don't agree with this. The web is certainly not
         | centralized (this is on Hacker News and not Facebook, right?)
         | It follows a power law distribution where you have some players
         | getting lots of traffic and then there are lots and lots of
         | small traffic sites. But it's definitely decentralized.
         | 
         | _Google_ is something of a monopoly providing some of the
         | features you list for the web at large, but there are others
         | (Duck Duck Go, Bing) that are just a click away.
         | 
         | Gmail took a huge share of the email market by being a better
         | product for the first several years of its existence (and being
         | free also helped). That doesn't mean email is centralized: I've
         | been using Fastmail for the last several years and it works
         | _just fine_. I don't have the problems you list.
         | 
         | Anyhow, I agree with your point that a decentralized _social
         | network_ needs to solve the problems you're listing. I just
         | think the web and email are actually examples of technologies
         | that remain decentralized.
        
           | rektide wrote:
           | Here here!
           | 
           | As a web developer, I think we've figured out maybe 1% of
           | what the web is good for & capable of. There's still so much
           | possibility, so many options, that _any given person_ can go
           | off  & explore & play around with & succeed on. The field has
           | never been more open for, more ready for new exciting
           | possibilities, better set to start changing if we can make a
           | real authentic honest outreach to users, that is a fair shake
           | from tech, & not leaving cloud-giants holding all the cards &
           | us with a couple magic beans.
           | 
           | The doom & gloom look at the macro of what the web is is
           | really sad. It's a constant pity party. The ability to
           | control & shape our information spaces to our liking & pick
           | our paths has never been higher, has only gotten better as
           | more protocols & standards, focused at purer social
           | networking levels than the web medium at large, have arisen.
           | 
           | As a developer, it's been a one way street with us crafting
           | better and better means of web development and deployment
           | every single year, and what we're excitingly starting to see
           | is more genuine & personal involvement not just with creating
           | sites, but with creating interconnection, creating interlink,
           | creating intermedia, not just on one big property, but across
           | many voices. Nostr highlighting the idea of a relay, that who
           | we relay is a vote of amplification, is semi-covert social
           | commentary on picking your traffic, on selecting what gets to
           | get shared out. There's no headier better more promising time
           | than today (and the web continues to be the premier
           | delightful connectable blank slate from with which to
           | experiment & iterate).
        
           | drexlspivey wrote:
           | Email is centralized in the sense that you might run your own
           | server/domain but if Google decides you are bad and stops
           | federating with you you might as well not exist. Who are you
           | going to exchange mail with if most people are on Gmail?
           | 
           | That's very different than Google banning your account where
           | you can just switch to Bing for search.
        
         | jrm4 wrote:
         | I think your "effectively controlled" is mostly meaningless.
         | 
         | There's orders of magnitude of difference between "started off
         | as scattered and big companies now do a majority of the
         | maintenance" vs actually CENTRALIZED, like Twitter.
         | 
         | My website and my email, from my domain, both exist generally
         | as equals without any meaningfully strong influence from google
         | or whatnot, e.g. censoring my website would be a practically
         | completely different thing from the ridiculous mess that
         | Twitter is becoming (if it isn't already.)
        
         | redder23 wrote:
         | Email is not "controlled" by large companies. People choose to
         | use large companies and let them read their emails because they
         | are stupid. Email has not evolved in any way BECAUSE its NOT
         | controlled by some company. If Google could, they would do even
         | more evil with email that "just" reading all your mails.
         | 
         | To compare Twitter with email makes absolutely no sense. Yes
         | Twitter is a totally controlled thing by a single company,
         | email is not. You could say it for the web when it comes to net
         | neutrality and where it does not exist anymore ...
        
         | Logans_Run wrote:
         | Rebuttal/response to/of your comment/thought/input. From the
         | Wiki -
         | 
         |  _I ran across Nostr when I was looking for an excuse to do
         | some network programming. I have a thing for small standards,
         | and the Nostr spec was 75 lines of exactly what I was looking
         | for._
        
       | cube2222 wrote:
       | In a similar vain, I'm curious how Bluesky[0] will pan out. The
       | protocol looks very cool with how much it separates and
       | distributes the different concerns[1] (storage, recommendations,
       | clients, etc.) as opposed to something "federated but fairly
       | monolithic" like Mastodon.
       | 
       | [0]: https://blueskyweb.xyz/
       | 
       | [1]: https://atproto.com/docs
        
         | tough wrote:
         | I've been curious about BlueSky too, popping a lot on Twitter
         | lately, but it's hard to secure an invite
        
           | cube2222 wrote:
           | Iirc the waitlist is packed (million or so) and they've only
           | let in 20k so far while they're working on scaling moderation
           | (which is pluggable as well, I think).
           | 
           | Some info in the interview by TheVerge[0].
           | 
           | [0]: https://www.theverge.com/23686778/bluesky-ceo-jay-
           | graber-int...
        
             | tough wrote:
             | Lol seems easier to get hired than invited by those
             | numbers, I'll join the matrix channel and see what's up
             | there
        
       | apsurd wrote:
       | > Software for chatting on the Internet should be small and fun.
       | 
       | Small and fun is the magic here. There's immense product insight
       | in building a product experience that feels really small,
       | intimate. It's the counterbalance to the unwieldy scale of Big
       | Tech.
       | 
       | We're in the natural cycle of things, I'm just saying I seem to
       | really get the feeling "the future is small", if that makes
       | sense. It's quite stressful to navigate the entire planet's
       | information and inventory.
        
         | CrampusDestrus wrote:
         | what is this obsession with products being "fun" to use?
         | 
         | you know what makes chatting fun? the people I'm chatting with.
         | 
         | you know what makes chatting not fun? being impeded from
         | chatting with the fun people.
         | 
         | a chat program that has fun people and always works is the most
         | fun to use!
        
           | apsurd wrote:
           | i agree, it's fun because of the people. a product is "not
           | fun" when it impedes on those personal connections. like the
           | obvious thing of injecting ads everywhere, a product doing
           | that, is not fun in my view. it's infuriating
        
         | leesalminen wrote:
         | I feel the same way. I don't feel the need or desire to be
         | connected to every single person on earth through some app. I
         | left almost all social platforms a couple years ago (except
         | HN).
         | 
         | I got into nostr and feel like it's almost exactly what I want
         | from social media. Just a reverse chronological feed of the
         | people I follow.
        
       | breck wrote:
       | What is the best Nostr web client?
        
         | jonstaab wrote:
         | https://coracle.social is the one I work on, and I think it's
         | pretty good. It does more to surface relays as a first-class
         | thing than most.
        
         | leesalminen wrote:
         | That's pretty subjective. I happen to like astral, though many
         | say it's too slow for them. I think a lot of people are using
         | coracle, snort.social, and iris. There are a lot of other ones
         | under active development.
        
       | dgerges wrote:
       | Super elegant vision. Would love this to gain traction.
        
       | eykanal wrote:
       | Saying "I don't want censorship" is equivalent to saying "I'm
       | fine with people using my tool for coffee meetups, genocide
       | planning, bridge club, and drug deals." It's an attempted
       | handwashing of moral responsibility under the cover of software
       | purity.
       | 
       | At this point, it's pretty well documented that social media _as
       | a tool_ has increased young female mental illness; the question
       | is only "how much" [1]. To try to wave away responsibility for
       | this by saying "but I'm just making a tool!" is beyond
       | irresponsible at this point; it's morally reprehensible.
       | 
       | [1]: https://jonathanhaidt.substack.com/p/social-media-mental-
       | ill...
        
         | saprolino wrote:
         | > media _as a tool_ has increased young female mental illness
         | 
         | Why should this be solved by discouraging censorship-resistant
         | tools?
        
         | afunctionof wrote:
         | [dead]
        
         | throw101010 wrote:
         | > "I'm fine with people using my tool for coffee meetups,
         | genocide planning, bridge club, and drug deals." It's an
         | attempted handwashing of moral responsibility under the cover
         | of software purity.
         | 
         | None of these activities are efficiently stopped by censorship
         | on the largest social media platforms... so what are you
         | suggesting? That we continue to employ inefficient censorship
         | (which gets also abused all the time by governments around the
         | world), or do you have any actual solution? If not, this sounds
         | a lot like virtue signalling to me.
        
           | dahwolf wrote:
           | The elephant in the room here is that quite likely a large
           | part of content that may contribute to female mental illness
           | is not hateful.
           | 
           | I'm of course talking about female influencers on Instagram
           | flexing their wealth, highly customized looks, hot
           | boyfriends, fancy holidays, etc. The phenomenon where a young
           | girl at her most vulnerable/insecure age is ranking against
           | this distorted image of filter-laden "expectations" is brand
           | new.
           | 
           | My point being, there's a huge amount of content that is bad
           | for our mental health, yet cannot be censored because the
           | harm is indirect.
        
         | irusensei wrote:
         | Bad take. Good software has to be used by anti-abortion
         | activists and abortion clinics.
        
         | b3nji wrote:
         | Arguably, the erosion of mental health could be laid at the
         | feet of greedy corporations using algos to push hate, and
         | division for eyeballs to advertisers.
         | 
         | Isn't Nostr algo free? Isn't it just a messaging service?
        
           | leesalminen wrote:
           | Yes, nostr is just a protocol. There is no inherent
           | algorithm. A client could choose to implement one and users
           | could then choose to just migrate to a different client
           | without one. All I want is a reverse chronological feed of
           | posts from people I follow. That's it. And right now the
           | nostr clients deliver that.
        
         | blueberrychpstx wrote:
         | Social media as a tool strikes me as the same kind of argument
         | as "REAL socialism hasn't been tried yet"
         | 
         | It doesn't feel at all to me that there are any social media
         | platforms that function at all like tools but rather data
         | vampires attempting to addict at any cost" and so Haidt's
         | mention of increased suicide rate is unfortunately not at all a
         | surprise.
         | 
         | Sorry if this sounds harsh but calling platforms in the
         | zeitgeist at this moment in time as tools is simply naive.
        
           | leesalminen wrote:
           | nostr isn't a platform though, it's a protocol. Something
           | closer to SMTP than to Facebook. Go build a little something
           | on it (there are decent libraries for popular languages at
           | this point which makes it easy) and see for yourself. It
           | doesn't feel like a platform, it feels like a tool.
        
           | scsibug wrote:
           | It is a tool for communication. We can build a twitter clone
           | on it, a chess match server, IoT messaging, etc. Nostr-the-
           | protocol is a proper tool. Agreed that the social aspects
           | built on top of it should be built with human wellbeing in
           | mind - not ad revenue.
           | 
           | Hopefully having the nostr protocol in place lets people
           | iterate faster to build good social technology, and
           | accelerates moving past the ad/engagement focused platforms
           | we live with today.
        
       | mikae1 wrote:
       | I see a problem. I'd say a majority of the posts on Nostr are
       | media posts (mostly images) and the network relies on Imgur and
       | other image hosting services for all content. Not very
       | decentralized in practice.
        
         | psychlops wrote:
         | The problem is that a decentralized service links to a
         | centralized service?
        
           | mikae1 wrote:
           | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35692399
        
         | rektide wrote:
         | Is it a problem? Right now it doesn't seem to be a practical
         | problem.
         | 
         | I agree that where we're headed, it seems like services like
         | this will only continually degrade, that a huge amount of the
         | corporate-run internet is undergoing radical #enshittification
         | at an alarming rate, & the nation-states have strapped
         | afterburners onto this hellbound-sled by starting to make the
         | terms of use for these already imperfect the feudal- oops i
         | mean corporate- data-keeps.
         | 
         | New age-verification identity-verification to post stuff has
         | scaled up with shock & awe speeds, with Imgur just burning down
         | huge swarths of the internet. So I guess yeah it has become a
         | practical problem alraedy.
         | 
         | Oh and there's other signs of horror/intensification all about.
         | Specs like Mobile Document Request opening up the Jevon's
         | paradox of making it easier to request government id online are
         | going to make a very shitty 203X's that greatly piss over the
         | internet legacy we have. https://github.com/WICG/mobile-
         | document-request-api/issues/6
         | 
         | But also... we have the saints of human history,
         | https://archive.org, ticking along doing the good deeds. The
         | more rag-tag ArchiveTeam folks. They keep saying it's not for
         | archiving, but I really hope WebPackage / WebBundle specs take
         | off, that we build a norm of take-away sites that we can
         | retain. (Caveat: right now Chrome has zero interest in letting
         | you use old snapshots, but I have zero faith this limited
         | security totalitarianism will hold, given that Certificate
         | Transparency lets us know that indeed this content did come
         | from X site at Y time & had the right cert then.)
         | 
         | In general, it's all the web, so it only sort of matters that
         | the thing goes away. We need to update the maxim, "Cool URIs
         | Dont Change" (https://www.w3.org/Provider/Style/URI). Sometimes
         | the resources go away. But the URI remains. And we can spread
         | backups, share the content, even when the hosts vanish, because
         | the web is so cool like that.
        
           | mikae1 wrote:
           | _> Is it a problem? Right now it doesn 't seem to be a
           | practical problem._
           | 
           | It will be the day these image hosting services die (and they
           | do, all the time). This setup separates the post content from
           | the post itself. I hope that most of us remember what a giant
           | mess hosting images for forums on free image hosting services
           | (that were later shut down) caused.
           | 
           | Apparently there was a discussion just a few days ago about
           | Imgur deleting images that are not associated with a user
           | account[1]. Just imagine all the broken image embeds that
           | will cause...
           | 
           | [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35636190
        
             | rektide wrote:
             | this reply feels 1 step behind my post.
             | 
             | i already mentioned imgur. i already spent a while talking
             | through how we adapt & deal with this. i tend to think the
             | way forward isn't to change our user behavior or the
             | pattern, but to layer user-sovereign resilience atop the
             | web, which we already have wonderful examples of aplenty.
             | 
             | the _Axioms of Web Architecture_ help us cope  & iterate
             | with emerging situations well, are a strong start for
             | resilience layers.
             | https://www.w3.org/DesignIssues/Axioms.html
             | 
             | and reciprocally, i'm not saying it's a solved problem
             | either.
        
         | anarchogeek wrote:
         | There's a new nip to cover the metadata for images and media
         | including being able to use torrents for file hosting.
         | 
         | https://github.com/nostr-protocol/nips/blob/master/94.md
        
         | leesalminen wrote:
         | It's weird how "decentralized" means something different to
         | every individual. Having the ability to choose where to host my
         | images is what I'd call decentralized.
        
           | kvathupo wrote:
           | As I understand it, the raison d'etre of nostr is to use
           | relays to store your data, which is presented on clients. So
           | if a front-end bans you, then you can grab your data off any
           | relay. If imgur shuts down, you're out of luck!
           | 
           | Bluesky goes further with the AT protocol for more general
           | data and algorithms iirc
        
             | drexlspivey wrote:
             | Relays don't (have to) store your data, they relay in real
             | time via websockets. Clients should store the data if they
             | care about persistence
        
             | kevingadd wrote:
             | And as it happens, imgur is revising their TOS and deleting
             | a bunch of content
        
           | mikae1 wrote:
           | Perhaps the greatest problem with this setup is that the post
           | content is separate from the post itself. I hope that most of
           | us remember what a giant mess hosting images for forums on
           | free image hosting services (that were later shut down)
           | caused.
        
       | dekervin wrote:
       | I've tried using snort.social , dog testing it with the intent of
       | recommanding it, but it's basically unusable. Would someone have
       | a good web interface to recommand?
        
         | jonstaab wrote:
         | https://coracle.social is the client I work on. It's less well-
         | known, but is pretty feature-complete.
        
           | dekervin wrote:
           | Nice to meet you. First time I hear about coracle.social .
           | The main issue I had with snort is that it takes a lot of
           | time before taking an action into account. It's a non starter
           | for non-geeky people.
        
         | snuckr wrote:
         | I think the most usable web clients are primal.net,
         | coracle.social, and iris.to
        
         | leesalminen wrote:
         | https://www.nostr.net maintains a list of all known clients. I
         | am a bit partial to astral, though it is resource intensive.
         | You could try coracle, snort, or iris to see if they're more
         | your fancy.
        
       | scsibug wrote:
       | Nice (blog author here); just heard this showed up on the
       | frontpage from someone on Nostr.
       | 
       | If I was writing an update to this, I'd probably point out how
       | much better the clients (especially mobile) have gotten, in such
       | a short span of time. As well as how lightning integration (zaps)
       | are letting us build new capabilities (instead of just cloning
       | twitter) that don't exist anywhere else.
        
         | Logans_Run wrote:
         | Glad its getting traction, it was a fun read and introduced me
         | to something new (tm). One issue I had about 'Zaps' was the
         | 'pay-to-play' aspect which seemed in discord/disharmony with
         | the OG vision of _Solving the Right Problems
         | 
         | There is no blockchain. No proprietary social sign-in. No
         | "real-name policy" No distributed hash table, onion routing,
         | raft consensus, or peer-to-peer protocol. There is just a
         | method of providing simple digitally signed text, and a simple,
         | scalable search service._
         | 
         | I mean I get it aaannnndd 54 lines of Spec etc and there is a
         | need for something like you offer/describe and I'm glad to have
         | stumbled across the link that lead to this blog that leads to
         | the GH <phew!>
        
           | scsibug wrote:
           | Lightning already exists; so it is nice that a simple
           | protocol can integrate with it. I view them as complementary
           | - it is good that Nostr does not need crypto, but it is still
           | cool that they can harmonize without changing the core
           | protocol.
           | 
           | It does solve a fundamental incentive problem of "who runs
           | big relays".
        
       | EGreg wrote:
       | How is this different than Secure Scuttlebutt? I remember
       | following that for a while. Dominic Tarr invented that.
       | 
       | Also Dat / Hypercore from Matthias Mullie, powering Beaker
       | Browser
        
         | evbogue wrote:
         | After using Nostr a bit, I don't think there's a huge
         | difference between SSB and it except that Nostr has no blob
         | sync and they abandoned append-only logs and use different
         | signing key cryptography.
         | 
         | Scuttlebutt just suffers from an inaccessible implementation at
         | the moment, but there is a team coming together to make a
         | working implementation again.
        
         | leesalminen wrote:
         | Nostr's GitHub page discusses the issues with SSB.
         | 
         | https://github.com/nostr-protocol/nostr#the-problem-with-ssb...
        
         | anarchogeek wrote:
         | Here's a good write-up comparing SSB and Nostr.
         | 
         | https://mattlorentz.com/weblog/2023/01/18/nostr-v-ssb.html
        
           | Zamicol wrote:
           | In my mind, key rotation is foundational, and neither system
           | appears to support that.
        
             | evbogue wrote:
             | You just generate a new key and link to it with your old
             | key.
        
       | packetlost wrote:
       | As a crypto-skeptic (lol), I _really_ like Nostr. Unfortunately,
       | I don 't think it will catch on until someone takes the time to
       | shave off the sharp technical edges and figure out spam +
       | identity verification. The current Nostr network is full of cult-
       | like bitcoin cryptobros, racist Twitter/Fediverse refugees, and
       | spam. Lots, and _lots_ of spam. But the technology is cool af and
       | could be made into something more.
        
         | fossuser wrote:
         | Yeah, partly why I think you need something like Urbit's ID
         | system to counter spam.
         | 
         | Though I'm biased and just generally like the urbit approach
         | more.
        
         | leesalminen wrote:
         | I've switched over to only private and/or paid relays and don't
         | experience any spam whatsoever. Not that this is the best
         | solution to spam, but it has been effective.
        
           | packetlost wrote:
           | I host my own relay and it's stupid easy to set up. The
           | problem then becomes relay discovery, which is an almost
           | completely unsolved problem. I do think it will get there in
           | though.
        
             | [deleted]
        
             | leesalminen wrote:
             | Check out the gossip client [0]. They take a unique stab at
             | dealing with relay discovery. NIP-65 [1] also attempts to
             | deal with this. Hopefully clients will start implementing
             | this shortly.
             | 
             | [0] https://github.com/mikedilger/gossip
             | 
             | [1] https://github.com/nostr-
             | protocol/nips/blob/master/65.md
        
               | jonstaab wrote:
               | https://coracle.social (my web client) implements relay
               | discovery as well.
        
       | nine_k wrote:
       | I have to repeat my most important concern about Nostr from ~3
       | months ago[1]: Nostr makes you forward data from strangers
       | unencrypted. If anything unlawful which you forward for Nostr is
       | ever found on your computer, or found transmitted from your
       | computer, you'd have fun time to explain to the authorities how
       | it even ended up on your machine, and why are you disseminating
       | it.
       | 
       | Encryption is not trivially easy to introduce into this scheme,
       | and it can't be too seamless. It's possible though, and I
       | encourage the developers to work on that.
       | 
       | [1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34529931
        
       | Multicomp wrote:
       | Between this new tool and https://github.com/simplex-
       | chat/simplex-chat I am starting to feel like (at least from my
       | filter bubble) that the web may be slightly starting to think
       | about maybe someday turning the corner on centralized-by-default
       | model for building new applications.
       | 
       | And/or it's just my first time seeing a complete pendulum swing
       | on the apocryphal mainframe-pc-mainframe-pc cycle.
        
       | meibo wrote:
       | Anything Jack is involved in is tainted for me until further
       | notice. I wouldn't even dare to touch any of his new platforms,
       | seeing his connections with Elon and how his judgement failed so
       | spectacularly with the Twitter deal - it's not worth it, just to
       | be sold out again when he gets bored of it or it doesn't end up
       | being a business. At least he admitted to it.
       | 
       | I'm not saying Mastodon is the solution, but at least no one can
       | take it away from me at a whim or has full control over the
       | protocol and the app.
        
         | leesalminen wrote:
         | > how his judgement failed so spectacularly with the Twitter
         | deal
         | 
         | A CEO doesn't approve an acquisition in a publicly traded
         | company. The Board of Directors decide.
         | 
         | > or has full control over the protocol and the app.
         | 
         | Jack does not have any control over the nostr protocol.
         | 
         | He may arguably have some control over one of the iOS client
         | apps (due to him finding the dev), but that's about it.
         | 
         | I was an organizer of nostrica (nostr's first conference) last
         | month. Yes, Jack paid for the venue, food & merch but he didn't
         | ask for anything in return.
         | 
         | He was very humble about the whole thing. More than I thought
         | he would be.
        
           | meibo wrote:
           | > A CEO doesn't approve an acquisition in a publicly traded
           | company. The Board of Directors decide.
           | 
           | Don't put words in my mouth. It may not entirely have been
           | his decision, but nobody forced him to go on Twitter to say
           | that he "chose him" and that he "believes it with all his
           | heart"[0]. You cannot possibly tell me that you think that he
           | was uninvolved in setting up the deal. Him being friends with
           | Elon for ages is public track record.
           | 
           | > Jack does not have any control over the nostr protocol.
           | 
           | Jack is bankrolling the founder of the protocol with more
           | than $240k. If you think that a SV CEO is doing that because
           | he wants to create a better world, good on you. If you have
           | any evidence that that doesn't give him any control, I'd be
           | happy to see it. I feel like it's valid to be a little
           | sceptical.
           | 
           | [0] https://theprint.in/tech/jack-dorsey-says-elon-musk-is-
           | singu...
        
             | leesalminen wrote:
             | The recipient of that donation (@fiatjaf) immediately split
             | it 50/50 with the developer of Damus (@jb55). All
             | distributions have been done in public. At last check,
             | fiatjaf has already dispersed 70% of the donation to other
             | people/groups.
             | 
             | fiatjaf has been a prominent developer in the Bitcoin
             | community for many years. Think what you may about crypto
             | bros, fiatjaf is not that. I've had the pleasure of working
             | with him a bit & have been on the receiving end of debates
             | with him. I've always found him to be an upstanding person
             | with deeply rooted ethics, even if I regularly disagree
             | with him. If $240k were enough to sway him to do something
             | he thought was wrong, Bitcoin would've been destroyed
             | already.
             | 
             | I understand where you're coming from, though. If I didn't
             | know the players and hadn't followed along (on nostr)
             | intently throughout, I would likely have the same concerns
             | as you. I still do, to some extent. Though my personal
             | experiences and interactions with these people has helped
             | assuage most of it.
        
               | drexlspivey wrote:
               | > If $240k were enough to sway him to do something he
               | thought was wrong, Bitcoin would've been destroyed
               | already.
               | 
               | How could fiatjaf destroy Bitcoin if he wanted to? He is
               | not even a contributor in Bitcoin Core.
        
             | irusensei wrote:
             | > If you have any evidence that that doesn't give him any
             | control, I'd be happy to see it
             | 
             | Here you go: https://github.com/nostr-protocol/nostr/nips
             | 
             | Not joking it's a protocol and clients decide what
             | standards they want to implement.
        
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