If it does not escape the trap of being social media, Nostr will fade into obscurity. But if it manages to escape that trap, then Nostr could be revolutionary.
Nostr adds V4V and "skin-in-the-game". None of the mentioned platforms had a function like stacker.news or Nostr. with real money integration. Sure, anyone can create a troll account but only accounts with age, relayed by high threshold servers will get any attention or spread. Imagine how little spam and how high the quality would have been online, if there would have been two internets. One where you pay for each message sent, like a postal service, and another free, like we have today but centralized by a few hegemons.
The flamewars and anonimity of the early internet and usenet were not a "problem". The problem is and was a thin skin. So what if friends ruin friendships over online interactions? People ruin or end friendships in meatspace over silly querks and incompatibilities all the time. The internet allowed truth, which is often rude and harsh, to surface. Well worth the "pain" of hurt "feefee's".
The medium IS the message. If you want pleasant cordial interactions, have in-person meetings and cucumber sandwich parties, where everyone has to be on their best behavior. But, the catch is, they also have to conform to verbal and non-verbal censorship, hiearchy and pecking orders, cultural norms and consequences.
The digital realm brings out inner insecurities and weaknesses. You do not have to read or reply, yet you do, in a flame war, or any other social interaction online, for all to see you participate in your own pain device, of your own free will.... Or...you know....don't.
As a protocol, nostr is only a vehicle. It does what bitcoin did for currency and value exchange. It makes it a neutral element. Garbage in garbage out. If you are only seeing gargabe out, try filtering your inputs.
This doesn't make any sense at all. My essay looks back 53 years to the original social media. You can't get any less short-sighted than that.
Nostr adds V4V and "skin-in-the-game". None of the mentioned platforms had a function like stacker.news or Nostr. with real money integration.
First of all, Nostr does not require payment in order to post. There are tons of relays that will let anyone post for free.
But even if every Nostr relay were to become pay-to-post, that would not eliminate spam on Nostr relays. Most spammers make money as a result of posting (e.g. ransomware, product promotions, etc). In order to disincentivize them from posting, you would have to raise the price-to-post higher than the return they get from posting.
That price is not going to be low, because a single person seeing the post could get the spammer a considerable amount of return. For instance, a post with a ransomware link could return hundreds of dollars for a single ransomware installation. But it would be insane for a relay to charge hundreds of dollars per post. Product promotions return far less, but even if they get $5 per post, charging that much per post would be unacceptable!
People ruin or end friendships in meatspace over silly querks and incompatibilities all the time.
Arrogant people do that, yes. But people who have humility and a sense of shame do not do that IRL.
The flamewars and anonimity of the early internet and usenet were not a "problem". The problem is and was a thin skin.
People drop their humility/shame when they post on social media. In effect, they become arrogant, but only while on social media, which is the opposite of social behavior.
The filtering that people apply to their words, as you mention in your third paragraph, is critical to social behavior. Most humans have thin skins, whether because of ignorance or arrogance (but I repeat myself). For their benefit, people filter their words; the ignorant and arrogant need help, not harassment.
As a protocol, nostr is only a vehicle. It does what bitcoin did for currency and value exchange. It makes it a neutral element. Garbage in garbage out. If you are only seeing gargabe out, try filtering your inputs.
Did you read the entirety of my essay? At the end of it, I directly stated that Nostr's current problem is that the hyper-focus on social media is preventing developers from making far more useful Nostr applications. It doesn't matter what users do; the application is the medium. And Nostr is currently a vehicle only for social media. And that is a tragedy.
(ps: I'm not angry at you at all in this post. This sort of back-and-forth is useful, because of the nature of the topic.)
This doesn't make any sense at all. My essay looks back 53 years to the original social media. You can't get any less short-sighted than that.
Short sighted in the future looking sense not the backwards looking sense. It's also biased by your experiences with or assessment of usenet. It's a different beast and will not suffer the same fate. In other words, it's short signted because in the article your ascribe failures of usenet to nostr that nostr does not and will not suffer from, and was explicitly designed to combat.
First of all, Nostr does not require payment in order to post. There are tons of relays that will let anyone post for free.
Yes, for now. The end game is to combat bots and censorship with payed relays, once nostr gets big enough. Post all you want, but unless it's worth the cost of propagating it will not get far. Ask the devs or look up the early discussions about nostr. It's why lightning is even integrated with nostr and stacker news in the first place.
The theories behind these integrations goes back a long time.
Again, in the early days of email it was decided not to have payments attached with each sending for various infrastructure limitations at the time. There was a precedent and anticipation of spam and malware, crazy flyer campaigns, this is where the term "junk mail" came from, postal bomb terrorism of course.
With nostr early days, these limitations do not exist. If and when spam gets out of control and starts costing the network, implementing V4V will be much simpler, and users will have a ready way to pay. There will still be "free" onbording relays and community driven idological relays, the way disroot or riseup are community driven, but they themselves will have to limit abuse by exlclusion or KYC.
But even if every Nostr relay were to become pay-to-post, that would not eliminate spam on Nostr relays..... In order to dis-incentivize them from posting, you would have to raise the price-to-post higher than the return they get from posting.
Not necessarily. Paying for curated relays means you are paying someone to eliminate that spam for you. We do this now with gmail and others using our private data and identity profiles sold to advertisers. Nostr enables direct, liberty respecting filtration. This is all in the early discussions about nostr.
People drop their humility/shame when they post on social media. In effect, they become arrogant, but only while on social media, which is the opposite of social behavior.
The filtering that people apply to their words, as you mention in your third paragraph, is critical to social behavior.
Then the word is incorrect. The words "social media" or web 2.0 postdates USENET. It is an attack word , a word loaded with venture capital and exploitation. It came along with Facebook and twitter and was not used before , specifically in the age of USENET.
The internet and text communication is neutral. You read the words, you interpret the context and implications. It is all happening in your head. It may have real or unreal consequences, fake or real intentions.
A huge mistake, one that is going to severely and irreparably damage civilization is what you are doing. Mistaking the two. You are mistaking the forest for the trees. Real social interactions with digital text. A huge part of this is the softness of modern life, we face few natural or existential threats, so minor inconveniences are felt disproportionately. Example: If your only or majority interaction with others is online and with your real identity where everyone is polite, say facebook, a context switch to an anonymous forum where no one holds back, would be traumatizing. One is a guarded truth, insincere, the other might be real but harsh. Again, in the full breadth of human culture and experience, both are valid. Americans are more intense then British people. what you are implying is American flamers and trolls are somehow doomed by virtue of their not being more like the subtle and polite British, as an example.
For their benefit, people filter their words; the ignorant and arrogant need help, not harassment.
This is an opinion and out-of-scope to this conversation and the point of your article, which is about the future of nostr and the history of online communication. What is considered " arrogant" is subjective and cultural. One cultures arrogance that needs to be cured, is another normal conversation.
It doesn't matter what users do; the application is the medium. And Nostr is currently a vehicle only for social media.
again, you are not looking in the right places, this is what is meant by adjusting you filter. Pablo7z is building all sorts of non-social stuff. There are market places being built. Games. DAO platforms. there are people working on tons of other innovations. I'm even working on a NIP that is non-social-media(i hate the word)
(ps: I'm not angry at you at all in this post. This sort of back-and-forth is useful, because of the nature of the topic.)
don't worry i have a thick skin and wouldn't care even if you were. What matters is the ideas. Even if you were to type in all-caps and use exclamation marks i would mostly read it ironically.
Social media hot take: like email/mastodon in terms of topology ... which is wayyyyy better than the alternative centralized social media so a huge win
But I do think it isn't going to be forever like email or is doomed to be like email because identities are portable which is novel and hard to account for. It's just where I'd guess it'll be in 3 years if the protocol can't produce portable experiences in that time frame. (You can already see thought leaders in nostr giving people permission, even shilling, centralization points on nostr.)
I'm very hopeful @jb55's work on nostrdb will approach the limit of decentralized experiences possible with nostr's current protocol design and inform what's needed to raise the limit.
Feels like the solutions are being worked on and open sourced quite rapidly.
One such example would be Primal. They worked out a solid caching service, and then open sourced it because they knew it could potentially be a centralizing force.
Any Nostr business that is seeking to create a better experience needs to open source their solution or risk the entire network centralizing around them. Which, at the end of the day, would be a complete and total failure. Might as well just use tradition social media in that case.
I'm super happy they open sourced. How expensive (including staff to maintain operation) do you think it is to run primal? It's cost/time prohibitive to run a normal relay and primal is caching the data of all of them.
Any Nostr business that is seeking to create a better experience needs to open source their solution or risk the entire network centralizing around them.
Nostr can't require projects open source though. Certain experiences are so expensive or hard to provide, open sourcing won't provide meaningful decentralization either.
Which, at the end of the day, would be a complete and total failure. Might as well just use tradition social media in that case.
We'd have to define failure. Creating a portable identity and portable data protocol that's widely adopted, even if experiences using it are centralized, is still a huge win in my book. It's a relatively incremental victory, but a victory nonetheless and more victories can be piled on top if it stays relevant.
Completely on board with your points, but here's my concern: If a single proprietary client or service becomes THE go-to on Nostr, it's vulnerable. The moment authorities knock, they'll give in, undermining Nostr's core purpose.
We only have the present moment.
Hope is as shallow as fear.
To hope and speculate is the same as live in anxiety and dread—at the end of the day it's all just illusion.
Exit the matrix and live in the present. See nostr for what it is, and the be co-creator to develop it into what you envision it to be.
EXISTING ON SOME SERVERS SOMEWHERE WITH PEOPLE DOING SHIT ON THEIR PHONES OR LAPTOPS OR SOMETHING LMAO