I wrote about The Art of Using Stacker News before, but the past few months have been lots of changes and improvements, much appreciated for all the great work from @k00b @ekzyis @kr and more.
I was lucky enough to stump upon SN around 2022 and have been witnessing how far it has come and is still growing. And I think the main reason why I'm so addicted to SN is that not only can I interact with smart and humble plebs who actually take the time to read and give feedback, but also being appreciated and rewarded with sats, something that the fiat world failed to deliver!
And here is a piece of updates and some tips and tricks that I've learned and things should pay attention to.
⚡️ Some Main Changes Since Last Post
1. Sharing Photos
No longer need to use extra tools like in the past, you can directly upload within SN now. But one thing to keep in mind is to always remove metadata on the photo you share. Ideally, delay sharing - once you left the places, then you are okay to share. And never don't disclose where or which city you live in because Google Lens is quite powerful these days.
How to upload
Simply click this small icon, but if it exceeds the free upload limit of 10MB, then you will need to pay some extra sats for it.
And SN's photo sharing still doesn't come with a nice layout yet, in order to make it cost-effective and makes it more organized and beautiful, one hack I've found is to upload the photos somewhere first, like I would upload them to my blog, then I take a screenshot from there and upload that instead, a sample post here: I uploaded 3 main photos instead of 17! And not to mention the images add beauty to my post instead of messing everything up.
2. Sending LN Message as DM
This is one of my favorite hidden features: you can send messages to anyone once you have their LN address - no more asking others for ways to contact, and no permission is needed!
How to send DM in SN
a. go to wallet
b. withdraw
c. choose the lightning address and input the receiver's LN address
d. input the sat amount, which can be as little as 1 sat
e. write some thoughtful comments
Send and done. (You can send messages to SN users from other LN wallets too.)
3. Starting your Own Territory
Territory launched around December 2022, and yes, anyone can start their own territory, but one thing to keep in mind is that making one is easy, but keeping it running and fun is HRAD - it takes real work.
Cost: monthly is 100k sats, yearly 1M sats or one-time 3M sats.
Better do the math to see if it's worth it, but one thing for sure is that you don't need to own any territory to create good content, you can just write them. I guess the better strategy is to keep focusing on writing good content first, at least having some POW in SN, then it's easier to build something after you have earned some trust and attention.
How to create
Go to the dropdown menu and scroll to the end, click create, input details, and choose payment, and you are good to go.
And fun fact: @saloon is the best territory out there, no CEOs, no mods, the real Wild West.
4. Autowithdrawals
This is a brand new feature:
As SN toward a half-custodial wallet, you can configure autowithdrawals to a lightning address.
How to attach it
Go to wallet - attach wallets - input your LN address.
But of course you can still do it manually because using an LN invoice is more private than using an LN address.
5. Crossposting to Nostr
Crossposting is quite handy for creators, but do remember that you CAN'T DELETE anything in Nostr. Personally, I don't use this crossposting; I rather send a link in Nostr and from links that I can control, not only can I edit my content anytime I want, but I keep the freedom to trash the links if I feel like it.
But for those who would like to use it, go to setting - enable crosspost to Nostr, and done.
NIP 5 Verification Supported
You can use your SN LN address as NIP-5 verification in Nostr too.
How to verify NIP-05
Simply go to setting - Nostr - NIP-5 - put your Nostr public key into the pubkey section, then go back to Nostr and put your SN LN address into the NIP-5 area, done.
Other Fun
- MeMe Monday is where stackers share their best memes to win 25k sats.
- Tech Tuesday is where stackers share their favorite tech tools or projects.
- Wednesday is when stackers share what they are working on this week.
Thursday is where stackers dig back into what happened in history during this dayor TBC.- Fun Fact Friday is where the best Fun Fact gets 10k sats.
- Stacker News Live is where @k00b and @car go over the top 5 posts and interesting ones each Friday (4 pm Texas time, zap steam here )
- Weekend Book recommendation is where stackers share the books they are reading lately, with many good gems.
The last but BEST one is @saloon, it opens every day, 24 /7/ 365, and with much fun.
👁️ Things Pay Attention to
The internet is an amazing place to share and connect, but you also need to take some precautions to protect yourself. And one of the most important things I learned about privacy is not about hiding everything, it's about choosing what to share in public.
Some Good Practices
- Never use your real name, better use a nym.
- Never share too much personal information.
- Ideally, never share your specific location.
- On data leaking / tracking
SN uses plausible to track data, and there's quite a lot of information there. If you spend some time looking at the data, you can pretty much tell which user is in which location or at least which VPN location they are using, and then you would see what browser they use or on a laptop or phone, what articles they have read or which pages spent the most time in. But hey, this is all the info that you are leaking, relax! ( happy to know if there is anything that I missed. )
Solution
You should always use a VPN and change your IP address from time to time , the USA or the UK are good options since more stackers are from these two places, or you can simply use Tor; However, using Tor is so slow, a better solution I've found is using one account to post and reply, and using an anon account or log out to read and search.
And whenever you feel like sharing your SN account-related photos, it's better to hide or edit the wallet balance or even cover the user name, and avoid leaking specific browsers and time.
- Self-destructing items
I learned an interesting way of living in SN: delete everything and live in the present with no history, which is quite freeing. Or for whatever reason you would like to minimize your traces, you can either do it manually or make the most with the delete bot, just @ delete in 24 hours or 1 minute, or any time frame you'd like.
Actually, this is one of the reasons why I'm more active in SN over Nostr because I have the freedom to DELETE: a) certain things, after they served their purpose are good to go. b) willing to let go or destroy could lead to better creation.
- Sharing as anon
Anyone can share as anon, but the posting fee would be slightly more, and it varies from territory to territory.
- Hiding everything and joining underground
This is one of the details where you can see how thoughtful team @sn is, for those who would like to maintain a low profile, simply go to setting - privacy - choose these
☑️ hide me from the top stacker
☑️ hide my cowboy hat
Once they are enabled, no one can even tell if you are being active or not.
After setting the healthy ground, then we can focus on giving and receiving value while having fun SNing.
🛠️ How to Navigate the Noise?
One interesting thing I've noticed is that as SN grows, it doesn't necessarily mean having more quality content but more noise, sadly, or maybe it takes time to filter things out, but here are some of the tricks I've found to minimize the noise:
1. Muting low-quality Accounts and Territories
You are free to mute all the bots or low-quality accounts that you don't want to read from and even mute territories.
How to Mute Accounts
Go to anyone's bio, click the ... icon, then choose mute.
How to Mute Territories
Go to any territories page, and click mute.
One tip for avoiding FOMO of any territory is just to subscribe to the founder to see their POW first, because the founder usually does most of the work especially in the beginning to inspire others, if the founder doesn't do much, you can expect what the territory will be like.
Downzaping
If you don't like certain things, you can down-zap them, and then these content would end up being in the outlawed area.
If an item gets flagged by stackers with enough combined trust, it is outlawed and hidden from view for stackers on Tenderfoot mode. If you wish to see this flagged content without any modifications, you can enable Wild West mode in your settings.
How to Downzap
Click ... icon in any posts or comments and choose down zap, the zaps will go to the reward pool.
One more hack: if you also enjoy in the wild and often check recent posts, you can mute many things in one go if you see someone post something you dislike; click the ... icon in the post: downzap + mute the stacker + mute the territory.
2. Subscribing to Interesting Stackers
You can choose to subscribe to posts or comments from any stackers, I only subscribe to posts, because subscribing to comments can be overwhelming, it's better to go to their pages to read from time to time.
How to Subscribe
Go to any stacker's page that you find interesting, click the ... icon, and subscribe to their posts or comments.
Or if you see some good posts and you would like to follow any updates, click the ... icon and subscribe, I normally bookmark the really good post and subscribe at the same time.
3. Going to Top Posts/Comments/Stackers
If you don't have much time to hang around SN and don't want to miss all the good stuff, you can simply go to these three links daily to read all the best stuff from previous days.
Or wait for the weekly Saturday newsletter from @k00b if you really don't have much time, the subscribe link is here, or you can enable it from your setting.
4. Making the Best of Searching
You don't need to keep waiting for the next hot posts to learn something new, there are actually many old posts with great knowledge to dig!
How to search
Simply hit the search on top, I usually search for keywords, or if I want to search for things from someone or myself, then I would add nym: stacker's nym.
Search results can be filtered by the following: most recent /most comments / most sats.
One more hack is you can use any eternal search engine to search things inside SN, just use : xxx site:stacker.news
Sums up of my Strategy
Basically I focus on what I am interested in, minimize the noise or things that I don't even care about with muting, and pay extra attention to interesting brains and content by subscribing and bookmarking, making space for what matters instead of chasing the current thing.
🤔 FAQs
Why Zapping Others?
Sats are so precious, so why zap others? Isn't it better to hodl?
1. To earn trust
Every stacker has aglobaltrust score. Rewards use theseglobaltrust scores which factor in the PoV of everyone.
Ranking of posts/comments uselocaltrust scores when they're available, ie you're logged in and have a significant affinity for another stacker's zap taste as indicated by your zapping.
Basically,
local trust affects what we see in SN with gently personalized feeds, and if you log out, you might see different ranked content, and that is with global trust score which influencing the Zap rewards.Tips: the high-trusted stackers process more power in voting, thus making the content they like more visible.
2. To earn rewards
As we all know, there is a daily reward from the SN pool, so during the zappers reward day, it rewards stackers who zapped one or more of the top 33% of posts and comments from the previous day.
- zappers of top posts get 1/4 rewards
- zappers of top comments get 1/4 rewards
3. To build relationships
If you zap others, others would zap you too; it's almost like sharing food, you pay one time, and friends pay the next round, so each got to enjoy more food:) Sharing is caring!
4. To vote for good content and show appreciation for creators.
Not gonna lie, it takes TIME to write good and original content! and the fact of just zapping few sats and getting to read a great piece of content instead of needing to deal with all the paywalls and subscriptions like in the fiat world is like a steal, but creators definitely need some support!
Zapping others has mutual benefits! and generally, the more you zap, the more you stack.
How to Stack More?
The simple formula is create + zap = stack:
- As a stacker
stacks = 90% * sats from posts and comments that you created + daily rewards
- As a stacker and territory founder
stacks = 90% * sats from posts and comments that you created + daily rewards + 50% * 10% of your own territory revenue.
Bacailly keeps creating quality content and zapping the good ones, but If you have time and would like to LEVEL UP the fun, you should learn how the ranking and reward system works too.
🤓 Bonus - The Art of Stacking
I hope you found this post useful, and if you would love to learn more, I've also put together
The Art of Stacking - who says you can only stack sats in SN?I share this guide not for you to game SN but to help you understand how it works and how you would get
rewarded by doing the WORK, and the least discussed part - learn to stack the unseen.Part of me is curious to find out how it feels to sell things in SN, so I need to create a learning opportunity, and nothing helps me to learn better than actually doing it. 👀 I would definitely share what I've learned and what tools I used after this experiment, and much appreciate your support:)
m.stacker.news. Any link from there will be marked as paid.Zapping is Win-Win-Win
How to Stack More?
a suggestion for SN (funny)