https://m.stacker.news/20870

Mark Zuckerberg informed Meta shareholders about his plans to invest $4 billion into niche decentralized network protocol for a distributed social networking system called Nostr over the next 5 years. He made the announcement during a pre-recorded video shown to a limited set of shareholders at company event on Thursday.

In the video Zuckerberg explained that he discovered Nostr while creeping on his archenemy Jack Dorsey's social media profiles a few months ago. Zuckerberg sounded excited and optimistic about the protocol and how Meta (Formerly Facebook) could copy products and features to steal like they've done to competitor's products in the past. Snapchat stories on Instagram and Facebook being the most infamous.

However, while Zuckerberg detailed his plans to copy and steal some of Nostr's ideas, Zuckerberg was more interested in using the $4 billion of capital investment in an attempt to capture the open source protocol and use Meta's vast resources to transform Nostr into an effectively closed protocol that Meta could gatekeep.

"Everyone knows centralized and permissioned systems are faster, better, and more reliable than these clunky open source products. We think we can take all the good parts of Nostr and ditch the bad parts like the lack of ability to censor content or pay anyone in the world for anything you want whenever you want." Zuckerberg said.

One of the critical features Zuckerberg emphasized to shareholders that he wanted to remove from Nostr was Nostr Zaps. Zaps give users the ability to send Bitcoin to other users at the click of a button. Users zap each other when they like a piece of content or information another user posted on their timeline. Journalists and creators are able to generate revenue for their work if they can build a large enough audience of zappers.

"Zaps are interesting" Zuckerberg said. However, he clarified that "Bitcoin has a few problems. Its very volatile and its used by criminals. We can't have criminals using our system if we can effectively close source it because the government will fine us. But we know users prefer a stable currency and the most stable currency is attention. If we can remove zaps and replace zaps with a feature we initially developed for Facebook, the company that made me rich as hell, called "Pokes" we think we can revolutionize Nostr like we did social media in 2006."

Later Zuckerberg provided more context, "Pokes get people's attention. If I pour my blood sweat and tears into a piece of art, digital content, our risky investigative journalism the last thing I want is to be paid in a volatile currency which could go to zero at anytime. However, if you gave users the ability to poke me on Nostr as, you know, a way to say 'Hey, that was some good content. You should make more if it!' that attention would let me know I was connecting with my audience and that my work was worth the effort."

https://m.stacker.news/20871