Keep it simple, download your phones headliner client, amethyst or damus, creating an account is the click of a button, no kyc, no email, no phone number. Follow a couple people you like, podcasters, commentators etc. You'll see people you find interesting or funny in the comments, give them a follow, stick to your feed.
When you are ready, you can delve into all the nuances of keys and different platforms and alby blah blah blah.
My 2 says:
Anyone who has had their bank account frozen for any reason will be looking for something like Bitcoin.
Anyone who has had their Twitter frozen for any reason will be looking for something like nostr.
Peace 🙏
This is one awesome example of nostr usage that isn't a direct copycat of some existing product:
https://github.com/shocknet/Lightning.Pub => Pub enables your Lightning node with public Web API's over nostr, allowing user nodes to act as a server without complex networking and SSL.
Basically just way better networking to have accounts on a Lightning node without worrying about a shitload of firewalls and security shit. These guys went through the Wolf accelerator in NYC and they're the real deal.
However, the products built on nostr currently include a fugazi twitter, fugazi medium, fugazi podcasting platform, and pretty much everything else that's a direct copycat of some existing platform with an existing network effect but now you can zap people. If that is not interesting to you then I don't blame you.
Web relays and nodes as architecture, json over websockets, decentralized and censorship resistant architecture is fucking awesome. The potential is way bigger than some shitty version of a current existing app. Shocknet's Lightning.pub is a great example (and I'm pretty sure they use it in their platform Lightning.video).
at the dawn of internet, many were saying "I'm on AOL or Compuserve" (centralised online hubs) - why do I need internet?
nostr isn't just a decentralised X, just like internet isn't decentralised AOL - it's a protocol that one day will be as obvious / invisible as http, everyone will take it for granted that all people, apps, services and ai models interact and (real) money flow through this magic substrate
right now, it's just bunch of idealistic indie devs who care more about protocol than about UX, and who definitely don't care to convince you
the question is if you want to witness it first hand and help it along or read about it in "wired" in 10 years time
When Elon Musk decides to lock your account on X and you can’t get in X anymore and you lose your 20 million followers and cannot edit anything anymore you will understand the value of Nostr. Only then you will understand it. Deeply!!
You will then be glad you moved to Nostr so you own your keys.
If X is like going to a bank and deposit your hard earned fiat, asking permission to please access your fiat and not having your own private keys then Nostr is like holding your own keys to access your hard money with your own keys in self custody.
If you value your information you published like you value your hard money you know where to put it.
There is a price for convenience and that price is slavery. And eternal obedience to the ones who own and hold your keys.
While you can be de-platformed (from a platform/app like X), you can't be de-protocoled (from a protocol like Nostr). Key distinction.
No one can prevent you from sharing your note (~ tweet), no government can send emails to Nostr executives to censor someone. There are no Nostr executives.
It supports live videostreams (there are are livestreams with people gaming, or writing code)
It's super duper easy to send sats to anyone's note or profile, similar as here on SN we just send sats
Since it's slightly more complicated to use it and it's not that big it means that there are not many "low quality braindead content people". There are some amazing folks like Lyn Alden, Preston Pysh, Alex Gladstein, Jack Dorsey...
There are starting communities and if you join you can be the one to start a community (like reddit, it just uses /n/something instead of /r/something)
You can choose your experience - there are many available clients with different focuses. Primal, Snort, Damus, Amethyst, Habla.News, Plebstr, see https://www.nostrapps.com/
The protocol supports long posts (here's the first article I saw on habla: Bitcoin: A beacon of hope
Thank you for such a clear bullet-point overview, that's helpful. I didn't know it shares similarities with Reddit as well. The "low quality brain-dead content people" is definitely a plus.
Really, the amazing thing about Nostr is how simple it is. You can build practically anything on top of it. OTOH there’s basic tweet-style posts, long form posting, IRC-style chat, and even video streaming. And the plus is that they all use the same ID and all have V4V.
Decentralized social media that isn’t directly related to bitcoin (I mean, you can tip with sats, but other than that it’s not inherently bitcoiner social media), but it happens to be mostly bitcoiners talking about bitcoin.
Joining Nostr is cool because you’ll be able to say you were one of the first users.
Not sure if Nostr is the final form of decentralized social media, but it’s at least the prototype, and if something better is built, everything could easily transfer over.
The tech in a nutshell: it’s a protocol in the same way email and HTTP are protocols. When you post, you send the post to relays (as many as you want), and the app itself is just a way to display posts from relays. Relays are basically like nodes, so there’s really no meaningful censorship or anything like that.
That was actually really helpful, thanks for explaining it in such a concise and clear way. Being one of the first definitely sounds enticing, do you think it will garner interest from nocoiners at some point?
So, this is just my personal hypothesis, but... "At some point", inevitably, yes, kind of.
I think it's a game changing innovation, and like all game changing innovations, it'll be commonplace for everyone eventually.
The innovation is social media as a protocol. That idea has been discovered/invented, and there's no putting the toothpaste back. Similar to the internet itself, and electricity. If Nostr never breaks out of the "social media for bitcoiners" perception, the idea of social media as a protocol will likely take another form. I think of Nostr as the first MP3 player. Is it the iPod? Maybe, maybe not. Either way, the days of CDs and tapes are numbered. There could still be uses for centralized social media, maybe people will use both, but social media as a protocol is inevitably successful.
For Nostr to be accepted by nocoiners, more people that don't care about bitcoin need to get on there (or bitcoiners needs to find something else to talk about besides bitcoin), the UI needs to be a little more user friendly, and people with big followings probably need to join.
Technically... Damus is the app that everyone uses, and someone could easily build another UI that becomes more popular... But that would still technically be Nostr, because Nostr is the protocol.
TL;DR - If Nostr/Damus doesn't become widely adopted, social media as a protocol will, likely as Nostr/something_else.
PS - bitcoin adoption likely solidifies Nostr as the default social media platform for most people.
I can, actually. My point just happened to sail well over your head.
There aren't many people saying anything interesting on nostr, so why would I try to convince another one to start using it? On the other hand, if you have something interesting to say, I'll try to make a sales pitch, because I selfishly want more interesting content.
It didn't sail over my head mate, haha, you can really only interpret it that way if you know what your intention was with that question, otherwise it just sounds like a passive-aggressive way to mock a post.
Anyway, with the formalities out of the way, I'm still interested in your sales pitch and respect your selfish desire to have more interesting content. So, I'll get to the question. Yes, I do think I have interesting things to say, in my humble opinion.
Without knowing what your priorities are, I'll start with mentioning that there's a very low marginal cost of cross-posting your X's on Nostr. People zap content they like, just like they do here, so your self-proclaimed interesting content will pull in a little revenue.
I take your presence on SN as evidence that you care about Bitcoin. There are lots of creators and developers on nostr who don't post on X, so there's probably some content you're currently missing out on.
Personally, I'm using nostr in it's current early state because I care about parallel institutions. I'll tolerate the shortcomings in order to have an opportunity to increase the amount of engagement and value in the network.
No problem, thanks for tolerating my mockery of your seeming mockery.
I care about Bitcoin indeed. That's why I was wondering whether I'm missing out by not being on Nostr, and it seems like I am. I'm quite surprised that some creators and developers aren't on X and only on Nostr, as I assume it doesn't have many users. My priority is related to your last point, I'd like to be able to have discussions and debates without the censorship other social media platforms have. And although X is pretty good now, it might change later on. Also, stacking some sats in the process sounds enticing, and the technology is just really interesting.
on Primal you can customize your feed to see your network/global/Look at nostr through Jack Dorsey's npub etc. Some feeds have zap.stream shows in them, I'm thinking eventually I'll have a feed of cheeseburgers near me (zap for pay and delivery)
Some great arguments put forward - if you're here you're a Bitcoiner, so you'd find another place full of friends. It's so much more than a social media/twitter clone, there's music platforms, blogging software, digital market places...it's not so much an app as an ecosystem appearing on a new protocol, which is in itself still in early stages of its evolution.
If you value decentralization, censorship resistance, and open protocols then Nostr i where its at. If not, then you probably won't dig it. Nostr is really a protocol not an app. There are many apps that use the protocol and many more will be created. At this point the application of the protocol that is getting the most attention is the twitter like apps. It is in the very early stages. I believe it will be much bigger than Twitter ever was but it may take years for this to happen. After all Twitter was mostly nerds like me in the early days.
It's still early. Just like most people didn't join Twitter before 2010, most people won't get on Nostr until it's more fleshed out and consumer friendly.
I think it's way too early for most to enjoy Nostr.
True. Saying it's not for everyone is like saying you want your own little private community without anyone bothering you. But if you want Nostr to be successful, it'll need more users.
With X you are working for Elon Musk. You think you are working for yourself and have those million clients, you call followers. You have these great folders with information you proudly call your tweets. You even have some friends you daily meet at the coffee machine.
But Elon is your boss. He can fire you any time. Instantly. And when you are fired you won’t be able to access your computer and your files. There will be people looking at you when you are guided down the stairways. People: @groeneboon has just been fired. Please keep working people, go back to your desk.
None of your colleauges would dare to say good bye, because they know if they put a sad face or show one tear, Elon can fire them too!
With Nostr you cannot be fired. You own your business. If you don’t like the building block you just take your stuff to another place and continue. Your clients, your files, your friends, you take everything with you instantly. Even you bank account you take with you.
Someone asked why I said twitter is waste of time... Because of many reasons as the majority of traditional media platforms, but with twitter is even worse since it was confiscated by elon musk... 🙈
All clients still feel clunky, laggy, buggy and not intuitive for the average user.
I'm waiting for the clients to mature, until then i just go there once in a while.
I like Snostr, but it's very buggy/clunky.
We need a full copy-paste of X(Twitter) UI/UX into a Nostr client, with Trending tab, but so far no one has done it.
If you are not willing to try new things then stay where you are, no one will miss you on nostr... It's not for everyone, you happy on twitterX, that's great !
We're having a discussion, there's no need to get passive-aggressive. All the other dozens of people here are actually useful and helpful, you're the only one who scolding someone for being interested. Anyway, I hope you get over whatever it is you're dealing with and don't be afraid to ask for help, it's okay. God bless.
After reading through all the comments here, because of the following reasons: the decentralization, lack of censorship, zaps and the sheer novelty of it all.
Fair enough. I don't think that'll happen under Elon, but then again he's no saint either, so it might. Probably should get familiar with is as I'm usually on the "wrong" side when the censorship takes place.
I would argue the only thing right in this statement is decentralized. It's not just about Bitcoin and it's not just a twitter clone.
Most user at the moment are bitcoiners but most bitcoiners are early adopters and we love our decentralized software, but so far I've just posted bread lol.
And most apps present it like a short post format like twitter but the protocol is capable of much more.
If traditional webpage are fiat, nostr would be Bitcoin.
All kinds, started making loafs for the first time since the pandemic kicked off.
But wife and kid nailed pizza dough last night, we are thinking about making it a regular thing.
The comparison with X is misplaced. Nostr is so much more than only a social media platform.
This said, it's very new technology, and still very niche.
With nostr, you have full control of your digital identity and your data. I am not trying to be dismissive, but if you don't see the value of this, then nostr is not for you.
I don't code and can navigate fine, although it's not completely intuitive...full disclosure I do prefer X as I like having a feed that has multiple topics
Nostr is a protocol and the potential is awesome
However, the products built on nostr currently include a fugazi twitter, fugazi medium, fugazi podcasting platform, and pretty much everything else that's a direct copycat of some existing platform with an existing network effect but now you can zap people. If that is not interesting to you then I don't blame you.
Thanks