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I regularly see people make distinction between SN and social media. The difference isn't obvious on the surface but if you are a thoughtful person after you use SN you begin to see the difference .

Stacker News

The incentive structure added by bitcoin and the relatively small community make it very different from places like Reddit or Twitter. That said, personally I do consider Stacker.news a social media site.
Wikipedia isn't the authority ( there really isn't an authority over language, its anarchy ) but I think the definition is pretty good.
Social media are interactive technologies that facilitate the creation, sharing and aggregation of content (such as ideas, interests, and other forms of expression) amongst virtual communities and networks.
In my experience Stacker.news can be addictive if you find the discussions entertaining and valuable. Then when you add the dopamine hit from getting zapped it can really suck a person in. Is this bad? I guess it can be if you are avoiding more important activities. Its probably very subjective and personal.
When I contrast Stacker.news with Reddit or Hacker News the difference is profound. The level of intelligence for the most part is much higher. Social media sites like Twitter and Facebook use algorithms and they seem to feed into conflict. Its been said in documentaries that these platforms hire psychologists to help them manipulate their users into spending more time on the site. Thing is... Twitter wasn't always like that.
I was fairly early to Twitter. In my area there were only a handful of people on Twitter and I ended up meeting all of them. Made friends and connections that benefited my career. I learned many things on Twitter that were helpful. It wasn't really about fighting with dumb people or talking about the news. Back then it was mostly software devs and people working in tech. There was a commonality between the people using the site. As the audience grew and celebs started using it began to change. Once it became something everyone had to be on it was pretty shot for me.
Once it began to change I started saying Twitter is where you go to get sad or mad.
Stacker.news is small. That's good for those of us that use it. If it grows I believe it will change drastically. Many of us that use it today and find value here will lose interest. Why? Because we aren't normal. I don't mean that as a slight. Its just true. Most people don't really care to share their thoughts on the topics we discuss. Most don't even want to write at all. They don't want to argue / debate. They don't care about bitcoin. They also don't care about fiat.
So is Stacker.news a social media site? I say it is. But @k00b has tried to create an incentive structure using bitcoin that avoids many of the issues with other sites. In general I don't think the human race has figured out how to deal with the number of low fidelity connections the Internet has given us. I believe future generations will learn from our mistakes. I don't even think we really know all the mistakes being made yet.

Nostr

Nostr is a protocol. Its not social media. Just like web sockets aren't social media or HTTP isn't. But the primary applications being created and used on the protocol are social media. They are clones of Twitter.
Why do people think Nostr isn't social media? Well, because its better for now. But you see normies that come to it and hate it. Why? Because its full of people like me. Talking about stuff they don't care about. Its full of self assured jerks that love to talk about how dumb everyone is that doesn't hold bitcoin.
If Nostr succeeds this will change. Is it good? Yeah. I think Nostr is good. I think SN is good. But they aren't perfect. They have some of the same issues that the old platforms have. Their creators have learned and tried to fix some of the issues.
What do you think? If SN isn't social media, what is your definition? What about Nostr?
Sn is obviously social media.
Which is funny, because I was never drawn to social media at all. For some reason, Instagram, tik tok, Snapchat, Facebook seemed more like a retarded chore, than anything else. I made a twitter in 2021 to find bitcoiners, because I heard about "Bitcoin twitter", deleted it after I found nostr.
Nostr isn't social media. But it's drawing me into social media apps. Pretty strange.
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Sn is obviously social media. Which is funny, because I was never drawn to social media at all.
Same
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82 sats \ 2 replies \ @ek 25 Oct
Imagine a world where you actually get zapped when someone zaps you. So the more they zap you, the harder you get zapped.
edit: oh wait, this isn't the saloon lol
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Are you proposing a SN Milgram Experiment?
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24 sats \ 0 replies \ @ek 25 Oct
I am proposing we should not abandon this idea
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58 sats \ 1 reply \ @Thereal 25 Oct
For me, Stacker News is a useful resource.
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Same, but is it social media?
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People have said it's more like a forum, and I think they're right.
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I can see that.
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I see SN more like this:
News, articles and discussions around Bitcoin. Call it an "ADVANCED" Bitcointalk forum.
And don't forget: SN was always a "Pay to post / say something". The so called "incentives" were used only to attract more users.
Nostr is something else. And nostr, is NOT a social media platform. Looks like, but is not. Is far way more than just that. I mean look at all these endless apps based on nostr: https://nostr.net/
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Yeah, the main incentive I was referring to was the pay to post thing. I think that helps in many ways. Peer to peer zapping as well but paying to post and the increasing cost really discourages spammers.
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P2P zapping is something extra, separately. Like a gift in private.
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I enjoy it for what it is. You can call it social media, news site, bitcoin forum. It doesnt matter, like minded people will always find a way to gather together.
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That's pretty much how I feel. If it is social media... its good social media
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Right. Its also not bloated like other ones. It has just what it needs, and the market dictates if it stays.
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When SN as a Nostr client? It will level-up the social networking.
I hope there will be future where the definition of social media will depend on a Nostr integration or not. A future where social is really social again with the integration of a protocol providing all the social aspects you would expect. Yes, Nostr is a protocol...but it also provides a network. I like networks, especially when they are social. Social networks > social media.
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Then when you add the dopamine hit from getting zapped it can really suck a person in. Is this bad? I guess it can be if you are avoiding more important activities.
Sir, I feel personally attacked. 😅
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I resemble that remark
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I resemble it too
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It's so clearly social media to me, that I can't even think what operational definition you'd have to have to disagree with that.
What I suspect is going on is that people are so accustomed to deriding social media that they can't acknowledge SN as being a positive example of it.
That's a bit reminiscent of how "conspiracy theory" has come to be used to mean "bizarre idea" and no one refers to something like the official account of 9/11 as a "conspiracy theory" even if it obviously is.
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Great take
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for NOSTR, it may start looking like solely social media, but that's like saying the Internet is just forums, classifieds and email early on
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Definitely, but lack of in-your-face ego manifestation means it's one of the better forms. Basically replaced reddit when they broke their APIs.
Nostr is mostly used like a Twitter. Just like with Twitter the experience is highly algorithm-dependent so lack of algo stunts it's growth. IMHO it should have shipped initially with more polish. Just today a major app disclosed a private key vulnerability that existed for 11 months!
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IMO Nostr will not make it without pay-to-post. NGMI
The thing in my opinion that makes SN so special, is that someone in order to post has to put up 100 sats. It helps to reduce spam and makes people think...
Is this worth clogging up the feed with? Is this worth my time? Is this worth someone else's time? Because in my opinion if it's not worth a nickel (5 cents) then it's probably not worth putting up for other people. Save it.
A random picture of a sunset, or a random picture of someone's lunch and "how great it is" is not what I'm interested in seeing. However it's Nostr currently. It's with few exceptions extremely low effort and borders on Spam IMHO.
Make them pay a marginal fee to post... and social media/forums/internet interaction becomes that much more real. My energy (sats) to share and this is evidenced by those 100 sats. Energy is truth, work is truth. If it's worth it users pay to post... otherwise it's all just spam there is no 'free' not really.
Otherwise it's all pretending and it's not an improvement imo.
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I feel they both could be classified as social media. I am hopeful that the slow steady growth and the fact that they are both built with Bitcoin incentives at the core, they will grow in a better way than what we have seen in the past. Nostr grown up will not look like Twitter grown up. And same for stacker vs. reddit. Incentives are important. And the future here won't be just cyber pink types. But there will still be Bitcoin at the middle. Which is exciting. Overall, I think we will age like fine wine here. Only time will tell.
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Probably the thing I like most is Nostr is a place where I can read and talk about bitcoin. Maybe it's just my follower list, but 90%of weekday I see is bitcoin.
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What do you think? If SN isn't social media, what is your definition? What about Nostr?
I think it is a social network, and unlike the rest, obviously what makes it more attractive are the incentives in on the other hand, I consider that being a small community, that is what influences the quality of the content you find here.
Regarding how addictive it is, I consider that it is at the right level. In the others you easily lose control 🕹️ you get trapped for 1 hour, the significant difference is that here your time is rewarded with value () in the others you just burn your time, in even if you don't stack a single in an hour, you at least learn something new, so by far is on another level with respect to social networks. And let's hope it stays that way, selecta. As people who seek Bitcoin to free ourselves from state control, we are and will always be a minority, the majority is too asleep and trapped in its short-term cycle to come to
And about Nostr 🟣 I think it's a bit more comprehensive and useful than just focusing on Tweeter imitations, although I must say that I'm an Amethys user and I think it's a very good application, I've also tried the Mostro P2P, something that's still new, but they're improving week by week, and it's developed by the same people 👥 from LNP2PBOT on Telegram step by step I'm trying other clients and learning more, but I definitely can't find anything similar to on Nostr.
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For me personally, SN is and has become a learning and interaction platform for all of us who have discovered Bitcoin.
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This. You hit the proverbial nail on the Proverbial Head Msd
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It's just my point of view
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0 sats \ 0 replies \ @OT 25 Oct
I see SN as a gamified writing platform. Community is smaller and it feels like a lot of us know each other even though we've never met.
Nostr is more open. Social media is just one of the things you can do on it. Its yet to be seen what it will turn into.
BTW, I sometimes forget that you can use SN without zapping.
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0 sats \ 4 replies \ @nym 25 Oct
It’s the most signal social media I know of. SN is a protocol also.
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48 sats \ 0 replies \ @nym 25 Oct
I meant the most “high” signal
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These are protocols
  • TCP/IP (Transmission Control Protocol/Internet Protocol)
  • HTTP (Hypertext Transfer Protocol)
  • FTP (File Transfer Protocol)
  • SMTP (Simple Mail Transfer Protocol)
  • SSL/TLS (Secure Sockets Layer/Transport Layer Security)
They have specs and allow for use by different applications much like Nostr.
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Can you define protocol for me then? What does that mean to you? Pretty sure I disagree with you on that one.
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3 sats \ 0 replies \ @nym 25 Oct
You’re right. I meant protocol very loosely. I just mean the ecosystem and assortment of tools they built and put together for this site to work, all available on GitHub.
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