32 ms·
Nostr (“Notes and Other Stuff Transmitted by Relays”) – An Introduction
- dgerges 3y agoSuper elegant vision. Would love this to gain traction.
- eykanal 3y agoSaying "I don't want censorship" is equivalent to saying "I'm fine with people using my tool for coffee meetups, genocide planning, bridge club, and drug deals." It's an attempted handwashing of moral responsibility under the cover of software purity. At this point, it's pretty well documented that social media _as a tool_ has increased young female mental illness; the question is only "how much" [1]. To try to wave away responsibility for this by saying "but I'm just making a tool!" is beyond irresponsible at this point; it's morally reprehensible. [1]: https://jonathanhaidt.substack.com/p/social-media-mental-illness-epidemic https://jonathanhaidt.substack.com/p/social-media-mental-ill...
- blueberrychpstx 3y agoSocial media as a tool strikes me as the same kind of argument as “REAL socialism hasn’t been tried yet” It doesn’t feel at all to me that there are any social media platforms that function at all like tools but rather data vampires attempting to addict at any cost” and so Haidt’s mention of increased suicide rate is unfortunately not at all a surprise. Sorry if this sounds harsh but calling platforms in the zeitgeist at this moment in time as tools is simply naive.
- leesalminen 3y agonostr isn't a platform though, it's a protocol. Something closer to SMTP than to Facebook. Go build a little something on it (there are decent libraries for popular languages at this point which makes it easy) and see for yourself. It doesn't feel like a platform, it feels like a tool.
- nunobrito 3y agoYep
- scsibug 3y agoIt is a tool for communication. We can build a twitter clone on it, a chess match server, IoT messaging, etc. Nostr-the-protocol is a proper tool. Agreed that the social aspects built on top of it should be built with human wellbeing in mind - not ad revenue. Hopefully having the nostr protocol in place lets people iterate faster to build good social technology, and accelerates moving past the ad/engagement focused platforms we live with today.
- saprolino 3y ago> media _as a tool_ has increased young female mental illness Why should this be solved by discouraging censorship-resistant tools?
- afunctionof 3y ago[dead]
- b3nji 3y agoArguably, the erosion of mental health could be laid at the feet of greedy corporations using algos to push hate, and division for eyeballs to advertisers. Isn't Nostr algo free? Isn't it just a messaging service?
- leesalminen 3y agoYes, nostr is just a protocol. There is no inherent algorithm. A client could choose to implement one and users could then choose to just migrate to a different client without one. All I want is a reverse chronological feed of posts from people I follow. That’s it. And right now the nostr clients deliver that.
- throw101010 3y ago> "I'm fine with people using my tool for coffee meetups, genocide planning, bridge club, and drug deals." It's an attempted handwashing of moral responsibility under the cover of software purity. None of these activities are efficiently stopped by censorship on the largest social media platforms... so what are you suggesting? That we continue to employ inefficient censorship (which gets also abused all the time by governments around the world), or do you have any actual solution? If not, this sounds a lot like virtue signalling to me.
- dahwolf 3y agoThe elephant in the room here is that quite likely a large part of content that may contribute to female mental illness is not hateful. I'm of course talking about female influencers on Instagram flexing their wealth, highly customized looks, hot boyfriends, fancy holidays, etc. The phenomenon where a young girl at her most vulnerable/insecure age is ranking against this distorted image of filter-laden "expectations" is brand new. My point being, there's a huge amount of content that is bad for our mental health, yet cannot be censored because the harm is indirect.
- irusensei 3y agoBad take. Good software has to be used by anti-abortion activists and abortion clinics.
- breck 3y agoWhat is the best Nostr web client?
- leesalminen 3y agoThat’s pretty subjective. I happen to like astral, though many say it’s too slow for them. I think a lot of people are using coracle, snort.social, and iris. There are a lot of other ones under active development.
- jonstaab 3y agohttps://coracle.social https://coracle.social is the one I work on, and I think it's pretty good. It does more to surface relays as a first-class thing than most.
- EGreg 3y agoHow is this different than Secure Scuttlebutt? I remember following that for a while. Dominic Tarr invented that. Also Dat / Hypercore from Matthias Mullie, powering Beaker Browser
- leesalminen 3y agoNostr’s GitHub page discusses the issues with SSB. https://github.com/nostr-protocol/nostr#the-problem-with-ssb-secure-scuttlebutt https://github.com/nostr-protocol/nostr#the-problem-with-ssb...
- anarchogeek 3y agoHere's a good write-up comparing SSB and Nostr. https://mattlorentz.com/weblog/2023/01/18/nostr-v-ssb.html https://mattlorentz.com/weblog/2023/01/18/nostr-v-ssb.html
- Zamicol 3y agoIn my mind, key rotation is foundational, and neither system appears to support that.
- packetlost 3y agoAs a crypto-skeptic (lol), I really like Nostr. Unfortunately, I don't think it will catch on until someone takes the time to shave off the sharp technical edges and figure out spam + identity verification. The current Nostr network is full of cult-like bitcoin cryptobros, racist Twitter/Fediverse refugees, and spam. Lots, and lots of spam. But the technology is cool af and could be made into something more.
- leesalminen 3y agoI’ve switched over to only private and/or paid relays and don’t experience any spam whatsoever. Not that this is the best solution to spam, but it has been effective.
- packetlost 3y agoI host my own relay and it's stupid easy to set up. The problem then becomes relay discovery, which is an almost completely unsolved problem. I do think it will get there in though.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- leesalminen 3y agoCheck out the gossip client [0]. They take a unique stab at dealing with relay discovery. NIP-65 [1] also attempts to deal with this. Hopefully clients will start implementing this shortly. [0] https://github.com/mikedilger/gossip https://github.com/mikedilger/gossip [1] https://github.com/nostr-protocol/nips/blob/master/65.md https://github.com/nostr-protocol/nips/blob/master/65.md
- jonstaab 3y agohttps://coracle.social https://coracle.social (my web client) implements relay discovery as well.
- 3y ago
- meibo 3y agoAnything Jack is involved in is tainted for me until further notice. I wouldn't even dare to touch any of his new platforms, seeing his connections with Elon and how his judgement failed so spectacularly with the Twitter deal - it's not worth it, just to be sold out again when he gets bored of it or it doesn't end up being a business. At least he admitted to it. I'm not saying Mastodon is the solution, but at least no one can take it away from me at a whim or has full control over the protocol and the app.
- leesalminen 3y ago> how his judgement failed so spectacularly with the Twitter deal A CEO doesn’t approve an acquisition in a publicly traded company. The Board of Directors decide. > or has full control over the protocol and the app. Jack does not have any control over the nostr protocol. He may arguably have some control over one of the iOS client apps (due to him finding the dev), but that’s about it. I was an organizer of nostrica (nostr’s first conference) last month. Yes, Jack paid for the venue, food & merch but he didn’t ask for anything in return. He was very humble about the whole thing. More than I thought he would be.
- meibo 3y ago> A CEO doesn’t approve an acquisition in a publicly traded company. The Board of Directors decide. Don't put words in my mouth. It may not entirely have been his decision, but nobody forced him to go on Twitter to say that he "chose him" and that he "believes it with all his heart"[0]. You cannot possibly tell me that you think that he was uninvolved in setting up the deal. Him being friends with Elon for ages is public track record. > Jack does not have any control over the nostr protocol. Jack is bankrolling the founder of the protocol with more than $240k. If you think that a SV CEO is doing that because he wants to create a better world, good on you. If you have any evidence that that doesn't give him any control, I'd be happy to see it. I feel like it's valid to be a little sceptical. [0] https://theprint.in/tech/jack-dorsey-says-elon-musk-is-singular-solution-for-twitter/931141/ https://theprint.in/tech/jack-dorsey-says-elon-musk-is-singu...
- 3y ago
- neilk 3y ago> Resilience is provided by the protocol being simple enough to implement in a weekend, in your language of choice. Platform lock-in is impossible, since any client can republish any note to a different relay if one misbehaves or enacts a disagreeable policy. That's a wonderful sentiment but we said the same thing about the web and email and both are effectively controlled by large companies. Twitter is centralized due to being the creation of a single company, but that's not the fundamental problem. The web and email got effectively centralized because distributed protocols create problems of search, filtering, abuse, identity, community continuity, etc. You can't easily solve them in a distributed way, and even if you _can_, you can't easily get everyone in the network to upgrade. Hence, providers arise that say "We're Nostr, only better!(tm)" or "We're the best way to find what you want on Nostr!" and they work on locking in their customers. If you want to be resilient to monopolization you have to show how you're going to solve those other problems.
- irusensei 3y agoThe identity is controlled by a cryptographic key on the client side so even if you get kicked of a server you and whoever is in contact with you can just grab your data from other relays.
- dangoor 3y ago> The web and email got effectively centralized… Woah there. I don't agree with this. The web is certainly not centralized (this is on Hacker News and not Facebook, right?) It follows a power law distribution where you have some players getting lots of traffic and then there are lots and lots of small traffic sites. But it's definitely decentralized. _Google_ is something of a monopoly providing some of the features you list for the web at large, but there are others (Duck Duck Go, Bing) that are just a click away. Gmail took a huge share of the email market by being a better product for the first several years of its existence (and being free also helped). That doesn't mean email is centralized: I've been using Fastmail for the last several years and it works _just fine_. I don't have the problems you list. Anyhow, I agree with your point that a decentralized _social network_ needs to solve the problems you're listing. I just think the web and email are actually examples of technologies that remain decentralized.
- apsurd 3y ago> Software for chatting on the Internet should be small and fun. Small and fun is the magic here. There's immense product insight in building a product experience that feels really small, intimate. It's the counterbalance to the unwieldy scale of Big Tech. We're in the natural cycle of things, I'm just saying I seem to really get the feeling "the future is small", if that makes sense. It's quite stressful to navigate the entire planet's information and inventory.
- CrampusDestrus 3y agowhat is this obsession with products being "fun" to use? you know what makes chatting fun? the people I'm chatting with. you know what makes chatting not fun? being impeded from chatting with the fun people. a chat program that has fun people and always works is the most fun to use!
- apsurd 3y agoi agree, it's fun because of the people. a product is "not fun" when it impedes on those personal connections. like the obvious thing of injecting ads everywhere, a product doing that, is not fun in my view. it's infuriating
- leesalminen 3y agoI feel the same way. I don’t feel the need or desire to be connected to every single person on earth through some app. I left almost all social platforms a couple years ago (except HN). I got into nostr and feel like it’s almost exactly what I want from social media. Just a reverse chronological feed of the people I follow.
- dekervin 3y agoI've tried using snort.social , dog testing it with the intent of recommanding it, but it's basically unusable. Would someone have a good web interface to recommand?
- snuckr 3y agoI think the most usable web clients are primal.net, coracle.social, and iris.to
- leesalminen 3y agohttps://www.nostr.net https://www.nostr.net maintains a list of all known clients. I am a bit partial to astral, though it is resource intensive. You could try coracle, snort, or iris to see if they're more your fancy.
- jonstaab 3y agohttps://coracle.social https://coracle.social is the client I work on. It's less well-known, but is pretty feature-complete.
- dekervin 3y agoNice to meet you. First time I hear about coracle.social . The main issue I had with snort is that it takes a lot of time before taking an action into account. It's a non starter for non-geeky people.
- dekervin 3y agoIt's way better than snort. Do you have an email somewhere? I would like to send you issues that will be shared with me.
- jonstaab 3y agoMy pubkey is npub1jlrs53pkdfjnts29kveljul2sm0actt6n8dxrrzqcersttvcuv3qdjynqn, feel free to send me a DM
- mikae1 3y agoCan somebody recommend a free relay for kicking the tires?
- leesalminen 3y agowss://no.str.cr
- mikae1 3y agoThanks!
- djschnei 3y agoIdeally you'll connect to several relays
- mikae1 3y agoI see a problem. I'd say a majority of the posts on Nostr are media posts (mostly images) and the network relies on Imgur and other image hosting services for all content. Not very decentralized in practice.
- leesalminen 3y agoIt's weird how "decentralized" means something different to every individual. Having the ability to choose where to host my images is what I'd call decentralized.
- mikae1 3y agoPerhaps the greatest problem with this setup is that the post content is separate from the post itself. I hope that most of us remember what a giant mess hosting images for forums on free image hosting services (that were later shut down) caused.
- kvathupo 3y agoAs I understand it, the raison d'être of nostr is to use relays to store your data, which is presented on clients. So if a front-end bans you, then you can grab your data off any relay. If imgur shuts down, you're out of luck! Bluesky goes further with the AT protocol for more general data and algorithms iirc
- kevingadd 3y agoAnd as it happens, imgur is revising their TOS and deleting a bunch of content
- drexlspivey 3y agoRelays don't (have to) store your data, they relay in real time via websockets. Clients should store the data if they care about persistence
- derefr 3y ago
- cube2222 3y agoIn a similar vain, I'm curious how Bluesky[0] will pan out. The protocol looks very cool with how much it separates and distributes the different concerns[1] (storage, recommendations, clients, etc.) as opposed to something "federated but fairly monolithic" like Mastodon. [0]: https://blueskyweb.xyz/ https://blueskyweb.xyz/ [1]: https://atproto.com/docs https://atproto.com/docs
- tough 3y agoI've been curious about BlueSky too, popping a lot on Twitter lately, but it's hard to secure an invite
- cube2222 3y agoIirc the waitlist is packed (million or so) and they've only let in 20k so far while they're working on scaling moderation (which is pluggable as well, I think). Some info in the interview by TheVerge[0]. [0]: https://www.theverge.com/23686778/bluesky-ceo-jay-graber-interview-decentralized-social-media-twitter-mastodon https://www.theverge.com/23686778/bluesky-ceo-jay-graber-int...
- noirscape 3y agoFor what it counts, you don't need to deal with Mastodon if you want to use the fediverse. There's plenty of other servers available like Misskey and Pleroma, both of which require far less computer power. The only thing you need on paper is a domain name. Heck - you can even use a WordPress blog since Automattic if you just want to run a blog outbox. Mastodon itself is a rails beast (lending credence to the tendency for the Fediverse to seem fairly monolithic), but that's hardly necessary. There's many other options out there (as much as the lead dev of Mastodon has been on a spree to try and hide this fact lately).
- scsibug 3y agoNice (blog author here); just heard this showed up on the frontpage from someone on Nostr. If I was writing an update to this, I'd probably point out how much better the clients (especially mobile) have gotten, in such a short span of time. As well as how lightning integration (zaps) are letting us build new capabilities (instead of just cloning twitter) that don't exist anywhere else.
- Logans_Run 3y agoGlad its getting traction, it was a fun read and introduced me to something new (tm). One issue I had about 'Zaps' was the 'pay-to-play' aspect which seemed in discord/disharmony with the OG vision of Solving the Right Problems There is no blockchain. No proprietary social sign-in. No “real-name policy” No distributed hash table, onion routing, raft consensus, or peer-to-peer protocol. There is just a method of providing simple digitally signed text, and a simple, scalable search service. I mean I get it aaannnndd 54 lines of Spec etc and there is a need for something like you offer/describe and I'm glad to have stumbled across the link that lead to this blog that leads to the GH <phew!>
- scsibug 3y agoLightning already exists; so it is nice that a simple protocol can integrate with it. I view them as complementary - it is good that Nostr does not need crypto, but it is still cool that they can harmonize without changing the core protocol. It does solve a fundamental incentive problem of "who runs big relays".
- SnowProblem 3y agoI wish Nostr were invented 30 years ago because it seems like a elegant protocol with room for extensions that could have served as the backend language for Twitter, IRC, FB, and more. But network effects are just so powerful and people post to be seen. Twitter isn't going to willingly open the door to competitors, and so I hope Nostr can find a few unique use cases and communities to let it blossom.
- klabb3 3y agoI.. agree, but I don’t think recreating existing platforms is a good idea either in FOSS or commercial projects. As you say, it’s already there. > Network effects are just so powerful and people post to be seen. Yeah, but those people aren’t moving the needle anyway, so they can be safely ignored, for now. They’ll come when it gets popular or trendy (see the recent mastodon influx). Current gen social media is clearly not the end-all be-all. It’s riddled with problems, both because of the business model which incentivizes short-termism like clickbait, but also inherent problems in the social graph, feeds, etc. We’ve had at least a decade of experience to learn from the mistakes of the giants. Maybe this sounds elitist, but whenever I see a Twitter clone (say current gen Mastodon or Substack Notes) all I see is a lack of creativity and courage to face novel opportunities.
- Multicomp 3y agoBetween this new tool and https://github.com/simplex-chat/simplex-chat https://github.com/simplex-chat/simplex-chat I am starting to feel like (at least from my filter bubble) that the web may be slightly starting to think about maybe someday turning the corner on centralized-by-default model for building new applications. And/or it's just my first time seeing a complete pendulum swing on the apocryphal mainframe-pc-mainframe-pc cycle.
- nine_k 3y agoI have to repeat my most important concern about Nostr from ~3 months ago[1]: Nostr makes you forward data from strangers unencrypted. If anything unlawful which you forward for Nostr is ever found on your computer, or found transmitted from your computer, you'd have fun time to explain to the authorities how it even ended up on your machine, and why are you disseminating it. Encryption is not trivially easy to introduce into this scheme, and it can't be too seamless. It's possible though, and I encourage the developers to work on that. [1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34529931 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34529931
- evbogue 3y agoYes, this is where Secure Scuttlebot is superior. Why would you connect to people out of your friend of a friend zone? An algorithm should decide who you are relaying.
- mkl 3y agoYou are talking to strangers on the internet right now and seem to find it worthwhile. Do you mean Secure Scuttlebutt? "Scuttlebot" seems to be the old name for the primary Secure Scuttlebutt server implementation (https://handbook.scuttlebutt.nz/glossary https://handbook.scuttlebutt.nz/glossary), though its website is still https://scuttlebot.io/ https://scuttlebot.io/.
- evbogue 3y agoYes, you've got it. Not many people were around back then, but once upon a time there was a working version of Scuttlebot (by Dominic Tarr) that was documented at https://scuttlebot.io/ https://scuttlebot.io/ with a client called Patchwork (by Paul Frazee). The idea behind the project was that you would gossip between scuttlebot 'pub' servers and then replicate messages from the people you follow and the people that those people follow. All of the messages were signed with ed25519 keypairs, and to send private messages you'd use ed2curve to box private messages. These days we're putting together a team that is going to salvage what is left of the working code from back before the project was scuttled and hopefully restore the network to functionality again. Please be in touch if you are interested in this future.
- themagician 3y agoI have played with this a bit lately and my conclusion thus far is: The idea of trying to bind everything to a single private key is such a bad idea for the average person. In order to truly secure a private key you have to go to pretty extraordinary lengths. It is not easy. It is not, "common sense." Like most of crypto, the basic immutable nature of things is simply bad for humans. Here, your private key is eventually going to get stolen because you have to type in your private key for every login. It creates a phishing/key-logging jackpot. And once the attacker gets you private key there is no recourse. No password reset. No way to regain access. Your accounts are forever compromised. This is the problem with "decentralization" in general. All of the benefits it brings are completely washed away by the mundane daily activities of being human.
- api 3y agoThere are ways to fix this such as the ability to issue a key revocation and issue a new key via a secondary key stored elsewhere but few of these systems implement such measures. The user experience is also hard.
- effisfor 3y agoI've tinkered with nostr and there's plenty to agree with here, but it's not specific to nostr. Nostr is in its very early days where people who tinker now are also pretty good at protecting that private key (dorks like us). For mass adoption we're probably going to see WebAuthn develop and solve the problems you're mentioning for most non-technical people. The early dorks will flinch at Apple/Google syncing people's e2ee keys, but techies will always be able to just dial in their private key to the client of their choosing. So it will be a bit messy, but hopefully the best of both worlds. And a giant improvement from current paradigm. I don't use it, but Minds is an example of an app that is using delegated keys to sign people's messages using nostr protocol, allowing a user's data a route out of Minds' infrastructure in the future. Again, seems a healthy improvement.
- allanrbo 3y agoIntrigued by the protocol, and have been lurking on Damus for some months. But ultimately I worry it has been tainted too much by Bitcoin cultism, and its ties with Bitcoin will prevent it from being trusted by the mainstream.
- nunobrito 3y agoThey are pushing things forward. There are many users outside the bitcoin world like myself participating there.
- kinakomochidayo 3y agoYup. Plus, I don’t want to use Lightning, and prefer web3 wallets instead, and the core Nostr protocol is made up of bitcoiners sooo..
- phkx 3y ago> Telegram Group - where development chat happens Telegram has stuck with me as a red flag. Mostly because Signal, which emerged around the same time, apparently had the better tech and was open. Not sure whether that changed.
- nunobrito 3y agoSignal development came from an ex-Twitter director that was initially sponsored by the CIA (through Radio Free Europe) and then developed with experts on the backyard of the NSA (Hawaii). Eventually this relatively unknown messenger algorithm got adopted by a messenger company own by Facebook (a privacy loving group) for over a billion users. It ain't no surprise that just about everyone relevant in the crypto world prefers telegram than something called "signal" (just inform yourself what it means in the intelligence community).
- phkx 3y agoI have to ask: crypto as in crypto currency or as in actual cryptography? I‘m left with the impression that both our descriptions of these protocols and services are in need of some more substantial backing.
- nunobrito 3y agoCrypto has nowadays three meanings. The first was cryptography, the second in currency as you describe, but the third meaning and most important one is related to the latin root of that word in the sense of "secret", "hidden": https://www.etymonline.com/word/crypto- https://www.etymonline.com/word/crypto- When talking about something crypto, one must measure these two "secret" and "hidden" attributes. Signal was never really adopted because of its suspicious origin and strange adoption by whatsapp. Similar case for a few other messengers like Matrix if you get around to see that in more detail.
- INTPenis 3y agoI'm all for the best solution winning but here's the perspective of a regular end user. When I read about nostr I see code examples and cryptography charts. When I read about Mastodon (fediverse) I just run docker-compose up and I'm in business. That is what made the fediverse breakthrough and nostr not. It needs to be user friendly for both end users and sysadmins for it to catch on. Also unrelated to all that, I'm kinda skeptical about any system that claims to be resistant to censorship because it will become a hotbed of racists and bigots online. On one hand certain parts of the fediverse take moderation too far, but on the other hand you can't have a platform with zero moderation. It would be chaos.
- kevinak 3y agoRegular end user…. docker-compose? We have very different concepts of what a regular user is. Surely, generating a key pair must be infinitely more easy than setting up docker?
- INTPenis 3y agoThere are many perspectives on what is user friendly. What helps the docker case along is its accessibility and availability to people. A lot of people know about it, so a lot of people have played around with it enough to use it. PKI is not on the same level of accessibility and availability as docker, not even close. The proof is to simply look at what took off and what didn't. Yes this is a tech forum but it's also a startup forum, and startups take off because they're accessible to people. Same goes for nostr, it will take off when it becomes accessible to regular people. And even that has many different aspects. If self-hosting is an important aspect, as fediverse nodes for example, then it must also be accessible to self-hosters. That is where docker-compose comes in for the fediverse.
- sph 3y agoThis is a tech forum. We tend to enjoy discovering and exploring new technology that's alpha quality and not yet ready to hit the shelves, and maybe we'll help them get there. Nostr is a couple years old. How old is Mastodon? Of course it's not grandma friendly yet. No one is trying to sell it to them just yet. I don't get this common and frustrating criticism often posted on here for any new project and idea. Every major breakthrough has started as a buggy, half-arsed project with many shortcomings. Pointing that out is not very constructive.
- kinakomochidayo 3y agoOther than the tech, one big thing that’s kept me away from Nostr is the people on it. I’d rather not have my feed spammed and have Bitcoin maxis endlessly talking about how stacking Bitcoin is great. What makes social network work is the diverse range of people and it currently doesn’t have that at all.