-
@ Camper's Ramble Log
2023-04-04 13:10:00Like many other nostr users (nostriches), I pulled the plug on Twitter in March and moved my social media energy entirely to Nostr to give it a proper test. And same as the most, I won't be coming back to Twitter after this. I'll share a few highlights here about my experience.
Motivation
There have been two sets of reasons for me:
Macro ones
-
I'm concerned about the creeping digital tyranny, censorship, and manipulation abilities of the centralized platforms and state actors. Trusting people that these powers won't be misused is naive (especially after living past few years where we've seen globally the state-coordinated attacks on free speech and freedom). Therefore, I'm eager to support and explore any tools that make individuals and their families more resilient to tyranny.
-
Secondly, I love that it's an open-source tech. If there is a reasonable OS alternative to private closed-source ones, I prefer to support it. I see these as impactful charitable gifts that have the compounding utility for the world - especially if they lower the barriers to entry for new subsequent projects, services, and prosperity.
Personal
- I haven't been able to isolate myself from all the artificial politicization and triggering present on Twitter. The site's definition of engagement has been corrupted over the years. And now more than anything, it maximizes the enragement. And even when going there for particular signals (Bitcoin, Macroeconomics, ...), I got served the enraging noise, and it has stolen way too much time from me.
What have I learned after one month on Nostr:
Good (Nostr winning):
- On nostr, you usually don't see what you don't follow. In the future, this may lead to more bubbles and group-think, but it will lead to more politeness, signal, meaningful engagement on your feeds, and true diversity of global thinking.
- People build on Nostr at an amusing speed. I've never seen devs and designers shipping so rapidly. And this makes me want to get involved more actively.
- Zaps are fun. At first. And valuable forever.
- Ex. It's pretty exciting when @Jack Dorsey reposts your stupid meme, and then your wallet phone notifications get instantly showered with sats. Then the fun novelty effect wears off a bit, but the undisputed utility and its incentives stay. People have the extra motivation to share valuable content and replies. opportunity for content creators
Bad (Twitter winning):
- Twitter still has the network effects.
-
Unless you're a bitcoiner or nostr enthusiast, you might struggle to find enough content you care about on Nostr right now. Myself an amateur economist (same as Paul Krugman), I missed the Macroeconomic news and commentary from the folks on the border of FinTwitter-Bitcoin
-
Missing some of the basic functionality
- Search: Twitter search function could be better, but it usually gets me what I need. Nostr search is a terrible experience for now
- Tagging people - it's so cumbersome/impossible to do on the mobile clients I've been using. Either way, many more positives than negatives. I will keep using the combo of both for different use cases now because, in the end of the day, it's just tools.
Hope
Above all pros and cons, there's the vividly expressed hope. There's this universally shared feeling on Nostr that the platform is the new frontier for freedom and happiness, and every day there's a feeling of a Digital Woodstock lived in the 90s Eastern Europe with the vision of almost limitless possibilities. It's a new and exciting world where everyone's white-pilled about the future, and that's why I'm staying.
Tl;dr: @note1akfxxp4k203wq0wz7tpwykapyv2rs0asvd4ka2qws87jvly4v64qu4jtkv
-