Most people agree that Social Media is broken and that we need to find new solutions. Max DeMarco embarked on a journey to find out more about a new invention called NOSTR. This is his documentary about that journey and his interview with key players.
I’ve actually been on Nostr myself a few months (and did my own video about it). As with most alternative networks, you see who you put in your feed.
Watch at https://youtu.be/aA-jiiepOrE
My own anthropological pet theory.
Dunbar’s number is the concept that a person can only have so many meaningful relationships. Another way of thinking about it is that we, as a species, feel most comfortable in tribes with a certain number of people.
Which makes sense. I hated, hated the little rednecky town that I grew up in. But when I moved to a larger city, the first few weeks were spent overcoming the loneliness of not knowing everybody around me.
What massive online social media does is essentially short circuit the behavior that we developed when we began urbanizing.
Now a person can be a member of twenty tribes without ever needing to leave their homes. If we are, in fact, only capable of a finite number of close friendships then every close relationship that you have online is energy that won’t be spent on a physical one.
True story: I left Facebook in 2016. I had been miserable but didn’t even think to relate the two. About a month after I jumped ship I got adopted by a group of fellow nerds nearing midlife. We hang out at least twice per week. Pub trivia, bowling, hiking. Those interactions are so much more meaningful than anything you can get on social media. By our nature, humans crave physical company.
Social media isn’t going to “break” us. But, if nothing changes, it will further dramatically alter society.
Well I’m on 17 social networks but yes it does not make me suddenly happier. But like alcohol, fear of heights, firearms, etc I think social media affects different people in different ways. I use them more for sharing knowledge than any actual “friendships”.
Which issue are they trying to solve? The censoring and control issue goes away with federated systems but there is the cost of having a running network. The corporate networks charge you the fee of personal info so it doesn’t cost actually money.
In all honesty the biggest issue I see is that social media eventually leads to us seeing what most of society is really like… boring, bigoted and stupid. This exists everywhere, it’s only that smaller networks like Lemmy just dont have the numbers to make those issues be so prominent.
… social media eventually leads to us seeing what most of society is really like… boring, bigoted and stupid.
Reminds me a little bit of Tragedy of the commons.
Which issue are they trying to solve?
Right? Stuff from the “old days” is still popular and usable. We can still email people, create private groups on WhatsApp/Signal/whatever to avoid algorithms, and subscribe to blogs by RSS (or email newsletter if unsupported, usually). In fact, it’s never been easier.
- many people have handheld computers in their pocket at all times
- Signal et al. are free and the apps are great. Remember paying per message?
- Mobile data plans are getting cheaper
- Many independent email providers with very high reliability
Just delete Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, whatever and move on.
Well, I’d certainly see it still more like ActivityPub. Only different is there are no actual login servers. You get 8 default relay servers that help relay your messages, and there are over 200 I think. Nostr is a different way of doing ActivityPub, but your identity stays with you (not on a server). A week after I tried it, I did this video at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8mSyMCJlSwA trying to explain some of the differences and similarities (like I did before for Lemmy, Mastodon, etc).
Sure there are differences but my question was really about what the new problem they are trying to solve. The local storage of your identity seems to he that big thing and I wonder who was asking for this. Seems like more of a nuisance than anything else, having to manage that data yourself.
The identity ownership is very key as it is a big issue with centralised and decentralised social networks. Hubzilla comes close with its nomadic identity, but that still has to be moved from server to server (or you host your own Hubzilla server). In this way Nostr’s identity is seamless as you register once with your public/private key, and whatever app or Nostr web service you use, it is synced via the relays, and you can post from anywhere (no imports/exports/restores). Secure Scuttlebutt has peer-to-peer identity, but each peer is a different identity. You can “merge” them, but it causes masses of issues with syncing new posts etc.
The other thing it is solving is there is no dependency on a server login nor a server to publish your posts. Any one, or more, of available relays makes your posts available. It has a clever way of letting followers know what relays you use vs what they use, so they can always follow you. And by the way Nostr actually has a Lemmy type service too, but I see very few were actually using it (or know about it). I think I touched on it in my own video when I looked at Nostr.
To me, it is quite an interesting network as real effort seems to have gone into addressing some common shortcomings. We could see that the Zot protocol was more advanced than ActivityPub, but guess what (like VHS and Betamax) ActivityPub won in popular usage. And of course this year ActivityPub got W3 open standards approval for social networking.
That said, I’m not sure how the ActivityPub protocol may be overhauled to support some of the solutions above. It is a whole different way of managing identity. It becomes this protocol vs that protocol. Yet there is a Nostr-ActivityPub bridge so maybe something is possible.
Most people agree that Social Media is broken and that we need to find new solutions
Solutions for what? Algorithmically driven “content”, made by people who don’t care about the material they’re churning out, as long as it gets them in front of eyeballs and lines their pockets?
The problem with social media, tech, and most of our other ills in society, is capitalism. Greed. MegaCorpX isn’t building a social platform so that you can have a community. They’re doing it to make money. You’re just a cog in that machine for them, but they make YOU feel like you can be the star of it, and exploit you in the process. Along with it you create parasocial relationships that make literally no one happy, a fertile platform for mobs and harassment, constant self image issues, FOMO, doomscrolling, etc. etc. Not to mention giving a platform to bigots, white supremacists, nazis, etc., and feeding those ideologies, all while pretending like you have to let them be there because of “free speech” or “town square/public commons/whatev”
Social media is a MASSIVE net negative, and the answer shouldn’t be “how do we make new ones after the old ones collapse?”, but rather “how to we move on from the idea that social media is necessary, and just let it die?”
It is not trying to solve “social media” itself. It is trying to address some of the issues that have plagued social media like being locked to a profile/identity that is actually controlled by a server owner, and problems like if a server disables you, you’ve lost your posts and have to start somewhere else again.
You’re going to get bigots, white supremacists, nazis, etc on any site anywhere (even in real life), but they are mainly a problem where algorithms insert something into your feed. Mostly on ActivityPub, AT protocol, Nostr, etc you choose who you follow and that is what you see. If anything pops up you don’t like, you can block that profile. With Nostr you block the profile globally once.
So yes there can be free speech, but likewise there must be free blocking.
The real problem with social media, is not social media, it is the problem humans. Technology can’t fix people. But technology can make your life easier by blocking what you don’t want to see.
Nostr? Isn’t that just for crypto bros, Nazis, and Jack Dorseys?
I checked it out once and the chats I dropped into were all about people giving each other “sats” (nanobitcoins) and there were also some far-right weirdos.
Conceptually it seems kinda neat but if somebody says they’re a big fan of nostr I’m gonna wonder about them
Yes, it does have Sats if you want to use those to get tips. But it is not required in any way to use the network. What you see depends on who you follow. So I don’t follow Jack. For those who want to tip, or receive, Sats is better tan using your own credit card I reckon.
Lol no I’m not buying cryptocurrency so I can give or receive microdollars for tweets
It is really much the same as Reddit Coins and others have, except you could cash them out if you wish. But yes, as I made it clear, there is zero reason to have to register or use that at all. It’s an available option, that’s all, and many do like having an option.
How is this different to ActivityPub protocol that the fediverse uses? Seems like its trying to accomplish very similar things? Like how KBin and Lemmy can interact with the same content and have different layouts, apps, etc.
I suppose it’s good to have alternative protocols for decentralized communication, but wouldn’t it be better to focus on one and put more effort into improving it?
I tried to explain that in my own video at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8mSyMCJlSwA. This documentary did not really go into that. But in summary they don’t have servers to log into where your ID is kept. You own your identity/profile and that stays on the client side. Every post is cryptographically signed so it is your post that no-one can alter. You send posts to a usual default of about 8 relays that pass posts on to who is following you. If one relay blocks you, or disappears, there are hundreds of others. So there is no server to delete your posts. But don’t lose your public/.private key as then you’ve lost your access to your profile. There is no password reset by a server owner. They actually do have a bridge relay with ActivityPub so I was able to follow and reply to some Mastodon users.
Thanks for the clarification! That does make it more interesting than just an ActivityPub clone
It has some technical differences but it is basically the same. I think the Fediverse is too far ahead for it to ever catch on. I don’t think enough people care about extreme censorship resistance.
Your link is missing, FYI. We’re currently discussing a Getty collage.
That is really weird. OK fixed that now in the OP I hope. The pity is this video does not really go into the actual mechanics of how Nostr works, and that was what got me interested in it (as my 17th social network). I did this video myself at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8mSyMCJlSwA after trying it out, to help highlight the actual differences as I understood them.
Why would we? Do we actually need it? I feel like it has done more damage to society than actually being useful…
Exactly. It needs to die.
Why would we? Do we actually need it? I feel like it has more cons than pros…
I’ve actually answered this more than once already. Someone did ask what does it actually solve and is new, and I listed a few things it tries to address differently. I’ve listed those as pro’s, but you did not specify the con’s that you know of it?
I’m glad you asked, where do I start? Facebook + Cambridge Analytica => Brexit. Mass manipulation. Giving every idiot a megaphone to spit out idiot ideas. Even worse, give them a place to meet other idiots with the same idiot ideas. Cyverbullying causing damage to the self image of teenagers everywhere. Instagram + pedo rings. Twitter is nothing than a palce for far right meet and greet, nowadays. Promoting every idiot who fancy themselves an influencer.
The only good thing it ever contributedwas when people organised protests during the Arab spring through social media. But now, the corporations are blocking access to their platforms at the behest of the governments.
Social media is F-ing garbage, let it die. I am however terrified of the next trend that will take its place…
I don’t entirely disagree with you about social media but like I’ve said it us the people who use social media that are mirroring their own personalities. It us not the tech itself. But my post was not about social media in general being perfect, it was about Nostr itself was trying to do to address some common shortcomings identified on existing social media networks. Nostr is not perfect either but it has some interesting and different ideas.