Ah yes, and #nostr is another place where the Trump fans hang out. They think he won the election, it was stolen from him and Jan 6th wasn't an insurrection. Yeah, interesting tech but I can't find anyone I want to subscribe to.
@thor Problem is you’d eventually just have what happened with #nostr; no media support so people would upload media to CDNs and post links in their messages, and then people would build clients that embed the linked media into the interface itself.
So everyone gives Jack Dorsey credit for #Bluesky, but he doesn't even have an account. He has zero presence on his own site.
But he posts on #Nostr multiple times every day, mostly about Bitcoin.
Hard to imagine he has much faith in Bluesky as a decentralized Twitter alternative when he's clearly chosen his preferred decentralized Twitter alternative.
In this blog I will explain how I'm using two Drupal contrib modules to integrate some Nostr features. 1) Setup an internet identifier for a Nostr account and 2) publish a text note to the Nostr network when you save a piece of content in the CMS.
Sneak peek at the overhauled Agora client that will support logging in with either your #Mastodon, #Nostr, or #BlueSky account and seeing posts from the other two protocols!
Super awesome to see what’s possible thanks to amazing bridges by @alex and @snarfed.org and @cheeaun for the awesome Phanpy base to build off of
I'm looking for a new way to publish posts on a blog or micro-blog.
Generally, you connect to your site (WordPress or other cms) and manage your posts. You need an internet connection for that.
Other solution is to use a static site generator, but you need some tools on your machine and it's probably not possible to publish a post from your phone.
My idea is to use a calendar to write your articles. Possible on a PC or a phone, online or offline (sync on reconnect).
1/2
Czytam o postępach prac nad mostem z Nostr do Fedi o nazwie Mostr.
Jeśli udało nam się wyplenić (lepiej lub gorzej) kryptowaluty z Fediwersum, to teraz kryptowaluciarska brać z #Nostr (która musiała wymyślić własny protokół, zamiast używać standardu #ActivityPub) będzie nam to wciskać przez tę bramkę.
Osoba głównego deva mostu też wiele mówi: Alex Gleason (wcześniej "head of engineering for Trump’s Truth Social").
O ile jego Soapbox po wyczyszczeniu z kryptowlutowego chłamu jest używalny w fedi, tak wielkiej przyszłości temu projektowi mostkowania nie wróżę. Bo to IMO dwa różne światy...
New: on Mostr, the bridge between #nostr and the #fediverse, that has just gotten an upgrade.
With the bridge, connections between the two networks become easier, and the borders of what the fediverse is become fuzzier. But not everyone might be interested in the connection, however.
Mostr, the bridge that connects Nostr to the fediverse, has gotten some upgrades recently. With the latest update, the homepage of the bridge, Mostr.pub, allows people to enter a fediverse handle, and open the link in their Nostr client of choice. Here is the Nostr page for my Fediverse Report account as a demonstration. Finding people on the fediverse and connect to them from Nostr has become significantly easier with this update.
For some context to this news, Nostr is another social network based on an open-source protocol. I explain a bit more how it works here. In the context of Mostr, two things are important to know: one of the core values of the network is anti-censorship, and there is no intermediary for creating an account.
In a talk (available on PeerTube here) at the Nostr conference Nostrasia, Mostr.pub creator Alex Gleason about his history with Nostr and the fediverse. He explains how he worked on fediverse software Soapbox, and then got hired as the head of engineering for Trump’s Truth Social, and now has quit that job to work fulltime on Nostr.
The Mostr bridge has been available for a bit, which allows Gleason to present some interesting statistics about it’s usage: 70% of the usage is from people on Nostr following people on the fediverse, with over 10k unique users across the bridge.
One part of Gleason’s presentation that stands out is his claim that Nostr is now part of the fediverse. I wrote about the multiple definitions of the term fediverse here, talking about how fediverse can be defined by protocol, by culture, or by interoperability. Although people can argue about which definition is correct, and whether or not Nostr should be included, Gleason’s remarks do indicate that Mostr makes the boundaries of what the fediverse is fuzzier, and harder to define.
Gleason also talks about content moderation and blocking, saying: “One thing that has been holding the ActivityPub protocol back from achieving even more, is the blocking culture”. But if Mostr wants to see itself as just another server among many in the fediverse, content moderation happens to it in the same way that it happens to other servers: by simply blocking the server you do not feel like connecting with. Any justification for it is only necessary between the admin and their users, and not anyone beyond that.
Starting to think about a #p2p social media protocol that doesn't fall foul of the UK's ridiculously broad #OnlineSafetyAct, and leaves what you see in your own hands.
Feed curation as active or effortless as you like, using whatever approach you choose.
So a protocol that provides the basis for user respecting apps with different approaches.
Goal: curation with zero effort via support for 'algos' that serve you rather than the other way around.
@eludom UUNET is something I used back in the day.
I doubt very much that, like TCP/IP it was a complete and adequate protocol.
My focus is here and now.
I may look at existing approaches such as #XMPP and #Nostr for comparison, and perhaps even #UUCP now you mention it but I have limited time and won't make progress if that's all I do.
You suggesting UUCP as a solution to today's problems isn't convincing because first I want to hear from you, what problems and how it solves them.
Flipboard’s Mike McCue recently released the first episode of the new podcast Dot Social with Mike Masnick, where they discuss protocols, platforms, and the decentralised internet, and it’s worth listening to.
Johannes Ernst gives a thread with a summary and responses here, which is worth reading. One thing I’d like to comment on is Mike Masnick’s comment that he expects innovation more to happen on Bluesky’s ATProto than on fediverse’s ActivityPub.
I agree that innovation in the decentralised network space is happening to a signficant extend outside of the fediverse sphere, but I disagree with the idea that this will happen on Bluesky and ATProto. Instead, I think that Nostr is a more likely candidate:
Innovation in a decentralised network is currently largely dependent on individual hobbyist developers that are experimenting. For an individual developer the accesibility and difficulty of working with the protocol is an important consideration. From my understanding talking to developers is Nostr the easiest to work with. ActivityPub differs a lot, but can certainly be difficult, especially regarding actual interoperability. I have been told that ATProto is the hardest of the three to develop for, plus that it is simply not even put into practice yet.
Culture of the network is even more important though in driving innovation. The fediverse has cultures and etiquette that say that some innovations in the network are unwelcome, especially regarding search and consent. One of the things that interest me about the fediverse is that the social impact of technology is taken into account. We’re building these networks for people. But making features off-limits in a network does limit innovation as well, there is a cost to it.
Bluesky is threading a difficult middle ground here with the culture. The developers seem to have more of a technologist mindset to protocol design, and concerns about how federation will interact with content moderation are not given much care. At the same time, a core group of Bluesky users is not particularly interested in federation, and wants a simple Twitter replacement. That puts the team in a pretty difficult spot with regards to future innovation. They made great strides with custom algorithms, but they do experience significant pushback from the community on features that they themselves want to work on, especially relating to opening the network.
Nostr has an explicit culture of adverse interoperability, and a libertarian community who seems to be quite inspired by crypto’s mantra of ‘if we can build it we should build it’. This is not really grounds for a network that is safe for many people. It does provide a fertile ground for rapid experimentation and innovation. The network is by far the smallest of the three, but it has also created quite some innovations that the other two network haven’t, in the recent months. Multiple long-form article publishing sites, a torrent archive, an integrated payment system for subscriptions with crypto, and more. There are good reasons to be have some issues with some of these innovations, but it is hard to deny that they are developing at a rapid speed.
Overall I think that innovation often happens at the fringes where there is reasons for experimentation. But also, cultural reasons that inhibit innovation speed can actually be pretty good from the human perspective.
Sort of given up on #Nostr for the time being. At this point I can only say cool tech but dull community.
I'm sure other people dig it. There are a couple of interesting accounts but they're more broadcast rather than chat bollox. I'm mostly here to chat bollox, I'm case you hadn't noticed. :80spc:
Jack Dorsey wrote a post about Nostr the other day that I think is worth reading, and take stock how he thinks about social networks. Fediverse-accesible link here (side note: Nostr can connect to the fediverse via a bridge, so I follow Jack directly from my Mastodon account).
First to note is that Jack is fully focused on Nostr, not on Bluesky. He deleted his Bluesky account a while ago, even though he is still on the board of the Bluesky organisation. Reading this post makes it clear where his attention is though, and its not at Bluesky.
Reframing Twitter as an information network over a social network is interesting, and I can see why. It also indicates the impossible dilemma Mastodon is in: Eugen Rochko explicitly frames it as a Twitter competitor, but by making search opt-in, it can never come close to the information network that Twitter was.
Nostr is positioned as working towards a multi-app/use-case ecosystem. Nostr struggles with the same problem that the fediverse has here; both protocols allow for a large variety of different networks and products, but they are currently heavily dominated by microblogging. The challenge for both networks is how to grow beyond just microblogging, and providing other use-cases.
Jack also mentions the ‘completely open and wild API’ as a benefit for Nostr. It is here that the fediverse is ahead of both Bluesky and Nostr. An open API is great for a whole lot of purposes, but at the same time it violates people’s consent to actually use their data. Nostr positions itself as the wild west. This comes with advantages, such as development speed, but makes the community unsafer. In turn, this makes it all the harder for the Nostr community to expand beyond the bitcoin bubble.
Overall, the post illustrates what makes me excited about decentralised social networks, and that we finally have choices. I personally disagree with part of Jack’s vision how a social network should look like. I can contribute to the network that aligns with my values, while there is still space for people to have their own network with their own values.
I'll do it again in #english, maybe it is of interest for others too:
@heiseonline is on of the biggest official accounts on #Mastodon by a german media organization. It's now a year old and I had a look into the ~62k followers. Turns out, that federation in the #fediverse seems to work: Less than a fourth are from mastodon.social, the rest are on more than 1900 different instances.
Finally the follower by software of their instance: Almost all are from #Mastodon, only from #firefish and #pixelfed are each more than 100. On fourth place is already a bridge for the #TwitterAlternative#Nostr, whch itself is not part of the #fediverse.
OK, das ist ziemlich cool: Danke @_max für die Daten!
Die rund 62.000 Follower von @heiseonline verteilen sich ganz schön übers #Fediverse. Mit Abstand am größten natürlich mastodon.social, aber danach wird's doch recht vielfältig. Insgesamt über 1900 Instanzen kommen da zusammen. Die #Föderation funktioniert, würd ich sagen. Auch wenn die Dominanz schon groß ist.
Als letztes für heute noch die Follower nach Software der jeweiligen Instanz. Hier ist "Dominanz" für #Mastodon eine klare Untertreibung. Nur von #Firefish und #Pxelfed folgen jeweils noch mehr als 100 Accounts @heiseonline. Interessanterweise auf Rang 4 die #Nostr-Bridge.
Einschränkend muss ich hier schreiben, dass bei mehr als 2000 Accounts die jeweilige Instanz nicht erkennbar war. Waren aber auch einige mit Mastodon und das Gesamtbild bleibt ja.