This is confusing as fuck
As somebody who:
- Uses nostr (and prefers it)
- Uses AP via Lemmy & Mastodon (and likes it)
- Knows what AP and Nostr are and how they work and the pros/cons of the two network designs are
I also found this site confusing AF. It sounds cool and interesting, probably? I can’t tell lol. Is it a network bridge operating at the level of a relay? Is it an app you can use to connect and post/read to/from both networks at once? What the hell is it?
It relays to NOSTR.
Recieved this from one of the developer’s:
Ditto is on Nostr but federates to the Fediverse via
nostr:npub1d03clrrrma7mlpxm0mz2dehmhkx3nh9rhxqwltgctpwyduztymustepzfs, and also implements Mastodon API for app compatibility. , Under the hood, it’s the same as Nostr with some Mastodon-flavored bells and whistles. You own your keys, etc.
I’ve been trying to figure out exactly what the point of this is. I haven’t asked Alex (haven’t talked directly to him in a long time as I have mostly abandoned fedi) but I know he’s the first prominent fedi dev to sort of pivot to nostr (a good sign; too many prominent fedi people are more interested in preserving their fiefdoms than the ultimate goal of all this) and has been building some interoperability stuff.
What I see at first glance is an attempt to slap fedi social model onto nostr? Trying to create a client that gives users a TWKN and local feed of some kind? I don’t know, perhaps someone can clear it up for me.
Anyway, I don’t really see the point, a primary benefit of nostr is the lack of network fragmentation and siloing. There’s some fragmentation that does occur with failures to fetch notes from relays and things, but not the network splitting and banlist passing and siloed networks like you get on fedi. Trying to shoehorn that UX back into nostr kind of misses the point IMO. I like the idea of community creation as a sort of organizational thing for feed curation without direct follows, it helps discoverability, particularly along lines of shared interest, but I don’t really see how the “web ring” like follow structure doesn’t achieve that already without the downside of building silos. A global feed, I see no point of that at all.
Is Nostr still just full of crypto bros and Nazis?
This post links to Soapbox, which is run by Alex Gleason, the Neo-Nazi who runs Poast, Baest, Spinster, and even helped run Truth Social. We’re already in fashy shadow-fediverse territory here.
Nostr is literally a social network made by and for Bitcoiners. Its defining feature is being “censorship proof”. Scams, Nazis, and CSAM are pretty much everywhere.
Nostr is basically decentralized 4chan with worse users.
Nostr is an open protocol. Plenty of questionable people have contributed to Linux, I still use the OS. Tor was made by an alleged rapist. I still use Tor. Open protocols are sometimes used or made by nasty people. Lemmy and email are “censorship proof”, they are both good protocols. Lemmy used to be 100% annoying tankies, but as it grew so did the diversity of the userbase. Nostr is going through the same thing.
You choose who you follow, so you choose who ends up in your feed. For the “public square” areas (trending tweets etc), relays set their own moderation policies just like lemmy, that feature is identical. Find a relay that suits your moderation preferences. Most nostr apps can automatically filter out anything related to crypto/nsfw/politics/other less popular topics and prompt you to do so. If something slips through you can easily click ban and move on.
Tips are a cool functionality. On one social network, content creators don’t have an opportunity to get paid for the content they post. On the other they do. Which one do you think will attract the most content creators? My bet is on the second. I like being able to send tips to people who write good posts. But it’s an optional feature, you don’t have to use it.
Look, pitching Web3 on Lemmy is already a stupid idea, linking to a site run by Alex Gleason, the Neo-Nazi that wants to turn the Fediverse into a fascist playground, is even stupider.
Fuck every part of this post. Fuck Nostr, Fuck Crypto, Fuck Soapbox, Fuck Alex Gleason, Fuck Truth Social, Fuck Neo Nazis, and Fuck every other social cancer involved.
Bitcoin is completely inefficient but including a payment / donation system is a good idea. That should be available on mastodon such that you can donate to your fav people/orgs but it’s probably difficult for the average person to verify that you donate to the right person
They should look at GNU Taler for having it in the future.
Actually, tipping on social media posts are an excellent use for Bitcoin. I regularly tip on nostr, it works well, I wish lemmy had it too. Good luck enabling transactions that complete in under a second, globally, for less than a penny in fees, with any other system. And without requiring you to hire an absolute team of lawyers to setup accounts and manage liquidity and make deals with foreign banks to backstop that liquidity. Oh and don’t forget about counterparty risks, chargebacks, currency conversion, and long settlement times! Bitcoin solves that all magically for basically free.
Yeah the fact that all the tipping is done off-chain via the lightning network is even more of a turn off. Did anyone else follow all that drama back on reddit?
It’s done off-chain because on-chain would be expensive and slow. On-chain takes 10 min and $1.50-$15 in fees depending on the day. Lightning takes < 1 second for < 1 penny in fees.
Lightning transactions are secured by the base chain, so you’re not at risk of losing any funds. The transaction data is “off-chain” because there’s no reason for it to be “on-chain”.
Yes and all that technical debt, complexity and loss in decentralization could be avoided by simply increasing the block size. BCH for example has zero-conf transactions and the average fee is also <$0.01.
But that would mean that you’d be able to use it as an actual means of exchange instead of this crippled “Internet gold” bastardization that BTC has become.
That should be available on mastodon such that you can donate to your fav people/orgs
This Already exists. You can stick the URL to your Patreon / Ko-Fi / LiberaPay / Venmo / Cashapp / PayPal / Zelle / OnlyFans / WeChat / etc. into your Bio. There’s even a convenient grid of listing lots of URLs or other info.
Don’t make the mistake of wanting an “everything app”. Integrating DeFi into Mastodon itself would be a catastrophe. Let people use the financial tools they already have, instead of trying to create some new banking system built on social media.
