I've wondered the same over on Mastodon a while ago and was told by multiple people that Nostr was just the latest hype pushed by a group of cryptocurrency fans.
this post was submitted on 04 Jun 2023
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I have an account on there and it seems to be nothing but crypto hype, reminiscent of various "get in now or lose out" kinda scams. Not a good look, and not a lot of good content - at least from what I can tell.
Hmm... thanks!
My view is that the technology is great but that the community is awful. Activity pub is set up to allow curated moderation. As a user you can select or host a community that is moderated the way you want. With nostr there is effectively no moderation. The thing is is that online communities elected to have moderation for a reason and Nostr seems to view that as a bug, not a feature
I like the idea and Nostr is pretty simple. My main queries are,
- They point out that there is no incentive to run an ActivityPub site and they seem to have paid relays instead. We can also make paid ActivityPub sites but, remember, there's a reason the biggest platforms are funded by advertising and maybe these public spaces could be publicly funded? I don't know.
- Managing cryptographic keys is hard and people already use Bitcoin badly. I guess the stakes aren't necessarily as high, though loss of reputation might be bad. Are non-tech people actually going to do it? Do we need a ProtonMail of Nostr?
- Is there anything stopping ActivityPub applications from adding an optional cryptographic identity layer for author and account transfer verification for those who want it? I don't see why not.
I just think that cryptographic signatures should be for those who care. Most people don't. Most people have a silly pseudonym and react to memes.
I mean, banks still send me a PIN via SMS instead of verifying my identity using FIDO2. You're telling me people are going to do the equivalent to make some shitposts?
https://shop.lnbits.com/product/nostr-signing-device
I mean they already advertise weird hardware on their website.
Otherwise they might have sound technology, I don't really know. Let's hope someone that has used nostr will answer in this thread.
WTF is that? Why wouldn’t you store your signing key on something like a Yubikey that’s specifically designed for something like this? Admittedly you’d have to use a specific key type, but still.
Oh god what is that thing? That's really odd.
I already hate nostr because of this
Full of bitcoinbros.
Ah. Dang.