GM Nostr. I'll share what might be a somewhat unpopular opinion, given my perception of the predominant culture on Nostr. While avatars and pseudonyms are great—and I'll preface this by saying I fully support folks creating their own online personas—the truth is, in my opinion, at least for now, "anonymity" doesn't seem to be a strong suit of Nostr.
I'm not even convinced that public posting on social media can ever truly be considered "anonymous." Maybe if you go to extreme lengths to mask your writing style, posting patterns, and the content you're producing. Potentially if you are discarding keys as you go or sharing your online identity with others, sure, maybe then.
You're encouraged to use VPNs, Tor, etc., but hiding your IP and creating an avatar is not the same as anonymity. Plausible deniability? Maybe...
In my opinion, this is fine—anonymity isn’t one of my personal priorities. Innovation, ownership of the content I produce, self-curation of the content I see, along with decentralisation, resilience, and censorship resistance are already quite ambitious technical drivers for Nostr.
This doesn’t mean we shouldn’t do what we can to encrypt communication and mask metadata as much as possible. But we need to be realistic about the nature of social media and understand the trade-offs and compromises we are (or aren’t) willing to make on these platforms.
#Nostr #Anonymity #Decentralisation #CensorshipResistance #DigitalFreedom
Anthony Accioly
npub1a6…w0tyc
2024-10-02 10:10:06
Author Public Key
npub1a6we08n7zsv2na689whc9hykpq4q6sj3kaauk9c2dm8vj0adlajq7w0tycPublished at
2024-10-02 10:10:06Event JSON
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