Why Nostr? What is Njump?
2024-11-17 06:55:48

Pegah on Nostr: The current invitation-only model of Bluesky raises questions about its commitment to ...

The current invitation-only model of Bluesky raises questions about its commitment to decentralization. By requiring an invitation code, the platform inherently controls who can join, which allows it to track and manage its growth—a practice more aligned with centralized marketing strategies. This approach might discourage some potential users, as it did for me last year when I decided not to pursue joining.

On the other hand, NOSTR embodies the principles of true decentralization. Despite its slower adoption and performance challenges, it operates without gatekeeping mechanisms, staying true to the ethos of an open and decentralized social media network. For me, this makes NOSTR a more authentic example of decentralized technology.
I don’t really understand this kind of criticism (and not to pick on Will here, it seems to be from ~everyone).

Bluesky took a different approach - first build a product people want whose technology supports decentralization, and add the features the geeks want later. It’s easy to shit on their lack of decentralization, but Bluesky has made clear and consistent progress on that front since day one, and I assume they will continue to do so.

The result has been a product that’s growing (those user stats are pretty realistic, doubly so when you look at the number of accounts actually posting real content) way more than nostr with tons of anti-centralization features that nostr is missing (anyone can create a feed algorithm, and there are many, decentralized content tagging is a really cool innovation - different “adult content” tagging services, opt-in different moderation services, etc).

The federated model of Mastodon led to a trainwreck of fiefdoms run by weirdly obsessive and controlling mods, but Bluesky took that and addressed the issues by splitting moderation from hosting.

Sure, Bluesky’s hosting model means you don’t get the relay-redundancy that sets nostr’s censorship resistance apart, but that’s not all that hard to add in the future (with the sync assumption they make making it easier to make efficient, too).

Building the kinds of stuff Bluesky has on nostr is gonna take a huge investment, we can’t leave folks like Will stuck building critical nostr apps by himself.
Author Public Key
npub1rt65j4vnd05qf72szpj8afdd5hrkylka7pe55lup8waquv0wm9sqjj0y9g