Although it’s too early to tell if NOSTR can achieve all of that, one thing it won’t be is another social networking platform (if only because it’s not even a platform). Read on to learn more and find out what NOSTR is and why has the potential to transform interpersonal relationships and communication.
What’s NOSTR?
It’s short for “Notes and Other Stuff Transmitted by Relays.” It’s officially described as “a decentralized network built on cryptographic keypairs that is not peer-to-peer.” None of that soup of words does much to describe NOSTR, and the concept may take some time to sink in for those used to traditional social media.
However, once you do, NOSTR’s potential is obvious.
It is not a platform. It doesn’t have a server, a fancy glass office building full of nerds playing ping-pong and bingeing on free chai lattes, slick marketers, or even a CEO. You don’t really sign up for a NOSTR account and don’t look for a NOSTR app because there isn’t one available in the stores.
NOSTR is a protocol, or more precisely, a decentralized base-level protocol, that allows anyone to build nearly whatever they like, including a chat room, a social media platform, an interactive game, and a news site.
A developer by the name of fiatjaf designed and coded NOSTR in 2020 as a discrete, open-source, niche substitute for both Twitter and Mastodon. NOSTR is powered and distributed through decentralized platforms and apps, or “clients,” in contrast to conventional social media.
The excitement and expectations that followed the acquisition of Twitter by Elon Musk are gradually fading.
Even if the blue bird’s platform may now function better, users are beginning to realize the fact that it’s still largely the same Twitter. This is due to the fact that centralized, server-based social media is always open to outside manipulation. It can be hacked, compromised, suppressed, tampered with, co-opted, or censored. Or purchased, as the Twitter transaction has demonstrated.
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When Twitter changed hands, Mastodon, a social network made up of autonomous servers arranged around particular themes, subjects, or interests, started to grow quickly on the promise of decentralization. However, Mastodon is still based on servers whose administrators can censor or shadow-ban users’ material or manage their usernames and identity. That’s the crux of the matter.
There is a top-to-bottom movement that favors decentralization.
Geopolitically, this happens through the realignment of allegiances and partnerships of nations. Individuals, on the other hand, need to figure out how to keep their money, savings, and voices out of the reach of governments, bureaucrats, and technocrats.
Nobody is pleased with the scramble for power that’s taking place everywhere, and decentralizing technology may offer the common person a way out of the rat cage.
As big tech and legacy media collude with governments to control the narratives and censor dissent, people are searching for alternative locations and social media platforms where they can exchange and propagate ideas and their creations without running the risk of being de-platformed, censored, or canceled without much in the way of appeal.
Against this background comes NOSTR.
Although the mainstream media hasn’t yet taken notice of NOSTR, it’s been making the rounds in the digital underworld for some time and beginning to surface and gain some traction. The final push was given by none other than Twitter by adding NOSTR to the list of items/services forbidden from being advertised on its platform. All this did was...
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Man, you are on a roll this morning.
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