Nostr: Notes and Other Stuff Transmitted by Relays

Just like in 1984, our world of communications is often controlled by centralised authorities. This can, of course, be a good thing, as it can stop bad people from posting bad things. But, what happens if you have something that is important to be said, but have been banned from comunication playforms? What if Google or Microsoft decide that you are saying bad things about them? Could they kick you off their networks?

Say you had just published a Penetration Testing tutorial for your students on YouTube, and they thought you were a hacker. Could YouTube just ban you for life on their platform?

We are moving into a scary world of untrusted communications. Overall, it will be difficult in the future to tell what is real and what is fake. So, if Rishi Sunak declares, “We are now at war with the world!”, can you trust this or not? And, what happens if YouTube or LinkedIn decides that it doesn’t like what you say about them, and bans you from their platform?

The answer should be to create a digital world where every message can be checked for its validity, and carries a digital signature, and where there is no centralised control of messages.

To overcome these issues, Nostr brings a new censorship-resistant global “social” network, and where there is no trusted central service. It uses…