Nostr: the protocol that protects the freedom of speech
We often hear about censorship on social media and I think that in 2023 this is unacceptable. Everyone should be free to express their thoughts, obviously within the limits of decency and without offending other people. Facebook and Instragram are certainly the platforms that most censor free speech. Furthermore, we know that traditional social media have obvious limitations: ads everywhere, they create addiction, anxiety and stress in people, centralized control, strange algorithms that decide what to show more or less, identity theft, permanent bans or shadow bans. After Elon Musk’s acquisition of Twitter, it seems that the blue bird’s social network is much more open and free than before.
Since the end of 2022, many people especially from the cryptographic industry have started using Nostr, a decentralized network protocol where the posts are censorship-resistant. You’ve probably seen a lot of people on Twitter talking about Nostr lately. Jack Dorsey, the former founder of Twitter, is financially supporting the development of Nostr. He donated 14 BTC to the development of the protocol.
Nostr is an acronym for ‘Notes and Other Stuff Transmitted by Relays’. Nostr is similar to a social network, like Twitter, where you can create posts or ‘notes’ (like a tweet), ‘like’ posts, follow and unfollow people, and ‘boost’ posts (like a retweet). However, Nostr is a decentralized protocol. It is a set of rules used by servers and clients to communicate (just like Bitcoin, emails or Bittorrent). Nostr is not an application nor a ‘platform’ (like Twitter, Facebook, etc.), but many applications can be built on top of Nostr. To use Nostr, you need to use a client. A client is how you interact with Nostr (to see all available clients, click here).
To post something on Nostr, you write a post (note), sign it with your key, and send it to multiple relays. You have two keys: the public key and the private key. The public key can be defined as your username. The private key can be defined as your password. To find another Nostr user, simply search the client using that person’s public key. On Twitter many users have posted their public key to be found on Nostr.
Nostr is being developed by @fiatjaf and @jb55 and check out the other great Nostr projects they are working on. Help others understand how to use Nostr (here’s a great help @dergigi has put together: nostr tips and tricks). Share your public key with your friends and experience an open-source, censorship-resistant protocol. Remember that we are still at the beginning of Nostr. At the moment the developers are focusing on the implementation of the protocol; functionality comes first. The user interface and user experience will continue to improve, but may feel rudimentary to non-technical users. And look at the potential of Nostr…
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In a society where everything is centralized, we need decentralization. Dear social media and government bureaucrats, your censorship is over.
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