Social media is now an integral part of our online lives; it’s how we get new information, react to news and communicate with each other. However, these apps had to generate profits for investors through , so the walls of censorship have been growing in recent years.
Social media applications were never intended to be content producers, they should only act as information distributors. But because of their function of disseminating information, they have been pressured by domestic politics, corporations and governments to curb certain narratives while forcing others.
However, as users began to notice that certain content and people were treated unfairly by these platforms, and in many cases misinformed by social media, the slippery slope of censorship increasingly drove users to alternative or private platforms.
However, the problem with moving to other private platforms is that you get the opportunity to express your opinion freely, but you can only say it to a smaller audience or community.
So you can leave any centralized social media platform (Facebook, Twitter, Instagram), but you can’t easily take your content and followers with you. This is where a new protocol, Nostr, comes into play, offering a possible solution to this problem.
Mi az a Nostr?
Nostr is an open protocol designed to create a censorship-resistant global data sharing network, primarily focused on the development of social networks. The protocol does not rely on a central server, but instead each user can run a client.
With this client, users publish content by writing a post, signing it with their private key, and sending it to other servers, which then forward the content to a network of relays.
The method of transmission also works on a simple principle. Relays have the sole task of receiving posts and forwarding them to other participants in the network. Users can entrust one or more relays with their data. However, if these relays collude to remove certain information or block content; users can then operate their own relay instead.
The Nostr protocol, thanks to the decentralized identification, allows websites and Internet applications to access this data at the user’s request, thus creating “decentralized” social networks and ensuring interoperability between websites.
Those interested can read more technical details on the project’s own website. THE ‘awesome nostr’ page lists almost all current clients and applications, which is already a pretty long list.
Financing of Nostr
While the number of customers using Nostr continues to grow, the team behind the open source project has stated that it will not be raising venture capital, as is common practice when building a centralized social media platform, for example. However, the former CEO of Twitter has already talked a lot about the merits of Nostr, and even decided to actively finance its development. Jack Dorsey donated roughly 14 BTC, or about $245,000, to further fund the development of Nostr.
Simple update: next version of @damusapp will show a lightning tip button if you have lud06 (lnurl) or lud16 (lnaddress) set on your profile. pic.twitter.com/mC06FG2P3b
— William Casarin ????????⚡️ (@jb55) October 20, 2022
How you can use Nostr
To access the Nostr network, one of Nostr’s clients must be used.
- Let’s create a private/public key pair using a Nostr client such as anigma.io or astral.ninja. The former automatically creates a private/public key pair. However, the latter application asks the user if he wants to create such a key pair and creates it if he agrees. These key pairs represent identity in the Nostr system. If you want an easy way to create and manage your keys, the best solution is to install a web wallet like Alby. Alby has native Nostr command line support. This helps to create a private key, from which the public key can then be derived, which can later be used for the various Nostr frontends.
- Save the private key: After you have created the private/public key pair, the private key must be saved in a secure location. Furthermore, if you happen to lose the newly created private key, you can always generate a new one for yourself.
If necessary, you can create multiple keys. The same key can be used on all nostr clients. If you want to create more identities or accounts, you can create new key pairs at any time. - Update your profile: You can update your profile name, picture, etc. at any time from the client you are using. However, exactly what and how often you can update your profile depends on the client. In general, all clients allow you to change the name, introductory description and profile picture.
- Write a post: The clients also display the posts and comments of other users. In addition, clients allow you to share your own posts and follow others. For example, the astral damus client allows you to follow others; however, this is not possible in the anigma.io client, as it works like Telegram and has public chat rooms.
- Search for users: ninja also has a global feed interface where you can see other people’s posts. The nostr.io/stats page ranks the most active users. The damus.io/channels page also lists some of the more active public channels.
What does Nostr give us?
Thanks to these features, Nostr can be a foundational technology standard that makes social media and data sharing, and more importantly, controlled data access, an integral part of the Internet.
Protocols like Nostr are not simply intended to replace current social media and data ownership, but to modernize it. The goal would be for people to take ownership of their data themselves. And applications can only be accessed with permission. This will enable technology to truly serve people and help hold governments and corporations accountable when data is misused.
If you want to try Nostr or learn more about it, you can also visit the following resources: GitHub, Client list, Reddit, Telegram.