Re: Why I disabled Zaps. View quoted note →

This is magnificent and, though it was nunya my beeswax, you kindly and unsnarkily replied. RESPECT ♡

I understand the sentiment but I also think that it's perhaps missing the point a bit. When you have social media that's decentralized and not driven by algorithms, incentives for posting can be difficult to find. Zaps are a freedom-preserving way to incentivize people to post good content on Nostr. I agree that Nostr is ultimately most important for its decentralization, self-sovereignty and censorship resistance but if there's a major flaw with Nostr, it's the fact that it really does only seem to attract the folks who are either hardcore Bitcoiners, banned everywhere else, or just curious about the tech. We need more content variety to keep Nostr going and growing. Zaps are a way to do that. Not only that, but they're a way to expand the Bitcoin economy beyond hodl culture (which is antithetical to what Bitcoin was designed to be). They aren't just present for posting memes or sharing AI slop, they're also there for rewarding authentic, high-quality content from people who just want to get back to what social media was always meant to be: a way to share and chat about things you love, with other people who also love the same things. So yeah, just my two cents. Everyone has a right to choose whether or not they want to get in on zaps; I use them but only sparingly, as I don't hold a whole lot of Bitcoin to begin with. Even so, I do think they're far more important than clickbait from a handful of goofball influencers. If the relays are the spine and nervous system of Nostr, and if its users are the brain, zaps are the digestive system.