Thread - Nostr Hypermedia

Yeah, you’re missing the point again. The Core example was off topic, sure, but I used an extreme one to make the point clearer. I’ve tried a bunch of Nostr clients, and Damus is by far the most unfriendly to beginners imo. I just don’t see how appealing to decentralisation helps Damus justify its inferior product when users can switch between dozens of other clients without losing any Nostr data. If Primal, for example, decides to fuck their users — leaks my burner email, fake name, or rugs a couple hundred sats in their built-in wallet — what’s really at stake? I can still move to another client that’s just as decentralised, supposedly doesn’t harvest my data, and looks and feels better than Damus in its current state. So when you say Primal is “harming decentralisation,” what exactly is the harm in practice? If a user can migrate instantly without friction or loss, then that’s not centralisation — that’s just bad trust in one interface. Damus being ugly and unusable doesn’t somehow make it more virtuous.

↑ Parent

Replies (3)

jb55 _@jb55.com 2 months ago

you keep saying inferior but all you have as an example of this is a few pixels different here and here. Is that all there is or is there a bigger issue? We have spent a lot of time to make onboarding as smooth as possible, so this post is confusing to me

1 replies ↓

vinney...axkl vcavallo@vinneycavallo.com 2 months ago

Let me take a step back here, maybe we're not on the same page. First, are you aware of and understand the situation I'm referring to (below)? It's not about having your wallet rugged or "losing nostr data". It's about the content you - and thousands of other newly-onboarded users - see being manipulated, re-ordered, hidden, filtered, by a central curator with no way to turn the setting off. Perhaps you want that, and that's fine - but are you aware of it? Talk about Core making changing settings difficult... Primal doesn't even have an "off" switch for this.

vinney...axkl

its really simple and not that contentious: Primal connects to their own "caching" server that does some mysterious filtering/hiding, image-swapping and mysterious post-ordering (promotion of content), rather than reading directly from relays. yes, you CAN supply your own caching server, if you happen to run one or know someone who does. but you CANNOT (yet) simply instruct Primal not to do this and read directly from relays. Odell has explained as much, though he makes it sound less nefarious than I am here (which tells you how each of us feel about this "feature"). whether you see this as a good or bad thing is a matter of subjective taste, but the facts are the facts. there is no argument, just preferences.

View quoted note →

1 replies ↓

weev 2 months ago

The harm in practice is that they have the ability to censor posts, and eventually they will be forced by EU regulators, among others, to do so, if Nostr ever has significant amount of traction. You are basically saying you want a centralized system. If you like Primal, you should just use X or Bluesky. I agree that Nostr onboarding of new users is atrocious and many of the apps are extremely unappealing to tons of people, but Primal should solve these problems without compromising the integrity of Nostr’s decentralized nature.

2 replies ↓