Good point, but all these "devs" who are into "decentralization" and were supposed to like Nostr apparently don't give a shit about it (because their entire discourse is a lie, they don't really care about technology, they only care about what their leftist friends think of them, see for example that guy who wrote "protocols, not platforms" and is literally being paid by a platform now) and are happy with Bluesky and their lies, so who else can we target?
We can't be serious about attracting florists, musicians, serial entrepreneurs, biologists, mathematicians or milkshake producers, right?
The only other demographic I can think about are people into politics that lean more to the right, but most of these seem to in love with Elon Musk still.
We're left with the conspiracy theorists who see the threat of X and Musk dominance, like Whitney Webb and Ian Carroll joined Nostr and James Corbett mentioned it multiple times, none of them made the jump into Nostr that we needed. Anyway, these are the big guns of the movement as far as I know, so it's understandable that they didn't, but there might be smaller players who will be more interested immediately.
I guess there is the big avenue of people who just want to make a group with their friends, or with other florists, and we're already moving in that direction already with NIP-29 groups and growing support for topic, theme, niche and semi-closed relays. I'm happy about it.
Nothing prevents us from moving into multiple directions at once though.
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Well, you really can't attract florists, musicians, serial entrepreneurs, biologists, mathematicians or milkshake producers if "you" think you are too cool to post your app on playstore and app store. And by you I don't mean you personally
I think there’s a small trap in the premise.
We keep trying to think in terms of demographics to target, as if Nostr just needs to find the “right tribe” — ideological devs, political dissidents, conspiracy researchers, rebellious entrepreneurs. But most living technologies don’t grow that way. They grow when they become useful to someone in a simple, concrete way.
The devs who talked about decentralization and then happily moved to Bluesky don’t surprise me much. In many cases it was never really a technical position — it was a social one. When the social pressure shifts, they shift with it. It happens all the time. It’s probably not worth building strategy around people who follow the wind.
At the same time, I don’t think it’s absurd at all to think about florists, musicians, biologists, or even milkshake producers. In a strange way they’re actually more interesting than ideological devs — because they don’t care about the ideology. If a tool lets them talk to their customers, their community, or a handful of trusted peers without being at the mercy of a platform, they’ll use it. That’s enough.
People don’t adopt protocols because they love protocols.
They adopt them because they solve a small but real problem.
That’s why the direction of groups, niches, topic-based or semi-closed relays feels much more fertile than any kind of cultural battle. Small spaces where people recognize each other: a circle of local musicians, a research community, an art collective, a group of friends. If it works there, it slowly takes root.
The big names — Webb, Corbett, and others in that sphere — can bring attention, but attention rarely builds ecosystems. Ecosystems are built by small communities that stay.
So yes, there’s nothing wrong with exploring multiple directions at once. But if I had to bet on one path, it wouldn’t be an ideological tribe.
It would be something much simpler:
small groups of people who find a place to talk to each other… and eventually realize that the place doesn’t belong to anyone.
Many people are fake and talk decentralization only for social / professional points. All they really care about is monetization. Does it make me money? No? I won’t be bothered.
One of these days Google is going to shoot themselves in the foot with the play store or GitHub is going to enshittify enough, etc. And zapstore or git on nostr is going to explode.
have patience. The important thing with nostr is not happening in public, but in private.
The public part is for posting memes and have a voice.
Network effects are strong so there is no choice but to be patient. As with Bitcoin, people will come for ideological reasons or when they have no other choice.
How you see things:
> but all these "devs" who are into "decentralization" and were supposed to like Nostr apparently don't give a shit about it (because their entire discourse is a lie, they don't really care about technology, they only care about what their leftist friends think of them, see for example that guy who wrote "protocols, not platforms" and is literally being paid by a platform now) and are happy with Bluesky and their lies, so who else can we target?
The reality:
More than a few devs came to Nostr from ActivityPub, OStatus, SSB, etc. Queer, left-wing, Linux neckbeards, people from countries that were put on the U.S. "naughty list", etc. They contributed a bunch to the Nostr ecosystem and were either ignored or actively managed out by Nostr insiders. The very same people who pushed them out are now predictably virtue signalling about how everyone outside the hard inner circle is "virtue signalling".
> The only other demographic I can think about are people into politics that lean more to the right, but most of these seem to in love with Elon Musk still.
Ding, ding, ding! Can we admit that the only devs and users most Nostrichs want or trust on Nostr are more of the same right-wing BTC Twitter crowd that effectively don’t want to be here?
Well... Consider that Nostr is not really decentralized. The relay model means some large hub and many relays unseen by most, so actual substantial centralization without imposing it formally.
Nostr is awesome for many reasons, but it's not really decentralized. Largely ignoring both the ZeroNet failure lesson, the Usenet success lesson and the eMule/KAD model. If this not change Nostr will remain marginal unfortunately.
Milkshake producers need to recharge so you won't get any milkshake in this yard
Also, fuck em, weoutchea
This problem is beyond logic. The people are under a spell. It will take a spell to free them.
Peter McCormack is probably the person to reach out to, he seems to have reached out of the bitcointwitter bubble. Would be good if he at least had nostr in his linkedin. Perhaps if he mentioned he's on there in his show.
Or if we sponsored his show.
I have tried to speak to him on here, but I don't think he looks at his replies. Plus I'm a nobody 🥲
Maximize customizability and then encourage/promote creative uses of the resultant features. Heavily promote Nostr as a space where artists can sell their work / get commissions (maybe adding new features to streamline this process) while simultaneously encouraging Nostr users to support and commission the artists who show up.
If you can get artists who are already on other sites (and they often are on a LOT of sites) to include Nostr in their line-up of social media platforms, while simultaneously building features to specifically cater to them, they WILL spread the word to their peers.
"I guess there is the big avenue of people who just want to make a group with their friends, or with other florists"
And that's two markets: One that's social and one that's commercial, no matter how small. The social ones have gotten used to the idea that social media should be free, but they also like it to be free of advertising as well. Blue Sky's trying to make that work, but I've not noticed how they expect to do it.
I can imagine a social media that marries the social and the commercial successfully though. It'd be one where users know which space they're in and neither side bleeds into the other. And the sellers in the commercial side are charged to be there and those charges pay for both the social and commercial side of things.
Maybe relays should be in pairs - one social and one commercial?