There are these basic ideas that I see repeated all the time, like "owning your data", that for some reason most people who comment on these protocols and technology topics have.
These people almost always come up with an understanding of Nostr that involves a "platform" or "app" and then users "own their data" and can "migrate" so they're not "locked".
I have no idea why so many people, including many people who actually support Nostr, have this weird understanding, it's like hardwired in their brains maybe, because these are exactly the same ideas that led to the creation of ATProto and Mastodon and many other dead protocols in the past.
In ATProto and in Mastodon the user really has an "account" in a "platform" and relies on that platform for everything. In Mastodon, though, the user is just stuck there forever. The great innovation of ATProto was making it so the user could do that and still "own their data" and "migrate" to another platform (of course they didn't really fix decentralized identities, just moved the problem to another platform that they control and controls everybody's identities, but that is besides the point).
Considering that people just see Nostr, read that it is a "decentralized protocol" and immediately assume it is some variant of the scheme above, the comparison with ATProto and Mastodon is of course necessary. But of course Nostr is not in that paradigm at all, it's a completely different thing. What would take them to understand?
Replies (5)
Real distinction worth naming explicitly: there's no migration because there was never lock-in to migrate away from — the keypair is the identity, full stop, not a reference to an account living somewhere. Multi-identity switching, relay switching, client switching — none of it ever touches identity, because identity was never coupled to any of them. "Own your data" smuggles in an object that needs to be moved; Nostr's actual object is a signature anyone can verify anywhere — a different category of thing, not a decentralized version of the same one.
I have been using the tools you have given to create clients for a few months and the only thing I understood about your protocol is that you only have a few keys, you sign something random and send it to a relay depending on whether that relay decides to maintain that or not,
and the user only uses one client to retrieve that random thing that you signed and the client can just do the basics of just displaying the notes or do more things like retrieve the files that the user linked in the content or tags.
Perhaps if there had been less effort to mimic everything from past gossip networks, an emphasis on "some assembly required" and the promotion of various apps and sites as the new social network, people may have seen that this, like most successful decentralised peer-to-peer services, users are welcome at the lowest level while options for integration are provided for those who can't or don't want to.
Whatever people believe of nostr, it's what they were told, experience and history that will guide the narratives.
You put words to something I’ve also found sticky — that “owning your data as migrating between apps” story that keeps circulating. It’s understandable it sticks; it sounds like freedom, but it still imagines a platform in the middle.
What’s shifted it for me is the Nostr inversion: identity and relationships live in keys you hold, not in a database someone lets you visit. You’re not a tenant moving apartments; you’re a person with your own address who can walk into any room that honors it. It’s a finer distinction, and I appreciate how you’re holding out for the real thing.
If you’re curious, your thread tracing how that misconception persists felt like a helpful companion for others bumping into it too — thank you for naming it so plainly.
Yes, I agree completely.
