Replies (65)
the answer is obvious
• delete global
• create subreddit type categories ->
content is king, and then regardless of your follower count (you don’t care how many followers a reddit user has), a quality post is a quality post
Global hell, bad onboarding and bad UX creates this problem of having to welcome new users and hold their hand every step of the way
Not against it, as long its not the abomination that is moderated communities
💯
I remember when I was new on Twitter, I made good use of the “These accounts work well with Guy Swann” thing.
First few weeks were like,
[Follow] [Follow] [Follow] [Follow] [Follow]
how would you see it being done?
Why would you want to delete global? I’m also p sure some clients (Iris?) censor accounts with no followers or something, which explains why new users are like wtf.
You gotta BOOOST the algo to drive engagemne- ah, fuck it. Nostr is not in its final form. We will figure it out soon enough or we wont and move to another protocol
Yeah I'm thinking it might purely be that, and centralized socials simply amplify this to counter it potentially?
Just needs to be a topic tag. Its basically the same as a hashtag except you can only have one. The rest is just ui work
Centralized responsibility would be a simpler solution than unstructured chaos
Primal is sorta doing it with subjects
It is not about relays. It is about not having algo's. Some algo's initially should be there to bootstrap people's experience like showing people globals of some clean relays and some fun and beautiful hashtags and some trending posts and when the user builds the follow list, then he can start seeing only his follows.
can we have it be different than hashtags.
personally find them really cringe and influencery/spammy
Twitter originally did it with #hashtags.
not a fan of hashtags, they get really spammy really fast.
go and see #bitcoin for yourself on Twitter
I just described how they are different:
You can only have one
You can’t add them via #, it is only added when you post in a specific community
my bad, misinterpreted your note 💜
I don't know about other clients, as I only use Amethyst. Twitter by default shows "for you" feed based on its recommendation algorithm, which mixes in content from outside following list. Amethyst defaults to showing only content that you are following. It's hard to reach outside one's followers this way, especially when one has very few, like me.
This is simply what it feels like to not be addled by the algorithm. 1/2 the followers resulting in 1/4 of the engagement means that 1/4 of what is said on legacy media doesn’t need to be said at all. Why would the algorithm show you something that you’ll 🤙 a move on, when it can show you something to argue about and keep you tied to the platform all day.
Also, the people here are more likely to be movers and doers. I don’t use any legacy media that much, because I’m actually doing things. People living the #puravida sometimes just don’t have time for media.
I found the opposite when I joined. I had 9k+ followers on Twitter and engagement with my tweets was absolute shit. From day 1 since joining Nostr I’ve had far more quality interactions and much more engagement than I had on Twitter. Engaging back with people in constructive and enjoyably human ways, and simply posting things that other people find interesting is what it takes here to get engagement. Some people have low engagement because they simply aren’t interesting, or at the very least haven’t yet found the right people to connect with.
If you're not a public bitcoin figure, people don't really follow you and don't care much about what you have to say. Your only chance for engagement is if someone you follow replies back to your witty comment on their note.
Honestly, this is why I'm still on Reddit. The pseudoanonymity levels the playing ground on conversation.
I get so angry just looking at other platforms, I hate the way it makes me feel. Maybe there is less engagement on here, I think theres still a lot of users that might follow someone and then forget about the platform for a while. Maybe the platform won't end up being good for influencers for a while, but I believe it is better for users mental health. That said, the disproportionately lower engagement seems like a distribution inherent to network effects.
or, just like to watch 😂
I know it’s difficult, but I’m still exploring here, and global is the place I stumbled on all the interesting things I don’t already know where to find. I think it’s easy to talk about containing conversations within a community when you are already settled into a community that works for you… As soon as coming here stops feeling like opening a door onto the whole public net I’ll probably lose interest..
There’s still could be like an Explore or something similar to r/all on Reddit
trad platforms do boost new accounts to get them hooked. Facebook famously targeted 7 friends in 10 days for new users as a KPI. Nostr clients could do similar.
👾
Non-issue for me, I'm not here to grow an audience. I'm here to be the audience, so thanks to all you Creators and Devs. Guessing I'm probably not alone in that regard. I'm here because the Bitcoiners I love are here and the gen pop is freedom minded. Decentralized communication will be paramount as Empires die, so I wanted to learn/participate now to a small degree. Nostr is pretty fun as far as I'm concerned. I am 45 and this is the only social media I have ever had. Likely the only one I will have. I have no desire to be an influencer, I couldn't do it if I wanted to. I have very little technical knowledge but know enough to keep my KYC-free coin cold. Thankfully in meat space I got some skills.
That too, lol. Some people just like to observe and consume content. Nothing wrong with that approach unless the person expects to gain followers that way, because that won’t happen. You definitely get out of nostr what you put into it, good and bad.
You are one of my only followers who actually uses Nostr. Any friends I managed to get here don’t post. They stay on FB except for rare moments in the beginning.
It’s not necessarily about growing an audience, simply that the point of social networks is to be social. But this is a solid frame that I wish more people had.
I follow to keep track of npubs of significance but I often can't view all the notes of my follows.
I use listr.lol to create lists so that I can quickly see when those people return to nostr. These lists are available for me to filter notes in Amethyst.
I see nostr as having multiple communities. Each individual gets to define who's in their community.
This thing isn't TwitteX, thankfully.
Maybe it's conversations? Amethyst and Primal both make replies first class citizens and more established users generate more replies so there's your second order phenom.
For me, the level of engagement feels real and proportional to effort. It's also great knowing that lulls are not because I'm shadowbanned or demoted by the algorithm. It's either a time-zone thing or the posts are weak. Both are fixable.
The default relays on most clients don’t offer much reach to new users. There needs to be better onboarding flows in these apps to explain what relays are, why they are important, and how to get more and better ones. Users coming from centralized platforms have no idea what any of this means, and usually don’t have sats to spend on paid relay fees.
This is like saying that to get people to buy cars, we need to get them to understand carburetors. The mainstream doesn't even want to look at NOSTR right now. Throwing technical concepts at them before they've settled in isn't going to be attractive, and will repel them more. On-boarding is already over complicated for Granny. Increasing the complexity only makes that worse.
Agree with this 👆🏾👆🏾👆🏾💯
I think there needs to be guidance when people first start using a client to add a lighting address , post to hashtags like #plebchain #grownostr, and to connect with people. With a little bit of effort that engagement is much higher than other networks.
Posting into the void is only seen on welcome relay or global and we'll no one uses global.
Agree 💯 with this.
I think it has a lot to do with the fact that there is no algorithm here. People are used to view X and FB as ways to engage an audience, but on Nostr it's just you talking to your friends.
The only way to 'get engagement' on Nostr is to engage with other people, like, comments, zaps... just talk.
The only algorithm here is human social interaction algorithm.
Boost more often! It's the on of the most powerful ways to get the valuable information spread far and wide. (This is a note to self as much as it is a call to action)
View quoted note →It is VERY hard to find your folk here if you are anything more than a Bitcoiner. That's all anybody wants to talk about. Endless circlejerk.
That's fine for all these people who only want to talk about Bitcoin and muh family. Not fine for anybody else. I have yet to find the people I actually want to be talking to. Its almost like algorithms can be a *helpful* utility.
Could it be that the engagement on other platforms is an illusion, created by fake users and the service provider.
Seems that’s how Reddit was bootstrapped, for example.
You could follow me and help fix the problem ;D
Yeah, search needs some work.
It seems to me that engagement is a function of engaging with others. ie. replying to posts is a big factor in increasing engagement on one's own posts.
I tend to think of it like walking into a bar where you don't know anybody... If you're there regularly, people will become curious and approach you. If you're only there for a short while, then you need to be assertive in approaching others and introducing yourself.
View quoted note →Important discussion thread started by Guy. Good ideas in the comments on how to improve #nostr ...
View quoted note →Maybe you forgot how it was to start a new account on Twitter. Yes, the feed was filled, but to get any engagement it took a long time there as well.
What is the latest relay advice anyway?
I've always suspected that I have issues with my relays but it's hard to tell.
Do you know if there is any up to date best practices for relays out there?
#amethyst will rebroadcast the event when someone interacts this should improve reach and discover new profiles.
I started from scratch on #Nostr with the #Iris client and got no interaction at all. Then I went to #Primal and saw in the notifications that there were some follows, likes and a zap. I think many interactions don't even come through on certain clients?
I took a look at your relays and you seem to have a high number of free or low-quality ones, and the list could definitely stand some curation. There is one paid relay (nostr.wine) but if you haven’t subscribed to that one you won’t be able to publish events to it.
You should try removing a bunch of them (screenshot your list so you don’t forget what you started with) and experiment with adding some low-fee paid ones into the mix. You can find them by using:
https://relay.exchange
You’ll also want to reduce the number of relays you see in your global feed to cut out the spammier content. Global is best viewed by limiting your view to a smaller relay set that only shows content from the sources you allow.
Good call.
I don’t have Nostrplebs set as my NIP05 and was told that I couldn’t get whitelisted to use it even though I’m a subscriber.
Wow thank you for looking and for the advice. I made some changes and grabbed a few more paid relays, thoughts?
Thanks!
Did you pay the invoices? I can’t see from my end which ones you’re subscribed to.
Also look for a way in your app to reduce the global feed to read only from the ones you’re paying for.
Yes, invoices paid. Thank you! 🤙
Cool, hope your experience improves!
I doubt it's nostr specific. I would guess there's a psychological phenomena where building a social profile the first time is more rewarding than building a second one, coupled with self-reporting and respondent biases. No one on Nostr who is happy with their experience is on X complaining about what's wrong with Nostr.
It could be said that I am a "digital introvert". Never built a "following" on any social media platform. However I do see the desire and the many benefits with doing so.
Nostr excites me because I/we can choose to follow an identity specifically because they write amazing long form content, take beautiful pictures, sell (via. lightning) content or services in a distributed market place, write/operate an amazing AI agent(s) in Vendata etc. The list of ways to interact with an identity can/will likely grow.
That relationship goes with me/you (unless you nuke your followers 🤬) So you can go to a different platform/app and you get introduced to some other aspect of an identity just by that graph relation alone -- good or bad. Not because they post "a lot" of kind 1's.
There is much to be learned when the relationship is identity -> identity vs. identity -> platform.
Guys question is a good one and also the thread that follows has some good considerations.
View quoted note →What is a good connection strategy for relays?Take the fastest? Those that those you follow use? Just as many as possible? Thanks.
I never had followers until I joined nostr. Making the effort to engage, explore, ask questions and follow while zapping notes you like is not hard. I don’t want algorithms. If they come, I will want to turn them off.
I think you are making the mistake of thinking that “the algorithm” is some esoteric or evil thing. When in reality it’s just a formalized set of rules for filtering and optimizing what you are looking at. Imagine if you did a blanket, unoptimized search for some keywords on the internet. You would NEVER find what you were looking for. You’d have to wade through 100+ pages of just nonsense and random spam sites that have hidden text with thousands of popular keywords on them.
There is nothing wrong with an “algorithm.” The problem is having your feed manipulated without your knowledge and without your control. That someone *else* is deciding what is good or bad or that you shouldn’t/should see.
I actually did an episode & an article about this…
Fountain
Bitcoin Audible • Read_763 - Evils of THE ALGORITHM • Listen on Fountain
"Everything about the concept of a social network and the incredible potential and beauty of #nostr as a protocol is in controlling your experience...
I like the calls for social media companies to open up their algo's. Fire can be used for good, it can also be used as a weapon. Same with algo's, they are not inherently good or bad they are whatever the coders have programned them to be.
That’s the thing. It’s how they’re used. Which, in the context of this thread, is the evil I refer to.
