didn't Primal receive 1 million dollars in funding? I think a big reason people are critical of Primal is because it’s funded by venture capital, which brings a lot of pressure to generate significant returns. This often leads to centralized features, like KYC, user tracking, and potentially even monetization strategies like ads or data mining, which can clash with the decentralized ethos of Nostr. Primal, as a business, needs to balance user privacy and control with the reality that it’s under pressure to scale quickly and generate profit. So, naturally, they may end up centralizing some aspects of the platform to maintain a steady revenue stream and ensure they comply with laws and regulations. The challenge is that Nostr was designed to be decentralized, and with Primal relying on this venture capital model, they need to retain as much control as possible. It’s a difficult position because it limits the level of decentralization that can exist while still being profitable. In the end, it’s up to us as users to decide what trade-offs we’re willing to accept—whether we value the platform’s user experience and features over the decentralization and privacy ideals of the protocol.

I totally agree with you. Time will tell if Primal's approach is viable, users will vote with their choice of client. My take is that while Nostr is in its infancy, it still needs projects with these terrible VCs trying to monetize the user base, centralize Nostr, etc. At this moment, there's no point in overdramatizing their caching of media files with link substitution as "misuse of my keys", calling for a boycott of the app and service, I think. Just like demonizing VC - any financial investment in the protocol is good for it. Nostr is not Bitcoin, unfortunately it doesn't have an economic model for self-survival.