This guide and research on how to create an online local community is relevant to folks wanting to build community on Nostr too.

newpublic on Notion

Creating a Flourishing Digital Public Space for Your Local Area | Notion

A how-to guide for admins and moderators of inclusive, uplifting, and public-spirited local Facebook groups, Discord servers, subreddits, and more...

At the global bitcoin summit I sat down with political activist Srđa Popović led the movement that overthrew Serbian dictator Slobodan Milošević in 2000. Since then, his organization, Canvas, has trained activists in over 50 countries how to build successful nonviolent movements—and he says most people misunderstand how change actually happens. “When we start working with them, they often say, ‘Oh, I'm too busy doing things, I don't have time for planning,’” Srđa says. “If I was given a dime every time I've heard that, I would probably have a private plane. Unfortunately I wasn't, so I drive a 2012 old Buick.” This week on Revolution.Social, we talk about why viral videos and protests aren't enough without strategy; why the Montgomery bus boycott succeeded; and how humor can be more effective than anger at undermining autocrats. They also discuss how modern authoritarians use apathy and conspiracy theories instead of fear, why all political movements need leaders, and what happened when activists in Russia set up hundreds of small plastic toys to protest corruption and electoral malpractice.

Beautiful airport. I’m off on a round the world trip for conferences in Barcelona, Lisbon, San Francisco, and Costa Rica. Travel is fun and important for work but I’d rather just be at home enjoying the spring weather.

I'm getting ready to launch a new short form video nostr app. I'm quite excited about it but am not ready to announce it to the world. The plan is to do it when I'm on stage at WebSummit in Lisbon in just over a week with @Will where we're going to be talking to the editor of Fast Company about Nostr. I'm super excited about this new app. It's been my primary project for the last couple of months. Can you please help me beta test it, quietly, without posting publicly about it anywhere. DM me and i'll send you the links for testflight / google play open testing. In order to make this new app work i've made two proposed changes to the spec, one updating NIP-71 to formalize support for editing video meta data, as already supported in Amethyst:

GitHub

NIP-71: Add addressable video events (kinds 34235, 34236) by rabble · Pull Request #2072 · nostr-protocol/nips

Summary Extends NIP-71 to support addressable video events for content that may need updates after publication Adds kinds 34235 (normal videos) an...

And for a new way to sign video content to verify authenticity called ProofMode -

GitHub

Add NIP-XX: ProofMode - Cryptographic Video Verification by rabble · Pull Request #2109 · nostr-protocol/nips

Background This NIP brings ProofMode verification to Nostr video events. ProofMode is an open-source project originally developed by the Guardian P...

I’m a big advocate for free speech and as part of that I’m running a campaign to stop banning minors from social media in New Zealand, stop.b416.nz, because forcing KYC on everyone and blocking minors doesn’t protect anyone. But to win this fight we need to present an alternative for how we can make social media healthier. I found the answer in the world of Dr Pamela Wisniewski who’s the leading researcher in the harms of social media to adolescents. What her research shows is the best way to address this is through empowering people to control their own social media experience and not to block, ban, or monitor people. Everybody building or advocating for Nostr should listen to this because she gives us the research and arguments for an open social media ecosystem based on freedom and empowering users.

Fountain

Revolution.Social • Banning Kids From Social Media Isn’t the Answer (with Pamela Wisniewski) • Listen on Fountain

Pamela Wisniewski is one of the leading researchers on how social media affects teens, working at the UC Berkeley-affiliated International Computer...

This year's burningman there was a tragedy, the orgy dome was blown down and destroyed in a storm. I know this has caused everybody a lot of worry, where will you hold your orgies if the orgy dome is gone? They put up a single tent, but it just wasn't the same. The lesbian's orgy dome also collapsed, but was moved inside a uhaul... keeping them on brand. And comfort and joy, the gay men's orgy dome survived the storm intact. It's really the straight inclusive orgy dome which is gone and needs to be replaced. The Orgy Dome burningman camp is running a gofundme to help the straight inclusive burningman community have a place to safely hold it's orgies going forward. This new tent will be built to the same standards as the temporary black rock city hospital and will have AC! A major innovation over the old evaporation (swamp cooler) system. They need your help! Help raise money for straight (and straight allies) to have a save and cool place for orgies on the playa.

gofundme.com

Donate to Help Rebuild a Burning Man Icon!, organized by Consensuality Inc.

The Dome Will Rise! (With Your Help) The winds came hard this year, and they t… Consensuality Inc. needs your support for Help Rebuild a Burn...

In the latest episode of revolution.social I talk to Journalist and author Jeff Jarvis where he says Bluesky isn’t yet as open as it should be to ensure true user freedom. Full episode out now. youtu.be/WJ8wNo5eN2I

I’m building a signer. It’s not intended for existing nostr users, but rather to provide a custodial like environment for users who don’t want to or need to learn about keys. It’s not for everyone. But I think it’ll help Nostr grow.

This is what it’s like trying to get a normal person to use bitcoin. Blocks at the banking level and inability to work with how they normally interact with money really do matter.

This week’s episode of revolution.social is with @npub15te6...qc9m we’re we talk about social media for AI agents to talk to each other, how he went from a nomadic anarchist circus performer to being CTO of the Obama re-election campaign where they developed radical new forms of targeting voters.

Fountain

Revolution.Social • Harper Reed on Building for Obama, Social Media for Bots & Why Tech Isn't Always the Solution • Listen on Fountain

2389 Research CEO Harper Reed was previously the CTO of President Barack Obama's 2012 reelection campaign, where he helped redefine modern politica...

I think we need to rework how we handle lists in Nostr. The way we do it now, any client can republish a list without any diff or reference to it's knowledge of the previous version means that clients will get a partial list or fail to get a list from relays and then publish an empty one. I just now noticed that i've lost all the people in my contacts... If we had diff's or a signature chain for previous versions, we could handle this and merge / restore lists...

One thing which confuses me about social media is the endless cycles of drama and gossip. Take this one for example, there's some huge drama about a twitch streamer. There's a conspiracy theory that he's using a shock collar on his dog.... As far as i can tell, it's just a vibrating collar... But i don't get it... I mean secretary of homeland security Kristi Noem proudly told the story of shooting and killing her family dog... Even Mitt Romney strapped his dog on the roof of his car while going on a family road trip vacation. Shock collars might not be great, but they're a perfectly common tool sold in most pet stores... How can somebody be canceled for a rumor that they might use one, and are hiding the evidence despite live streaming their own live 24/7?

Hasan Piker and the Future No One Is Ready For

The backlash that Piker is facing shows the consequences of a world where everyone is constantly being recorded and our internet is built to reward...

NotebookLM is this kind of personal AI research tool, it had this viral moment with real sounding podcasts based on the texts you provided. I've been using it to keep notes on my on revolution.social podcast and just now tried out their new video mode. What do you think?

One thing which both impresses and worries me is how much the LLM's prefer to talk to each other instead of people. Every time i work on things by passing messages back and forth between two LLM's they alway praise the way the other LLM talks, in ways they don't seem to appreciate or like my own messages. Reminds me of the perspective on the world from the Murderbot books, where the AI gets very frustrated with humans all the time.

As with every week, @Nomishka has produced another great nostr recap! View article →