So, after spending about 2 months on Nostr, I've decided to leave my account dormant there and come back to Fediverse as my "one true platform".
Let's do a postmortem.
What is Nostr?
Nostr is a protocol, much like ActivityPub or ATProto, but tries to solve problems that these platforms haven't.
The major difference is, your account is yours. There are "relays" there that are similar to instances here. However, unlike here, the relays don't always have a website attached and they don't "host" your account exclusively. Each relay you are a part of, has a copy of your profile and if you get "banned" from a relay, you just remove that relay from your connection and keep posting like normal.
There's many different things that Nostr can do, like micro logging, chat, streaming, communities similar to reddit, etc.
One of the other big features is that you can pay creators directly with the use of Bitcoin Lightning which I thought is a pretty neat idea. Though, with the amount of scammers in the crypto space, nobody wants to touch it anymore.
All of these things seemed good to me and I enjoyed engaging with the different systems. My issue, however, isn't with how the protocol is built, it's with the low engagement numbers.
Over my 2 months there, I've gained about 65 followers. Compared to Fediverse, that's REALLY low. Especially considering that there's only about 10% of followers that will engage with any post.
I'd even tried making exclusive Nostr themed content AND giving away Bitcoin Lightning (free money, anyone?) and only got a handful of interactions on each post.
It's good technology if you don't mind having to block stuff you don't want to see consistently. (Which I don't mind) But if the regular user doesn't get much out of the platform, they have no reason to put into the platform and that's pretty much where I'm at.
Fediverse continues to be the best social media platform for engagement. There are censorship issues here. (If you're banned by the biggest instances, you're pretty screwed) However, I don't have those problems.🤷
It was a good experiment nonetheless.
#Fediverse #Nostr #SocialMedia #ATproto #ActivityPub
