mike's avatar
mike mike@mikehardcastle.com 7 months ago
I want to talk about followers on NOSTR. It’s a big gripe with newbies used to legacy social media. Here’s the reason you’ll never really know how many you have. If I follow you, I update my profile on my relay(s) to store this information. If you don’t follow me and don’t check the same relays, you have no idea I’m following you, because I don’t notify you. You will by proxy eventually find out as our paths cross and you start examining my profile on my relay. That’s the technical answer, but the real answer is privacy. If I follow you, why should you know? We are so used to this information being exchanged that we don’t question it. If I want to create a silent npub which does nothing, doesn’t ever post and sits on a private relay, you’ll never know I exist. That’s privacy, which is a form of freedom.

Replies (20)

Default avatar
npub1heqk...kx28 7 months ago
Another glitch that I have witnessed is that sometimes I follow people, but I don’t see that I’m following them. Some of these people are people I know outside Nostr and they can confirm they haven’t migrated to a new npub or anything. Anyhow, for some reason, this also happens.
1 replies ↓
Kendy's avatar
Kendy 7 months ago
Follow counts are shitcoins. I guess I get it if you need to run a business or sell advertising but we should broadly deprioritize that metric. Especially if the platform is infested with bots. View quoted note →
Matt's avatar
Matt matt@gitcitadel.com 7 months ago
I wouldn't even notice if my client didn't have follow count. It isn't a metric I value. I value interaction (or not if I'm lurking). I've worked hard to build relationships of all kinds here and I think that's what social media was supposed to be.
mike's avatar mike
I want to talk about followers on NOSTR. It’s a big gripe with newbies used to legacy social media. Here’s the reason you’ll never really know how many you have. If I follow you, I update my profile on my relay(s) to store this information. If you don’t follow me and don’t check the same relays, you have no idea I’m following you, because I don’t notify you. You will by proxy eventually find out as our paths cross and you start examining my profile on my relay. That’s the technical answer, but the real answer is privacy. If I follow you, why should you know? We are so used to this information being exchanged that we don’t question it. If I want to create a silent npub which does nothing, doesn’t ever post and sits on a private relay, you’ll never know I exist. That’s privacy, which is a form of freedom.
View quoted note →
1 replies ↓
Default avatar
npub1sces...q7fu 7 months ago
Much more intersting would be to manually mark some npubs interesting. Then the client/relay would slowly serve you npubs which those you find intersting are interacting with. Ideally weights would be involved so you can say who is more inetersting to you.
1 replies ↓
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