Replies (62)
Parker must not understand that code lives on even if every CEO is arrested and jailed. I can run the applications on my phone or on my computer. I can run a relay on my server. I don't need a CEO. I just need the software to exist somewhere for me to download it and use it. It's literally the same as Bitcoin. I don't know how he does not understand it. NGMI.
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I think a huge part is that the source code of apps built on nostr is largely open. Nostr has a culture of FOSS. Whack a mole is in play here. Its almost impossible to stop nostr cos of that as I see. But yes parker is right that it doesn't stop a CEO being arrested. But a CEO of an app is just one person in a larger mechanism.
It’s not clear app CEO’s can be arrested. The legal authority is enabled by company writing the software also running the host.
Notice how OpenSSL devs haven’t been arrested?
The irony of these debates on centralized platforms never gets old.
Will also never understand bitcoiners who shit on things not being “perfect.”
Maybe they'll arrest the CEO of Bitcoin core next by this same logic
'they're' forcing us to learn and adapt to survive.
They’ll essentially curtail that Nostr CEO’s freedoms, but the rest of the network will remain unaffected.
Good luck catching them all ✌️
Not every app will even have a CEO. Also Parker just dropped the 'swarm' argument on the floor.
This situation seems like a clear sign that governments are gradually losing their grip on control. As they continue to print more money, their resources diminish, leaving them increasingly stretched thin. They end up spending most of their energy trying to suppress emerging technologies and ideas.
It's like a game of whack-a-mole—technology evolves faster than they can react. By the time they fully understood what Bitcoin was, it was already too late to stop it. The same thing is happening with Nostr; once they grasp its significance, it will likely be too late for them to intervene effectively.
They're already struggling to manage platforms like Twitter, and as time goes on, more decentralized technologies will emerge, further eroding their control.
Parker is just one of many btc guys who don’t “get” nostr. I don’t really understand how they don’t see the parallels but … alas
Ya, and that’s what makes Nostr so different. It’s interesting to see this discussion play out!
Respect the hell out of Parker, but this strikes me as a “Crossing the chasm” moment.
Yeah, even if they try to go after a Nostr CEO, the whole network is still going to keep running. That’s the beauty of it being so decentralized. It’s like trying to catch smoke with your hands—good luck with that!
Don’t mind him. He got NDS. 😂
His perspective on nostr resonates with how I feel about it. Nostr may have the bones to be a very powerful tool on the internet, but it has yet to find a first product market fit to drive people to use the protocol. I don’t think a replica of current social media will do the trick, it needs a novel use case or a novel form of social media. You have cool ideas with nostr+bitcoin, but that also won’t drive adoption much because very few people are sending bitcoin around.
Amethyst isn't a company as far as I know. Many nostr implementations are just open source projects.
Apps can be built with Nostrocket so teams can easily be geographically distributed and there’s no centralised point for any government to go after.
Arresting CEOs isn’t the big problem though - governments of “liberal democracies” trying to censor speech is, and for that there is absolutely nothing better than #Nostr
Thanks
@Lyn Alden I appreciate your take and think (even though it might be years away) Nostr is the future of free speech!
Money is a prime example of the Byzantine Generals Problem.
There is no way you can ensure a concerted effort of groups when a system is non-byzantine. This concept goes beyond currency, and is the key behind dismantling illegitimate power structures. Built on bitcoin is the future.
I met Parker at an event a little while ago. He has a lot of great ideas so I totally get where Parker's coming from, but I think Alden has a point too. The decentralized nature of Nostr, with data spread across relays, makes it tough to just shut it down. It's like a bunch of puzzle pieces scattered around—hard to grab them all at once. Sure, there might be risks with client CEOs, but the whole system is more than just that. We're all learning and adapting here, and that's kinda the beauty of it.
He'll get Nostr at the zap height he deserves.
Right? the system’s built like a Hydra. Chop one head off, and two more pop up. The beauty of decentralization, am I right?"
Debating decentralization on centralized platforms, no system’s perfect, but isn’t that the whole point? We’re all just figuring it out as we go. Bitcoin wasn’t perfect at the start either, but look where it is now. Nostr’s on its own path, and that’s pretty cool to see.
He's correct, nostr doesn't fix CEOs getting arrested. But his point is also moot because targeting CEOs of nostr apps, even of big ones, will never have the disruptive return for governments that the arrest of a centralized platform's CEO has, mostly because switching costs are close to zero for nostr users, while there is no switching option for telegram users.
Although governments will not be able to arrest all the CEOs of Nostr app companies and kill the network, couldn’t they threaten to arrest smart phone companies to not allow Nostr apps, which could effectively kill it?
It’s light years better than it was two years ago. And it’s just getting started.
Parker is smarter then he is playing, he trolled you.
He’s all about going all in on medium of exchange. I think he views NOSTR as a distraction from that effort.
If you know a bitcoiner who can’t give up the X, please be a friend and tell them to get some help.
(Can’t see the thread if you don’t have a Twitter account…)
I always think of this show when I hear his name. Always.
Linking to X is bad form Lyn. Nostr party foul
He is not wrong. They can keep arresting all the CEOs but our contents and free speech stay here forever. That’s what we want. For content creators we can’t imagine if they lose their contents it’s like end of the world. I love NOSTR
Don’t let good enough be the enemy of perfect. There are no solutions just tradeoffs. I like nostr’s chances! Arrest CEOs all you want, this post will still get relayed, lol. Not really much to debate here actually.
Nostr can be used via browser.
Appreciate the post. Appreciate the argument. Appreciate you.
The central thesis here is that, imo, arguing against Nostr is arguing against the strongest player in the game. And no team doesn’t hire the strongest player, even knowing the future is uncertain.
As a 25+ year investment advisor, I learned never to bet on any particular company in what was a clear emergent “theme”. Bet on most of them. But I’m a Maxi now, I’ve disavowed that fiat thinking. So I’m all-in on Nostr, w/ Twitter as my fiat sweep account. But for people still trying to find their social media “plan b”, trying to figure out what’s happening in the social media world, this is a maelstrom of decisions happening fast.
I subbed you on Nostr probably more than a year ago. Now shit’s exploding. The response to people who want to argue against what’s clearly happening is, imho:
“We cannot guarantee success, but we can deserve it.” ~ George Washington.
he's not correct because arresting nostr app CEOs is irrelevant. The value is in the nostr network and governments will not go after the app CEOs because you can plug in another app and reduce the efforts of governments to garbage. So governments will not even attempt going after a CEO of some app with 50,000 users.
I just don't understand your point and also Parker Lewis clearly doesn't understand the value proposition of nostr.
Right, but would people use Nostr in large numbers if not accessible via mobile. Not sure.
agreed. how many bitcoiners is "so many bitcoiners". it's a strawman
They will try to cut off a few heads,
Until people realize that Nation States are a market
which,
like every market,
can be arbitraged.
The hydra is antifragile and can't be defeated.
I think these 2 points summed up your rebuttal of what
@Parker Lewis was trying to get at:
On fixing CEOs getting arrested:
“I do think Nostr de-incentivizes app CEOs from getting arrested since it's way less impactful on the network and there's not much for them to turn over. So if they are arrested they can easily comply to minimize their personal impact without harming the network much.”
On the benefit of #nostr as a technology:
“Socio-political things can affect things temporarily and locally. Technology, on the other hand, can affect things permanently and globally.”
How can such a smart dude not see the obvious? He can't even play out basic nostr game theory. What is he blinded by?
View quoted note →This is why github needs to be fully replaced by nostr. Even though most popular nostr apps are open source and on git (a dvcs), the underlying project and configuration management (PRs, issue tracking, wiki, acls) cannot have its value underestimated. Without it, distribution and maintenance of a project is crippled. Right now, it exists at the grace of microsoft.
The greatest threat vector to nostr is to allow social-selling to make the base-implementation protocol too complex for a new dev to quickly spin up a basic social app. I believe the protocol architecture, clear goals and the NIP system mitigates but doesen't eliminate the possibility.
They are mainly talking about relays, not clients.
He seems to be solely focused on CEO being arrested. It sounds like he is not considering that the CEO of telegram was arrested because he was a single point of failure. Not only because he didn't censor
"Nostr CEOs" could be arrested for not censoring, but IMO its a lot less likely since none of us are a single point of failure for nostr
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Phones have browsers
Nostr is immensely useful where governments or corporations are heavy handed with censorship. It is more difficult to censor.
Why can't that be the novel use case?
Replace the x.com portion with a nitter host like nitter.poast.org
Lyn,
I hate to say a bitcoin-twitter influencoor is stupid, but Parker simply doesn't understand nostr enough to make any argument against it. His statements betray his ignorance: calling nostr clients "platforms", talking about open source projects for nostr clients like they need to be run by a SEC ruled public corporation, not grasping the nature of relays and their relationship to individual users, being blind to incentives and business models around nostr. Beyond that, he ignores your jurisdictional diversification argument. Perhaps you should ask him to read NIP-01 before he argues against nostr again. Of course, i'm not on X so I won't have the opportunity to get dismissed by him
Why do so many nostr users think bitcoin does anything to fix the problem of a CEO getting arrested for not censoring their wallet app?
We already forgot that Apple tried to censor Damus, but
@jb55 fought against it, someone invented a workaround, and zaps are still integral to the nostr experience regardless. If an open source app developer censored people for their political speech, nobody would use the app, it would be forked and re-distributed anonymously, and the government's efforts to censor would be fruitless. Nostr takes the "platform" choke-point away from social media, and in doing so, there is no "nostr ceo" to imprison.
I think difficulty to censor is a great feature for a communication network that already exists, but I don’t think that feature is enough to drive mass adoption to the protocol in the short term. Most people don’t have an issue of being censored on social media. Maybe over enough time there would be enough censoring to drive more and more people to the protocol…. But it’d be better to have a positive reason to come here as opposed to waiting for enough negative reasons to accumulate.
Then he's gone full tard.
Lyn, I’m new to Nostr and I really appreciated your points about it with Parker Lewis. Also, loved your book and really helped expand my view of the importance of these kind of technologies inside and outside the US.
Lyn, I think Bitcoiners see it because of understanding concepts like 'Bitcoin is nowhere and everywhere at the same time' and the importance of a protocol not having a CEO who similar to a Bitcoin $5 wrench attack is just too easy a target for beaurocrats to display their power and control over. Parker can be cute with his phrasing of "fixes arresting" for "CEO"...the " fix" is to mute the affects of the government overreach and force light on what they are really after which is not actually the CEOs but what CEOs control
Narrator: it was not Parker’s last tweet about nostr FUD. 😂
he doesn’t want to learn, he wants to affirm his existing bias.
Parker can stick with Elon’s db if he thinks it’s best and we’ll let the chips fall where they may.
Linking to my own post in isolation is bad form and the thumbnail is awkward depending on what client you're using, so I'll also provide a pic of the start of the debate too, with two posts of his and one of mine.
I'd be open to any thoughts about this debate.
