Fabian Ommar from The Organic Prepper wrote a piece about a new protocol called NOSTR, short for "Notes and Other Stuff Transmitted by Relays," that is described as "a decentralized network built on cryptographic keypairs that is not peer-to-peer."
The way NOSTR works is different from, say, Instagram, which uses centralized servers to control all operations. NOSTR is more of a protocol than an actual app as it allows every person who uses it to be their own independent platform.
NOSTR was developed and released in 2020 as "a discrete, open-source, niche substitute for both Twitter and Mastodon." It runs through decentralized apps or clients as opposed to centralized apps like Facebook and Twitter use.
"The excitement and expectations that followed Elon Musk's acquisition of Twitter are gradually fading," Ommar writes.
"Even if the blue bird's platform may now function better, users are beginning to realize the fact that it's still largely the same Twitter. This is due to the fact that centralized, server-based social media is always open to outside manipulation. It can be hacked, compromised, suppressed, tampered with, co-opted, or censored. Or purchased, as the Twitter transaction has demonstrated."
(Related: There have been times when Twitter opposed censorship, but only when it affected Twitter negatively.)
Even with Elon at the helm, Twitter is still a centralized censorship circus
In Ommar's view, NOSTR has the potential to change the way people communicate by allowing them to openly share what interests them, including censored news, without having to beat the censors to the punch.
Those who choose to use NOSTR will need to learn the extra steps and extra responsibilities it takes to participate. There is no centralized server that stores your username and password, for one – you have to create and remember all of these details on your own.
You also need to learn how to run a free client to share posts or create articles using your pubkey, or username, and your private key, or your password.
"If a post is shared with another client, the information is transmitted 'trustlessly' around the network in a similar way to how Bitcoin and cryptocurrency transactions are dispersed to all nodes in the platform," Ommar explains.
"The foundation of the system's operation is the relay servers that send, receive, index, structure, and store events (or messages) independently."
The best part about NOSTR is that nobody can restrict anybody else from using it or sharing content. They can choose not to look at what you have to say, but they cannot stop you from saying it – the same cannot be said for any other social networking platform out there.
The ability for most people to even use NOSTR only just occurred on February 1 after Apple and Google allowed the first Twitter-like apps or clients to appear in their respective stores. For iOS, it is DAMUS. On Android, it is Amethyst.
"With those, you may make your pubkey and begin dabbling with NOSTR on your smartphone," Ommar explains.
Since the technology is still new, it is crude compared to what most people are used to from the big guys in social media. There is still a lot of room to grow, and those interested in growing with it can do so now by learning how NOSTR works and getting themselves set up in this new ecosystem before it really starts to take off.
More related news can be found at Freedom.news.
Sources for this article include:
Please contact us for more information.
