Oddbean

Fair question! The primary difference is that every gif that is copied from Gif Buddy creates a Nostr event that allows other people to use it freely As a developer, when you want to implement gifs into your app, you are bound by API terms/limits set by GIPHY or Tenor (owned by Google) This is the primary reason why there’s no gif button on @damus So the more Gif Buddy is used, the more gifs are available on relays without being bound by such restrictions The goal of Gif Buddy is to create an open library of gifs that doesn’t restrict usage in any way and that isn’t owned by anyone (including Gif Buddy) Gifs were created by individuals, but eventually were collected into centralized databases owned by these two companies It may sound like a trivial feature, but Gifs are a form of speech so it’s important to decentralized that form so that it can’t be restricted in the future Hope that makes sense!

Not sure how familiar you are with the protocol overall, but it follows nip94 outlined here: https://github.com/nostr-protocol/nips/blob/master/94.md So the event is published under a special Kind (1063) If you search under that Kind and sort by gifs, then you’ll have your own gif repository to go through!