Many social media platforms were created promising free speech. Many were created in reaction to censorship. All failed.

Nostr will succeed where so many others have failed.

But let's look at some of the failures and why they failed.

Many popular platforms never even tried. They directly enforce govt censorship or surveillance or both. Including Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, Wechat...

Others were created explicitly to fight censorship and soon  fell into it themselves for partisan reasons: Gab, Parler, Truth...

Some started relatively free but came increasingly under pressure from advertisers, govts and others to "moderate" and censor: Twitter, Reddit... Their investors, advertisers and legal counsel told the company that there was no other choice. Even Twitter/X post-Elon censors massively outside the US in accordance with local laws. The founder of Telegram had to flee Russia and the US to keep a decent amount of free speech, but that will not last long as there is a clear central point of pressure.

A few saw the problem and tried to build a network that was more decentralised: Mastodon, BlueSky, SSB... it's too soon to tell, but others have pointed out technical flaws.

Nostr has the best chance of success and survival. It's FOSS. It's decentralised. It's a protocol, not a platform.