Oddbean

This is a really great point by @Vitor Pamplona about community. People go to BlueSky because they want a “safe” community of leftists (politicians, journalists, celebrities, and normal people) who all agree with each other and think X is for Nazis and Elon is the antichrist. On Bluesky, their views will not be challenged, because they are the same as everyone else’s. They do not need to worry about being confronted with uncomfortable truths. There is “diversity,” but no diversity. People go to Threads because they want a “safe” community of leftists (politicians, journalists, celebrities, and normal people) who all agree with each other and think X is for Nazis and Elon is the antichrist. On Threads, their views will not be challenged, because they are the same as everyone else’s. They do not need to worry about being confronted with uncomfortable truths. There is “diversity,” but no diversity. People go to [INSERT NOSTR CLIENT] because they know it an “unsafe” community of people who cannot be defined by a single political label, comprised of plebs, technologists, dissidents, legit cypherpunks, anarchists, entrepreneurs, Bitcoiners, open-source devs, artists, podcasters, creators, activists, and more. On Nostr, people expect to be challenged, because there are no guardrails. They expect to encounter views that clash with their own. They expect to be uncomfortable at times. Nostr enables confrontational truth (paraphrasing @PABLOF7z ) There is “diversity,” but there is also diversity. nostr:note152609lgkamcey5kq5qka6y4023kh7cxxvg54gkn0hpndm6k0cfzsjcta3z

Not everyone cares about politics though. And that's where I understand the need for "safe" community. And nostr experiences are currently lacking in this direction. Imagine I'm an older lady* that's really interested in beautiful crochet and hand made stuff, I would like to have experience where other people show off their crochet, we have fun, we can joke and help each other. Since I have many stresses, worries and other issues in my daily life and I get my news from elsewhere I would just like this place for my fun time, for my rest, for calming down. Now what is the chance that people start trolling (preying on escalated discussions), people call each other nazi/commie, I'll get exposed to politics, people explaining their virtues, trump, conflicts, biden, videos of murders, linux developers, scammers, porn, ukraine, etc. If the chance of me being exposed to garbage (we can call it *P(shitshow)*) is larger than lets say 10%, then the fundamental reason for me participating in that community (=app) disappears. One interesting side effect of this is that there are many (MANY!) great niche communities that use super old websites/forums software (powered by things like phpBB), because younglings usually don't find it slick/new enough, so quickly lose interest. *) I'm not saying crochet is only for older ladies, I'm saying that this specific crochet aficionado happens to be an older lady in the situation I just made up.

As someone who enjoys sewing, crochet, homesteading, homeschooling, and a wide variety of other activities, I was stuck on Facebook for many years because I couldn't find another platform that met my needs (and I tried all of them, believe me). A year ago, I tried Nostr and thought, "Nah, this won't do." But since trying Nostr again about two months ago, I've already found at least one or more people with most of my interests to follow and enjoy—far more than I did on Facebook or Instagram. I also get to see their other interests on their feeds. I deleted Facebook and Instagram, and now I’m only using Nostr. It will only get better. The bonus is that I can choose to see politics or Bitcoin content if I want to. I feel like everything is in my hands now and no ads!

That sounds great!! I'm really happy to see folks having good time on nostr in topics like that. From your experience - do you also get a lot of posts (notes) that are quite irrelevant / annoying? What nostr client are you using?

I switch between Amethyst and Primal. I use Highlighter and Npub.pro for my long-form content posts. Amethyst is great because it supports both short and long-form content, but it's not available on desktop yet. Primal is more user-friendly in my opinion, but it doesn’t show all of my followers, and I sometimes have trouble posting. I always set my notes to "Latest" so I only see posts from the people I follow. I never use "Global" on Amethyst, as I find it filled with annoying content. Occasionally, I’ll check out "Trending" on Primal, especially when I’m looking for new accounts to follow. If I follow someone and later find their posts annoying, I unfollow them. I also try to follow everyday users, not just the popular ones, as they tend to bring more diversity and interesting content for me to explore.