Oddbean

auto-following on account creation is a mistake. especially for nostr clients. takes a bunch of agency away and puts the person in a defensive position of “why am i following this account?” trending, search, and topics are far better leads to a follow.

Primal asks you what topics you’re interested in and auto-follows people. Instead, it could just display lists related to those topics — so it doesn’t auto-follow anyone — but the feed won’t empty thanks to the lists.

Depends on the client you created your account with. I only started recently and Primal had you choose interests, then put a bunch of accounts in front of you and let you follow who you wanted then sent you on your way.

Why is he up so early? He's in California nostr:nevent1qqswsryg0j2eh89e5uy5ruwvpydwaewhd30tspgsxaww39j6yzrlm6qpzemhxue69uhk2er9dchxummnw3ezumrpdejz7q3qsg6plzptd64u62a878hep2kev88swjh3tw00gjsfl8f237lmu63qxpqqqqqqznclks9

Na. Sturgeon's law—ninety percent of everything is crap. I would be super annoyed if my on boarding experience was following a bunch of randos, most of which suck. Plus, users can follow random accounts on their own if they want to.

Yeah I pretty much feel like that with primal, and seems like they are having a rethink about it (separate to my feedback lol). I think bluesky feeds work amazingly well, I have to hand that to them. And I wish feeds were as smooth and useful on nostr. Soon, hopefully. Topic feeds would be ideal at onboarding.

it is just a hack, so i disagree unless we actually achieve functioning algo feeds. - trending doesn’t work. until we have functions algo feeds ^ trending is just bitcoin and ‘how good is nostr’ circlejerk threads, which imo doesn’t lead to follows for new users - search is too much work if you assume a new user is initially indifferent to nostr - topics (hashtags?) aren’t active, and id argue never will be if most of nostr is twitter clones, as that’s a remnant of old twitter.

Agreed, topics and trends, search https://image.nostr.build/e8ad30b1b7bb78d0852b1e912540770ce7a572414849044b22f4e044cad1c3d9.jpg https://image.nostr.build/e251ef45ebfe8463ad052fa1cd8dd8eac55a87c97ed7f9eea5f9ef9e3603ea64.jpg

(Succinct reply) Perhaps a list of “suggested” or “recommended” accounts to follow based on interests rather than auto follow. And somehow be able to return to the recommended list at some point. (Detailed reply) With onboarding of a new user, I think there has to be some type of list of accounts. Auto-follow might not be the best option. For me, I didn’t mind. I was able to view accounts and read posts. If I liked what I saw, I would continue to follow. If not, I unfollowed. Most of the accounts that were recommended to me, I still follow. I’m not sure if I would have found them on discovery. Since then, I have used the search option to add new accounts to follow. And sent zaps to complete strangers. It’s fun. I get your point about “why am I following the account”. Someone who joined @primal said those exact words and immediately started to unfollow without reading a single post. I explained those accounts were based on her interests. She then decided to search for accounts based on her interests. After a while, she stopped searching. Go figure. So I think there should be some balance to find a middle ground. Especially considering Nostr isn’t the most popular tool right and there are not many users covering diverse topics. Plus there’s still spam and bot accounts.

i love this response. very thoughtful! it's very difficult at the moment to determine if there is an audience or community for different types of content. where do i find them? how can they find me? tags are okay, but not everyone uses them. and yes... the bots... ;_;

Thank you. 🫂 I’m not a fan of using hashtags in posts. Sometimes I use them. Most of the time I don’t. When I search hashtags, sometimes I get a lot of obvious bot posts. Throw in AI and sometimes you can’t even tell if an account is real. I try to be the person who adds nuance and multiple perspectives to a conversation. And then try to find a reasonable solution. I’m not simply a “yes” person. Although, I can easily agree with someone. It’s still early with Nostr. Post great content and the people will find it. The light will always shine. ✨

Damus automatically has it sorted by certain topics and gives you people to follow. Are you suggesting using #hashtags to boost yourself if one desires to reach the top of such a list? I don’t care but others might. #asknostr We disagree on trending but that’s normal for people to not have same views. Respect 🫡

It makes sense why I see a lot of those people with big follower numbers but not much interaction on their posts. Primal's auto-follow feature results in accounts with a large number of followers but minimal engagement. This is likely because they are being automatically followed rather than being accounts that genuinely interest the user. I get why they might think it's necessary now, while Nostr is small, but I hope it's changed in the future.

This has led to npub follow lists full of spammy npubs. Anytime someone generates an npub, the npubs currently trending (or whatever metric they're using) get a new npub. Effect is the same as follow bots. Example: nostr:nprofile1qqsqtgsf9l63f966pkwre78lq4t43y6pxfnnnym4d83j68nlyw4y3aspzdmhxue69uhhqatjwpkx2urpvuhx2ue0qythwumn8ghj7un9d3shjtnswf5k6ctv9ehx2ap0qy2hwumn8ghj7un9d3shjtnyv9kh2uewd9hj77clz29 nostr:nevent1qqswsryg0j2eh89e5uy5ruwvpydwaewhd30tspgsxaww39j6yzrlm6qn49spd