Oddbean

It is a whole new mindset, it was harder in 2022 when there wasn’t many guides for normies (including me), about how to use Nostr. And the clients where clunky and slow. It reminds me of the internet in 1994-1998. You had to figure it out and put some work to use the internet then.

I feel the other way around. Before wot and the in- and outbox model you would simply throw a handful of relays into any app and your nostr was synched across the network. Now you take your paid relays out of the inbox settings cause (of course) others cannot write to them. Then you setup outbox relays and app relays. Of course you want to be on a WOT relay as well and let's not forget that you should have some search relays too and of course a history relay in case you manage to nuke your profile and list of people you're following. If you do all of the above right you might receive DM's or DM replies from the people you're communicating with and they might see your comments on their notes unless they don't. If I have the same configuration on two different client seeing two different timelines and missing entire DM's on one but not the other or I see replies on one but not on the other then something doesn't work and I stand to my opinion that most normies wont spend any considerable amount of time trying to figure out why this is the case and how to fix it.

I have several devices, including an iPhone and a GrapheneOs cellphone, plus several computers, so I use a variety of clients. Just a couple of days ago I complained that we can't even get basic consistency between Nostur (iOS) and Amethyst (Android), as in not even seeing replies from people I follow, and I simply got the usual smug replies that boil down to: "use it the way is convenient for us (devs), not how you want" (in this case, use only one single client, as if there was one for all platforms), and "code your own client(s?) if you don't like it". It's funny because I'm the first one to always say that no one owes jack to anybody here or anywhere -- unless you're paying. But it *really* goes both ways. Users don't owe jack shit to devs, even FOSS devs. If I don't like it, I won't code it. I will simply end up leaving. All I hear from devs is how we "need" (I disagree) more users (because they want to monetize them I guess) but at the same time, they can't stop bitching when real users already here complain about basic functionality.

If its any consolation, as a dev, I wrestle with a lot of this myself. The way the relay servers work, and the disparity in how clients interact with them will often (most of the time) yield inconsistent results particularly between apps. As a user I end of just having to wade through multiple apps and acknowledge I'll probably never see all replies, reactions or know who zapped me etc (lightning wallets and nwc are another issue of inconsistency) I fear that mitigating this over the long term may lead to either centralization to nostr platforms like Primal and ZBD which will produce a better experience there, but silo off from nostr as a whole.. or put more demands on app developers to create robust caching themselves and background tasks to retry pulling/pushing events from/to relays that have draconian throttle policies or are not as stable as they make themselves out to be. The thing is, users shouldnt need to be doing so much configuration of their clients, and constantly checking relay settings, or having to login and authorize and reauthorize connections. There's frictions that are unnecessary that add to the poor experience outcomes. But one thing is for certain.. devs, myself included, need to set aside more dedicated time in the analysis, debugging, and address some tech debt to make their apps run a little smoother. It'd also be super helpful for devs of nostr-tools and NDK to document actual good flows for how best to use them. Both of their docs barely scratch the surface. With each passing year nostr has and can do more, but it does feel to me that 2023 was the best for overall UX.