Nostr is being pushed as 'impossible to censor,' but that’s a stretch. It started as 'censorship-resistant,' which was honest. Now it’s verging on dishonesty and could mislead people—activists, for example—into thinking it’s like a cypherpunk project that protects them, when it doesn’t. Assange protected his sources and paid for it; with Nostr, the activists could end up paying the price.

On the technical side, this narrative is harmful too. Developers hesitate on basic spam-blocking to avoid being seen as anti-free speech, leading to degraded feeds and frustrated users. Censorship resistance shouldn't be a psy-op we play on ourselves for the benefit of spammers. Nostr improves on the status quo by preventing platform lock-in and making it harder to cancel legit users, and that’s already a valuable step forward.