Oddbean new post about login | logout Observation from a new #nostr user: What the hell is up with every other post here being about #bitcoin? I get that nostr users are generally heavily into cryptocurrencies, but my god, there’s so much spam about it. I see people hashtag it in notes that are in no way related to Bitcoin or cryptocurrencies at all. What gives?
Early adopters of nostr have generally been bitcoiners and since you can tip in sats, people try to increase engagement by using #bitcoin in every post in the hopes of earning some sats. Since there are no algorithms here suggesting content, I recommend you search for some hashtags you’re interested in and maybe follow those hashtags or maybe the people posting them. There is indeed a ton of bitcoin adjacent content here but there’s also a lot of content that is not. Definitely lots of room for improvement for folks who want to use nostr but don’t care about bitcoin. Those improvements will come though and stuff is always being worked on. I’ll tag a few smart folks who are looking at this @Derek Ross @elsat @jb55
Thanks for the response! That makes a lot more since now on why people use the hashtag for non-related posts. I’ve more or less ignored that functionality of Nostr so far. Again, thanks for the insight!
In damus you can make use of the search box to find notes with keywords that you are interested in. Follow people who post interesting content to liven up your feed. As geek mentioned hashtags can also be useful, and can also be followed. For instance type in hashtag and the following words one at a time in the universe search bar: Permaculture Homestrading Photography
Yeah, I get that. I’m not new to decentralized social media in general, just Nostr specifically. And was very curious why there was just so much Bitcoin related postings when I haven’t really run into that elsewhere so much.
Great question. The ethos surrounding Btc is decentralization, rules over rulers, sovereignty and ownership (hold your own keys). I see all of these attributes in nostr. Unlike bluesky where you have decentralization in name only, and mastodon where each server is run by an all powerful human admin who can ban at will etc. That said bitcoiners are the beachhead in large part as Jack discovered and shared nostr over a year ago. There are non-bitcoiners on nostr, it is just a bit of work to find them.
I agree, but be the change you want to see ... we do need more content
Seems like 99% of #nostr users are either bitcoin devs or #bitcoin enthusiasts. It’s hard to find anything not bitcoin related here. On the other hand, it’s a great place to find about the latest developments in bitcoin and security in general. I hope #elonmusk will keep fucking up #twitter and the user base here will grow outside of the bitcoin community soon. #grownostr