Cool, I am sold. What is a graph?
A graph is a structure consisting of a set of nodes and a set of edges.
In a social graph, the nodes are people and the edges represent social relationships, like being friends with, being followed, or being zapped.
Simple, isn't it?
https://m.primal.net/IfrI.png
Despite its simplicity, the social graph is a powerful tool, that can help with:
1. Impersonations
2. DoS attacks
3. Social discovery
4. Personalized ratings
And ultimately, it helps us build the freedom web.
Let's look at the HOW, shall we?
1. Impersonations
Who is the real @giacomozucco ?
NO, don't look at the number of followers, it can be faked.
The signal is the line just below that, because follows from people you trust are hard(er) to get
https://m.primal.net/IfUM.png
Is this mechanism perfect?
Absolutely not, but it's a great start. For a more robust solution, read to the end.
2. DoS attacks
Email is broken because anyone can harass you with stuff you never asked for.
As Bitcoiners, we are tempted to see every problem as a monetary problem.
But do you really want your mom to pay to message you?
Maybe there is a better way. The soci..
You guessed it. You can allow
- those you follow
- those followed by those you follow
- and so on
to message you for free.
Everyone else has to pay for your attention.
That way your mom can keep sending you those boomer videos for free!
Um, let's move on.
https://m.primal.net/IfUb.png
3. Social discovery
Word of mouth drives billions in commerce.
What do your friends like?
What do they eat?
Who do they follow?
This information has been used to sell you stuff you don't need.
But it doesn't have to be this way.
You see, the problem is that big tech companies now have a monopoly on this information.
But with open social networks like Nostr, it's all public.
Sounds scary? I'll tell you why it's not.
When you have an open, public social graph and the ability to filter spam, the incentives change to the point where the advertising industry gets fixed.
Yes, advertising will still be a thing, but you won't be forced to watch ads because you can't be captured.
Companies that optimize for attention will be disrupted by those that optimize for value.
As @SvetskiWrites points out in his latest 'Reviewing Reviews', there is another crucial piece of commerce that will be radically changed:
Ratings.
4. Ratings
Ratings today are mostly fake, irrelevant, and censorable.
But they are broken on an even deeper level: you value the opinions of your friends more than those of strangers.
(I meant to tag @Svetski)
https://m.primal.net/IfrR.png
It's possible to use the social graph to create ratings that are
- personalized
- relevant
- dynamic
- hard to manipulate
How, you ask?
Well, that's too much for one tweet.
Fortunately for you (wink wink), here is an article in which I summarize hundreds of hours of research on the social graph.
It goes into the weeds, the implementations, and the philosophy behind it.
https://pippellia.com/pippellia/Social+Graph/Navigating+the+social+graph
We have a chance to create the freedom web, but to get there we need to understand the tools.
This free website is a way for you to save time and learn about them in a distilled way.
https://pippellia.com
I want to thank @franzap @elsat @Bit McCoin ⚡ @Vladimir Krstić @stelios for reviewing before release, and @hodlbod for having me on the @Thank God For Nostr Podcast to discuss these topics.
https://www.fountain.fm/episode/SJJKS7tr2WI9R4gaVXxO
If you liked this 🧵, follow me for more of these and consider retweeting it to share it with your audience.
If you are a builder that wants to integrate the social graph into your project, reach out to me.
I would be more than happy to help.
note1jwu5qpyh02uk7neyj4tn2aq6fq5amtsv67t59xkffyqekm65lfmqq6y62e
This is great.
But next time can you just make it one long note? This is nostr, you can write long-form for free 🤣
Thank you!
Oh I like threads, as they:
- require to be concise
- show images where you want them
I tried to post it from Highlighter but it didn't worn for some reason, so I had to do it the manual way lol
@pippellia what happened when you hit publish on highlighter?
cc @PABLOF7z
basically nothing
btw I already sent Pablo a video recording showing the issue
Ok let us know if it happens again, looks like Pabloverse fixed already
Agree with that but nostr clients are not great with threads
Was delightful to read on amethyst 👌
I have some serious Amethyst envy
Makes sense why you'd want them.
Unfortunately Primal just loaded one reply from you at a time, so I had to keep tapping and waiting for the next note to load... very annoying to read and impossible to skim.
I had a similar experience on Damus.
I guess this is what the frontier looks like 🤣
Nice write up, and incidentally I think this is the first twitter-like thread I've read on nostr.
Why did you write your article like this? I don't think nostr has a character limit. If you don't start from the last note its kinda annoying showing the reply to every note in the chain.
Some people stuck with Xitter brains
It was okay on #Amethyst. Also sometimes long posts are annoying, esp. on the main feed. You press "show" and now if you don't care to read it, you have to scroll........... To the end to collapse it again.
We don't tweet here sir!
wasn't the reappropriation of the word "tweet" a thing?
On the long run I totally agree but to get the level of saturation that I can travel to a random town and find 5 opinions on each of the 200 restaurants all from my social graph is a long way out. But that's what it needs to be really helpful.
well, the candidates grow literally exponentially.
I follow directly follows hundreds of people, but if we expand at people that are distant 2 hops we get to 10k-ish. 70k is 3 hops, and then you start to saturate because Nostr is still small.
keep in mind that a lot of one's follow lists are probably going to overlap a lot though, and those repetitions should logically strengthen the trust vector of the npub
Indeed, it will not work so well in situations you describe. But on the other hand you can then expand the search to "friends of friends" and so on.. then at some point it will be less relevant, but at least in theory this is how you can expand your search..
"Six degrees of separation is the idea that all people are six or fewer social connections away from each other. As a result, a chain of "friend of a friend" statements can be made to connect any two people in a maximum of six steps. It is also known as the six handshakes rule."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Six_degrees_of_separation
i had a real "nice" experience with trustpilot after some assholes running a scam to sell bitcoin miners they never send... was a lotta money into a black hole, and the way they treated me was like i was the bad man
this is the hellscape that will be KYC regulated everything
No one cares about zucco you should have picked a better person for your example
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