My concern with Primal is that it could end up being too much like just another Twitter in too many ways.
Improvements over Twitter: our identities are cryptographic key pairs that are not controlled by primal, and the notes are stored on relays that are not controlled by primal.
Same as the old Twitter: monetization by advertisements. Which means primal is going to end up building algos that reward people with high follower counts, at the expense of everyone else.
Wait a second - did I say “end up?” They’re already doing it. Screw that, I say.
https://prettygoodproject.substack.com/p/the-pretty-good-way-to-calculate
i don't think that's their concern
that's their aim
Precisely
I don’t think we’ll have a truly decentralized web until our digital tools are themselves managed by our web of trust, rather than by digital stewards like primal or standards committees or repository managers.
Spoken languages are truly decentralized. Who decided the string of syllables we use in English for pencil? No one. Everyone. The question itself is kinda silly.
We need to respond the same way to the question: who decided the json schema we all use for a nostr note? Currently the answer is: fiatjaf. I look forward to the day when the answer is: what a silly question. No one is in charge.
Don’t forget about their caching service. Seems pretty optimal for the inclusion of advertising.
Yup. I can’t help wondering how long it will be before they make a list of “approved” relays. Which will get whittled down to a handful of relays, all controlled by primal.
Probably not too far off.
How many people in the nostr community see this coming and appreciate its significance, I wonder?
I believe this is apparent to most people here now, because we are early adopters and are familiar with the underlying structures/tech.
However, I believe the next big wave will be completely unaware and will simply use the default settings and default relays etc run by the most “influential” clients.
I really think that corporations, news agencies, and governments will not use nostr until they can completely control their narratives, which will mean complete control of their relays and whitelists of npubs that have write permissions to their relays.
They will want to maintain control of the digital stewards. Which is why we must put stewardship of our digital tools of communication into the hands of our WoT.
Fix the language, fix the world.
I think they will have their relays and we will have ours. I think the key will lay in our ability to educate people about how their “freedom of speech” is not really free. I don’t know if we will be able to do it, but it’s worth a try.
I would love everyone in the world to become passionate about freedom of speech, but we cannot assume that will ever happen. We need to build tools that people will use bc they work, not bc they align with a worldview.
Example: Peter schiff hates btc ideologically but has accepted it on his website for years bc it works. That sort of thing.
Agreed!
Web of trust will do that by doing a better job of curating content than anything that currently exists. Most users won’t care about the underlying ideology. They’ll use it bc it works.
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