I finally got around to downloading #Damus, the new iOS client for the Jack Dorsey-backed Nostr protocol.
It's got some interesting ideas, but the relay servers seem to have similar scaling issues as Mastodon. I wonder how many are being run by the NSA 
Most of the content seems to be shitcoins, test messages, and thirst traps. Will be interesting if that changes.
I'm at this address if you are around: npub19jdp5svjek2vg7fj96ykytn970t5g7u788ztelxxdun7q58pvh4q8hvl47
@mattsheffield damus isn't from jack... he uses it, but it's not his.
@mmasnick Oh really? I guess I didn't check that. Let me use the handy edit button.
Have you had any compatibility issues seeing other profiles on Damus vs other ones like branle?
@mattsheffield it's buggy as hell. I don't use Damus, though, as I'm not on iOS. They briefly had a web version (which was nice!) but shut it down when they realized it was leaking private keys. I've been using various web clients... and they're all... buggy.
@mattsheffield heh. correction for your correction: nostr is not dorsey's either. He just likes it and has been promoting it, and gave the (anon) developer $300k to work on it. But it's not his.
@mmasnick Oh fun. Well I guess I can re-edit my edit.
@mmasnick Lots of bugs all around, for sure.
It's got some interesting ideas, but adoption is going to be a lot more difficult than even for Mastodon given most ppl have never heard of signing keys.
Have you seen if anyone is doing 2FA yet? Missing it kind of is a big deal to the security conscious imo.
@mattsheffield yeah. I mean, the simplicity is interesting, as there's lots of development going on, which is cool to see. But it has a very, very long way to go.
@mmasnick Yep. Right now, the most likely use cases are going to be nazis, webcams, and shitcoin scams. But the latter two are pretty common and easy to access.
I really am perplexed by the relay thing though. It's so contrary to the idea of total decentralization imo.
@mattsheffield @mmasnick I think it’s because so many modern internet users are stuck on mobile or other ISPs that are hostile to P2P protocols - plus discovery has always been hard with P2P, which is why the point of censorship for torrents were always the trackers. I think the way to do this “right” is to implement the relay level as P2P (a nice architecture would be to try and self-organize the network into an expander graph), and let users manage relay lists
@mattsheffield @mmasnick I’ve spent a while thinking about how to implement a censorship resistant social network, and even with something like IPFS as the backing data store you still run into the problem of now your users need pinning services or they have to have an always-on machine somewhere to do it themself
@mmasnick @mattsheffield (this is one additional argument in favor of using a generic backing store like IPFS)
@mattsheffield @mmasnick what’s really needed for censorship resistance is to allow broadcasting encrypted content with decryption keys discoverable via other channels (similar to a distributed Mega) so that the hosting services can’t be liable for the content, since they have no way of distinguishing it from random bits