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I love Mastodon and ActivityPub. But I think Nostr is going to win. Here's why.

Mastodon is a great platform. I have an account there, and I have been using it as a twitter replacement for several months. I have been using nostr for around two months. I have also read fairly deeply into how Mastodon and Nostr work. I think nostr is better. Here's why.

Background:

Mastodon and Nostr offer basically the same thing: a federated/decentralized replacement to twitter. They share the same basic features: tweeting, following people, a public square w/ trending notes and hashtags moderated by instance rules, DMs.

Mastodon/Lemmy/Kbin all federate through an underlying protocol called ActivityPub. You create an account at an instance which you use to interact with these sites. Your instance can push/pull data to other instances via the AP protocol.

Nostr is an underlying protocol, like ActivityPub. The main service is hosts currently, called Nostr, is a twitter clone, but there's other stuff like a video streaming platform. They all federate with each other just like Mastodon/Lemmy/Kbin. There is no reddit clone on nostr yet, but I imagine it's only a matter of time.

Instead of "instances", nostr has "relays". The app or site you connect to nostr through will usually connect to multiple relays (just like your mastodon instance will connect to multiple other instances). Relays, like instances, have their own moderation policies and can choose what kind of content they allow.

Here's why I think nostr simply works better:

  • In mastodon your identity is tied to your instance, in nostr it's not. If your instance decides to close up? You have to make a new account somewhere else. You lose all your followers, the list of who you follow, your tweets, your DMs, etc. This sucks. This happened to me early in my mastodon experience. It was annoying, but it would be way more annoying if I had spent five years building up that account.
  • In mastodon, your instance can stop you from seeing content from other instances and ban users from other instances. It can stop you from following them or being followed by them. While this moderation might be nice sometimes, I'd rather it be opt-in than mandatory. Nostr relays don't have this power. Nostr doesn't allow this because you are usually connected to multiple relays. While a single relay can do this (as each relay sets its own policies), as long as one relay you are connected to lets the data flow, you are good to go.
  • In mastodon, admins can read your DMs. If you DM somebody on another instance, that's two instances that can read your DMs, and so can anybody who breaks into their server. In nostr, all DMs are encrypted by default and can only be read by the intended recipient.
  • If mastodon and fediverse's goals are to create a P2P or federated network of instances, having users tied to instances is not good. It incentivizes users to pick bigger, more stable instances which will lead to centralization over time.

A question of funding

One question that fediverse needs to solve is: how are we going to fund hosting costs for instances and more broadly, development?

There are many valid options such as: ads on instances, selling "badges" or awards like reddit, subscriptions for extra features, etc. What is not a sustainable plan, imo, is just hoping users donate enough to keep things afloat. Open source and free software projects have a long history of being underfunded leading to them closing up shop or not reaching their full potential. Nostr at least has a potential answer for this, while AP/fedi don't really seem to yet.

Nostr has an optional built-in tipping functionality where you can leave tips for users whose content you like. You can tip a fraction of a penny or $100. And users can tip you. This has a few effects. For one, it incentivizes people to use nostr. Non-profit orgs, for example, can use it to fundraise.

Secondly, it provides a sustainable funding mechanisms for relays and development. When you make a tip, it goes through your "tip pool" and you can select people or entities to give a % of every tip to. So, for example, you can leave a 10c tip on a tweet and 1c automatically goes to the relay operator.

Where Mastodon/AP is better:

  • Mastodon has more people I want to follow. There is a greater user base and diversity.
  • Mastodon has a more consistent interface. Pretty much every mastodon site looks the same. Nostr has a dizzying array of apps and web portals. That's great for user choice, not great for user onboarding.
  • While nostr relays in theory can filter content and cultivate public squares with specific sets of values, I've found in practice this hasn't been done as much, most relays seem the same. I think in time as the user base grows this will happen organically, there's just little reason to separate them out now.
  • Password recovery/account loss. With nostr, your identity is a private key generated by your client. This means your identity isn't tied to an instance (yay!). But, if you lose the private key, you lose your identity and have to make a new one. Likewise, if somebody steals your key, they can post as you. And there is no real password recovery functionality since nobody else has your password. There are good technical solutions for this like social account recovery and key revocation certificates but they aren't currently implemented. I imagine they will be with time.
  • Mastodon/Lemmy/Kbin/etc can all talk to each other through ActivityPub. While Nostr's underlying protocol supports this kind of federation, the twitter clone is the main platform with users on it and it doesn't have a reddit clone etc.
  • The AP username format of username@website.com is much better than nostrs long public keys. There are some nostr protocol proposals to make this better, some of which are out there and working, but it's not really standardized yet.

Adding an edit about moderation since there is a lot of confusion about this:

Moderation abilities in AP and Nostr from an admin perspective are identical.

  • As a relay operator in nostr, you choose what kind of content your relay accepts. You can block users, filter content based on keywords, de-federate from other instances with weak moderation policies, etc. Same as being an instance admin on AP.
  • As a user, you can choose relays which provide you with a good "public square" experience free of bigots, NSFW, or other content you don't want to see. It's your choice, same as AP. Most users are connected to multiple relays. You can connect to only one in if you want.

The key difference in moderation is that in AP if your instance blocks a user or relay, it is blocked for all their users globally. This means you as a user can't keep following or DMing somebody whose username or relay has been blocked unless you make a new account on a different instance and check it separately. On nostr, as a user, this is not a problem. If you disagree with that moderation decision you just add a different relay to your list, as long one relay in your list of relays connects to that user, the data will flow and you will get to see it. It will remain blocked on the relay which blocked them and for users connected to it (if they are only connected to that relay, or if all their other relays also block that user/defederate from that instance).

It's the best of both worlds: relay operators can set their own moderation policies and vibes and choose which other relays they federate with, users have the freedom to use multiple relays to access the content they want and the freedom to choose which relays they use based on what kind of content they allow.

53 comments

  • In mastodon, your instance can stop you from seeing content from other instances and ban users from other instances. While this moderation might be nice sometimes, I’d rather it be opt-in than mandatory. Nostr relays don’t have this power. Likewise, Mastodon instances can stop their followers from following you. Nostr doesn’t allow this.

    This is exactly why I won't use Nostr. What you're describing here isn't ideal for many folk that are part of marginalised groups. When each individual has to individually block every bigot only after being exposed to their bigotry, then the vulnerable folk don't hang around. This is doubly the case when there is nothing stopping the bigots from just creating another account after burning their first one.

    One question that fediverse needs to solve is: how are we going to fund hosting costs for instances and more broadly, development?

    This is also something that activitypub communities do better, because they are communities not relays.

    • This is exactly why I won’t use Nostr. What you’re describing here isn’t ideal for many folk that are part of marginalised groups. When each individual has to individually block every bigot only after being exposed to their bigotry, then the vulnerable folk don’t hang around. This is doubly the case when there is nothing stopping the bigots from just creating another account after burning their first one.

      In Nostr, each relay can set its own policies. Relays can and do establish policies for acceptable behaviours. If you want a strict content policy, connect to relays with strict policies. You won't have to individually block any users or relays/instances. This is essentially the same as mastodon. The difference with nostr is that you normally connect to multiple relays, so a single relay, where your identity is tied to, cannot block you from following who you want and seeing whatever content you choose. Let's say Relay A blocks a user you want to follow. No problem, you are connected to relay B and C that don't. And, of course, if for some reason you only want to connect to a single relay, you can.

      This is also something that activitypub communities do better, because they are communities not relays.

      "Hope our commmunity of users donate" didn't work out well for the previous iteration of P2P discussion spaces: forums. The fact is, hosting online discussion forums gets costly quickly, especially if you want them to be reliable. Hell, even IRC servers which serve only text can get expensive to host. I'm not saying there's no way to convince users to donate to valuable instances, just saying that as a general strategy for FOSS it hasn't worked particularly well.

      • In Nostr, each relay can set its own policies. Relays can and do establish policies for acceptable behaviours.

        Sure, but it's still each relay admin playing whack a mole with bigots as they pop up with new accounts.

        On AP, because identities are tied to instances, the instance admin can kick the bigot and they're gone for everyone, before many folk ever see it. And if there is an instance with admins that don't deal with bigots, the admins can defederate from the entire instance.

        Nostr doesn't give you any of those options. An instance is just a generic relay. No community, no differentiation, no protection for vulnerable folk. Which is fine if your goal is "free speech" but not so good if you're a member of a vulnerable minority just trying to connect with people/communities without having to be super on guard.

        I left twitter to get away from an environment like that. I'm not going to head back to a federated version of the same thing

        The fact is, hosting online discussion forums gets costly quickly, especially if you want them to be reliable.

        Absolutely. I admin several AP instances, including the one I'm posting from now. We have crowd funding to help, but we are still out of pocket running it, but that's fine, because the reason we run it is for the whole community aspect I've been talking about.

        I have zero interest in paying out of pocket to run a generic relay that will probably end up being used by the very people I'm trying to avoid.

  • This assumes platforms win based on technical details, which they don't. Mastodon will probably 'win' (whatever that means) because of network effects and general culture.

    Nostr has an optional built-in tipping functionality where you can leave tips for users whose content you like. You can tip a fraction of a penny or $100. And users can tip you. This has a few effects. For one, it incentivizes people to use nostr. Non-profit orgs, for example, can use it to fundraise.

    But user have to be technically minded enough, and willing, to set up a crypto wallet to do this.

    In mastodon, admins can read your DMs. If you DM somebody on another instance, that’s two instances that can read your DMs, and so can anybody who breaks into their server. In nostr, all DMs are encrypted by default and can only be read by the intended recipient.

    E2E encryption is possible with AP. Besides, if what you're talking about needs to be unreadable to third parties, you should probably use something like Matrix or Signal, especially considering how bad Mastodon's DMs actually are.

  • Interesting points, just one thing I recently thought about: eMule vs Torrents. Torrents requires trackers and websites to host torrent files. eMule was rather fully decentralized from the start and you only needed the hash key. In actual performance there wasn't a fundamental reason why one or the other would be better. But Torrents won by a large margin, and I believe it's because it needed websites and trackers and created "hubs" that could fund themselves from ads.

    This could similarly apply to the fediverse.

    You might also underestimate how much moderation and how many malicious or fascists actors are under way. It could easily become a cesspool.

    Encrypted DMs could be added later.

    But I definitely think there need to be better tools for migrating your content. Or migrating a complete community including all posts from one instance to another (like a rolling journaling backup that you can do daily, and if your instance just disappears you can just copy it)

    • Torrents won because of search. Each torrent site maintained an index of torrents and you could search that index. Nobody could pollute the index with nonsense entries because the index was curated by the site admins.

      There was no good way to search ed2k or gnutella or the other P2P systems. There were many independent indexes (hosted by nodes) like Torrents, but they were not curated by any trusted custodian. Anybody could publish an index, and your client would fetch all nearby indexes and search through it. These indexes, because they were not curated by trusted custodians, and because there was no cost to publishing a list with a bunch of nonsense in it, lead to a terrible spam-filled search experience.

      Federation is great when you have multiple repositories of information and users choose which repository they prefer. That's what Torrent search sites did. If you need a single repository that is in sync for all users and is curated in a P2P manner and you can't trust all participants of that system to be "good actors", that is where you need a system like blockchain, there is no other decentralized way to solve that problem.

      I wrote a lengthier post about federation vs blockchain as data storage and reputation mechanisms if you are interested https://lemmy.ml/comment/8051480

  • bluesky has a much better chance nostr which most people don't even know about

    • Yeh, it's all the network effect. Where people go will, generally be where they continue to go.

      That's why threads was dangerous (and may still be) to and more grassroots federated options

  • Here's why I think activitypub is probably better.

    Having multiple instances, hundreds or even thousands, spreads the load of the network. Smaller instances can curate the communities they want to subscribe to in order to limit traffic and storage. Communities can be hosted across the network too to reduce load on single instances.

    This means that when things are done well, we could produce and serve reddit/twitter levels of content and availability on hobbyist level hosting options spread across the world.

    • Nostr does all that too.

      • But then what is a relay? See if a relay doesn't hold an account and cannot ban/moderate directly content they serve then what's exactly happening?

        I also wonder if it's a bit of a legal minefield. See I'm running mbin here. I get content from many other mbin/kbin/lemmy instances. Usually they have pretty good moderation and content is removed on my instance too. But, if someone raises a legal complaint with me directly, I'm required to act on that and moderate on my own instance. Which I can do. It seems like you're suggesting that's not directly possible with nostr? So if the main instance chooses to allow it, then it's tough luck for me, I am required to host it?

53 comments