Why You’re Not Hearing About Nostr Though You Should Be

You’re not hearing about Nostr because it’s not big and sexy like Bluesky, which has become a veritable pit of one-sided groupthink. (I don’t need to tell you which side, and if you’d like to know my bias in order to read further and judge me, I prefer neither side, and like many, seek a sane middle only to not find one).

You’re not hearing about Nostr because freedom of choice, lack of censorship, and independence aren’t sexy, fun, or exciting. Apparently, and we all hate to admit it, likes, follows and somehow obtaining a hollow and fictitious “American dream” through influencing are still trendy. In fact, I’d wager to say these values of freedom, independence, and choices have been forgotten about by the majority.

You’re not hearing about Nostr because it’s a geeky protocol, discovered and cared for by open source developers who see its many use cases for the world. Now, we’ve awakened in small FOSS droves to help you take back your power, your agency, your attention span, your audience, and your control.

We’re gifting you freedom of speech on a platter and you’re not even aware of it yet.

We figured out long ago the system was stacked against us and we weren’t going to get it to change, so we are making our own lane to benefit everyone. We’re up all night rebuilding the Internet and the only reason you haven’t heard about it is because VC investors and “The Media” have not been given reason to care. We are simply doing the right thing for the sake of doing the right thing. There will be no riches, no trophies. The revolution will not be televised, as Gil Scott Heron warned us decades ago.

Nostr is The Thing You Don’t Yet Know You Need

But it will be there, strong and robust, when that day comes.

Nostr has no marketing department.

There’s no one to weed out the nerd speak. There are legions of passionate users who are happy to “purple pill” one friend at a time. We speak in strings of excited slogans that include phrases like social graph, Nostr identity, npub, sovereignty, key pairs, freedom, independence, zaps, relays, and the like.

However, the general public is still calibrated to social network, account, login, algorithm, and self-censoring with phrases like “unalived.” They may not be aware their favored tech is centralized, nor how it hurts them daily.

How do we make the public excited that we have the solution to their problem that they are unaware of?

What Nostr Has Done to Change My Life for the Better

In two years of being on Nostr, my life has drastically gotten better. There were other variables, of course, like moving back to Phoenix, Arizona. That’s where I immediately found my very small tribe of Nostr faithful. This is the first way Nostr changed my life—it helped me find my tribe.

Nostr PHX members care about the values Nostr restores. Having these friends in my life has balanced me in a world that only wants to create more friction. This small group of world changers is behind Culture Shock 2024, Wavlake, the Plebchain Radio podcast, the Radio Detox podcast, and more software development in the space than I should name.

Our extended members outside the city are responsible for even more—Tunestr, FanFares, Shopstr, and many more. Life changes when you hang amongst those passionately fulfilling their purpose to change the world. Our pace is slow but the ideas are massive.

There’s nothing you can buy, no course, no book, and not a single coach on this planet that can ever come close to having the right people in your life.

Nostr has taught me to be the change more than anything previously. It has taught me that innovation is within reach. In finding my purpose, Nostr helped me rechart the course of my life. My journey is from a mere media veteran working in B2B social media marketing to now, a person working to change social media (and more) for good. By ‘for good,’ I mean changing for the good as much as I mean changing for permanence.

Getting My Attention Span Back Didn’t Happen Overnight, But it Did Happen

You’re trying to thrive and focus in a society that is built to steal your attention away at every turn. From emotion-triggering ads to clickbait in “news” and social media, your attention is going full lizard brain. We’re not meant to react to visual information on a screen as though a tiger is chasing us. But Big Tech™, Big Media™, and Big Advertising™ are banking on this. It’s how they hook and control you.

Nostr lets you opt out.

I’ve gradually opted out of having legacy social media apps on my phone. I’ve worked to make my social media consumption more conscious. In doing so, I came to realize scrolling Meta’s products like Facebook and Instagram made me the product. On top of that, I realized I was no longer aware of the updates in the lives of friends and family. I began texting them instead, just to make a conscious effort to keep in touch. This made me realize how I’d done this less over the years and how much less it had been done to me.

I thought of how my grandmothers religiously wrote letters to friends and family, doing the work to keep in touch way back when all we had was pen, paper, envelopes, and stamps. Today, I have more ways to keep in touch than ever, so why was I feeling like my human connections were so far apart?

Legacy social media platforms are doing more to divide us than connect us.

They’re doing more to fracture our focus while moving us more quickly to one-click purchases. They feed on our insecurities while making us feel increasing connection to strangers and “influencers” who will sell us something over creating connection within our own local communities.

We all loved Meetup until it began charging $30/month, for example. We all loved Telegram until we realized we had no privacy there and that the company would not hesitate to throw our chats under the bus. The Twitter purge. The rise of short-form video with more people consuming it than creating it means the majority of society isn’t being reflected by this bite-sized pieces of content. The ideas of only a small few are getting out—bolstered by company-controlled algorithms. Those companies are bolstered by the state control of “We have to or else!” It even happened with Disney and Jimmy Kimmel.

We have reached an age where you will not be able to see what you want to or should be able to unless you are driving what you consume. If you are not in control, you are being controlled.

Nostr Solves Many Problems

Nostr solves this centralization problem on every layer already and it will only get better.

It solves the social media problem.

It solves the media problems pertaining to journalism, news, podcasting, music, and entertainment.

Nostr solves Ticketmaster and Spotify.

Nostr solves the problems you have with your medical record.

Nostr solves the problem of Big Tech™ social media that wants to charge you to earn on its platforms and force you into giving up your identity in order to use them.

Nostr solves invasion of privacy.

Nostr solves ownership of your data, letting you slide between apps seamlessly and effortlessly instead of locking you in.

Zapvertising on Nostr solves marketing and advertising problems.

Nostr solves algorithms.

Nostr solves your inability to grow an audience and earn from your content.

I could write volumes about each sentence in the above paragraph. You just tell me which one you want first. I’m @heatherlarson aka “MAKE SONGS LONGER” on Nostr and I’m happy to help.

Change is Here.

I’m here to tell you the answer is here and with AI-assisted development, we are shipping Nostr apps to market faster than ever. You may not yet comprehend how badly you need it, but it’s here. Nostr is changing lives worldwide—helping creators find an audience, get paid directly for their work, and foster connections Big Tech™ has squelched for years.

Nostr is helping people organize protests against tyrannical governments who censor their internet connections. Did you know Bitchat has Nostr tech on board?

Nostr is helping us help indie musicians make a living.

Nostr is helping me teach yoga online. It’s helping other teachers to teach languages.

If you’re tired of shadow bans, Facebook jail, getting canceled, getting verified, and paying to get engagement or monetization—Nostr is here for you. If you want to build open source apps and join a vibrant developer community, Nostr is here for you. If you want a way to create an e-commerce business but are unbanked, Nostr is for you.

It’s there waiting for you. Already solving problems you didn’t know you had. It may even change your life, overthrow a government, or bring you your next favorite song.