Nos is an iOS application built upon the Nostr protocol. Unlike Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, YouTube et al which are built on platforms, the Nostr protocol allows users to interact with numerous different applications, instead of a single application. It is similar to the smtp protocol for email which allows one person to have a Gmail account and their friend to have an Outlook account and another friend to have a Proton account. Everyone can send and receive messages amongst one another because of the underlying SMTP protocol. Think of Nostr as the underlying social protocol.
Why is Nostr better than platform social media?
Nostr is an acronym that stands for “notes and other stuff transmitted via relays”. It borrows architecture from a couple of different types of technology with the underlying goal of putting the user in charge of their identity, their feed, their moderation.
What this means in practice is that when a Nostr user signs up for an account and starts following people and people start following them, they can use that account to log into any other Nostr application. So if a user creates an account on Nos, they can use that same account to log into zap.stream if they want to stream content or support streamers. When you log in all of the people you follow and who follow you will also be present in zap.stream. In practice, it means accounts are truly portable.
Unlike platform social media where information is stored on a single server, Nostr has a relay-based architecture that posts content to multiple servers including account information like followers and who a person follows. If one server goes offline, the account information is still available on the other relays.
Nos and most other Nostr apps today allow users to create their own feeds, there is no underlying algorithm showing the most popular content or most engaging content above the content of your friends. Some apps also have trending feeds, but those feeds are not the default when you open the app.
In addition to curating your own feed, Nostr allows users to moderate the content they see in their feed. Nos and few other apps support user-led moderation. Users can follow bots that will tag or label commonly accepted offensive content. In addition users can label posts or replies that are harassing or spammy or NSFW (not safe for work). People who follow users who label content will also see those labels. In all instances, the content receives an overlay with a label. All users can still choose to view the labeled content. Lastly users also have the option to mute users and their content from appearing in feeds.
Today on social media platforms like YouTube, Instagram, and TikTok an algorithm is determining what you should see based on the needs of the business, not on what you would like to view. In addition, when content moderation questions arise - it is the corporation making the decision about the types of content you can see rather than you.
The Nostr protocol supports multiple types of content as well as apps for viewing and interacting with that content. Users can post microblogs, links, images, videos, stream, podcast, mp4s, live chat and long form (blogs) across over 50 different apps. When a user is live streaming on zap.stream you can open Nos and watch the stream for example.
The combination of these elements puts you as the user in control of your experience leading to healthier social interactions and habits.
But what about the other protocol based social media?
ActivityPub which is the protocol underlying Mastodon and many other Fediverse apps, has a few challenges including:
- Identities are tied to a server, so if you want to create a Mastodon account and also a Peertube account you have to create two separate accounts similar to what you would do today if you created an Xwitter account and Youtube account.
- There are thousands of ActivityPub servers each with its own community (which is great), but if the moderators of that community make a decision to block federation with another community you will not be able to see the other community’s posts. In other words there is still centralized moderation, just on a smaller scale.
- Today ActivityPub apps have a hard time supporting different content types - most only support micro-blog formats like Tweets. There is also a challenge seeing all of the types of content you want to see in a single place.
AT Protocol which underlies Bluesky
- The main limitation today is that it is hard for other open source developers to build on this protocol.
- This means that all of the functionality is tied to the BlueSky app and what they release.
Nostr has the technology, but the other protocols have larger networks
Nostr, ActivityPub and the AT Protocol make up the foundation of the social web, an interoperable space for sharing and interacting with content between the three protocols. Today, tools like Bridgey Fed make it possible for Nostr users to follow people on both ActivityPub and AT protocol apps like Mastodon and Bluesky respectively. In Nos and other clients you can view the posts and reply to them.
