So, so much decentralized tech never gets adoption due to a lack of an identity management layer that nobody wants to build because it can’t be perfectly decentralized and have the account recovery features that 99% of regular folks need. This is an example where perfect is the enemy, nemesis even, of good.
Someone should build an identity system that is optionally centralized or federated (if you like your key custody, you can keep it), migrateable and that ONLY handles identity. That will still be orders of magnitude better than relying on Google, Twitter and friends, simply because there won’t be a glaring conflict of interest of platform rent-seeking.
Moreover, anyone who wants to build decentralized/federated apps don’t have to reinvent the wheel poorly. It’s so sad to see project after project fading into the ether because people can’t fucking sign in in a reasonable way.
At least with crypto currency, there’s a somewhat strong argument for individual key custody, but I’m not talking about protecting $20M while on the run from the feds, I’m talking about afternoon shitposting with friends and strangers.
Ahaha.. is this a serious post? I'll take the bait.
If you want to shitpost with friends and strangers than exists no realistic purpose for identity management since the main goal is to remain anonymous and true anonymity comes by default on nostr.
In case you do want to protect your identity in that case protect your keys. In case you missed the last few months, there are browser extensions that do not grant access to private keys, similar to metamask and other crypto wallets.
All of that are battle-proven technologies with several years of practice and success in keeping private keys private. You should know that, the question is why don't you know that, or more frankly why won't you know that.
I think you’re misunderstanding my point. I’m not saying key custody is infeasible. I’m saying current solutions aren’t working for average people, ie non-techies who don’t even know what a private key is. Do you disagree with this?
If you agree with this premise, that also rules out browser extensions as a universal solution because most users are on mobile. They also have multiple devices and somewhat frequently forget their credentials. Nostr is amazing and if you read my history I have only good things to say about it. But that doesn’t mean that the UX works for everyone, and I simply argue that key custody is a recurring issue in practice.
(Btw, by shitpost, I mean any random discussion such as the ones here on HN or Reddit. Not 4chan.)
Please notice that the large majority of metamask users are complete non-techies. The rules of this mechanism are explained since the beginning: keep your keys somewhere safe and this hasn't been an issue since years now.
I'm sure you can agree that having someone above users with access to their private keys is a serious failure point to user privacy. Exactly the reason why nostr remains strongly out of reach when compared to government controlled media.
How does nostr handle determined activists with establishment backing? What if a nostr user posts information an activist wants censored and the activist goes around threatening relays, their hosting providers, anyone connected to people operating the relay?
There is a quintessential feature that differs nostr from any other social network in the past decades: Your private key proves that you wrote a specific text.
Assuming the scenario where a user is basically chased away from major western relays, he can still continue writing new texts with his private key. As long as some relay located somewhere (e.g. China, Panama, Moon, ..) accepts his texts, then others will still be able to read and know it was from that specific person.
There are other ways to censor a person/nostr: 1) Block the whole traffic related to nostr relays at provider level inside a country. 2) Make illegal to use nostr since it is "unregulated communication media". 3) spam the network with hideous/horrible content, and then market the protocal as "darknet" only used by criminals or mentally ill people.
Any of these tactics are used often. The thing about nostr is that texts don't live just on relays and anyone can easily archive them. This means that history by specific users can be kept and safeguarded for the future. That is mostly the reason why I like it so much. We only know detailed history thanks to the records that survived until our days. Any closed platform eventually closes down their data (e.g. reddit, stackoverflow, twitter, etc) but in practice this is the same as denying access to our collective online history. Nostr will survive woketivism or any other *isms.
