Stuart Bowman on Nostr: > With a Web of Trust based on follows that scarcity starts with the user's follow ...
> With a Web of Trust based on follows that scarcity starts with the user's follow list
I agree and I think that's a great way to think about it — but obv this only works for users that are already following people. The question of how to make a "general" trending feed (to show by default to non-signed-in users) seems like a different, separate thing.
A general trending feed is not 100% mandatory (like it's totally possible that you just have to start following some people to see new content, nostr will keep functioning) but I think that it could really help nostr for two reasons:
1) In the short term — faster growth. Lowering the barrier to adoption by showing people interesting stuff immediately.
2) In the long term — avoiding stagnation by not having followers be a prerequisite for visibility/virality.
I think it was George Hotz that said something like "algorithms promote class mobility", which I agree with. If you are some anon poster who is totally unknown but you have really amazing content it would be optimal to surface that content so that person can actually gain followers. Tiktok works because their algo identifies "underpriced" stuff and pushes it up. People are looking for opportunity and it seems they're willing to engage with dystopian systems to get it, so I think the realistic move is to work on a credibly non-dystopian alt version of that opportunity machine (that works even better in edge cases where you'd normally run up against censorship)
Published at
2023-10-02 21:05:37Event JSON
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"content": "\u003e With a Web of Trust based on follows that scarcity starts with the user's follow list\n\nI agree and I think that's a great way to think about it — but obv this only works for users that are already following people. The question of how to make a \"general\" trending feed (to show by default to non-signed-in users) seems like a different, separate thing.\n\nA general trending feed is not 100% mandatory (like it's totally possible that you just have to start following some people to see new content, nostr will keep functioning) but I think that it could really help nostr for two reasons:\n\n1) In the short term — faster growth. Lowering the barrier to adoption by showing people interesting stuff immediately.\n\n2) In the long term — avoiding stagnation by not having followers be a prerequisite for visibility/virality.\n\nI think it was George Hotz that said something like \"algorithms promote class mobility\", which I agree with. If you are some anon poster who is totally unknown but you have really amazing content it would be optimal to surface that content so that person can actually gain followers. Tiktok works because their algo identifies \"underpriced\" stuff and pushes it up. People are looking for opportunity and it seems they're willing to engage with dystopian systems to get it, so I think the realistic move is to work on a credibly non-dystopian alt version of that opportunity machine (that works even better in edge cases where you'd normally run up against censorship)",
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