- Note: “relay” is the nostr term while “instance” is the AP/Mastodon/Lemmy term. They are functionally very similar and offer the same abilities to ban annoying users from “public square” type spaces. Moderation works identically.
- In AP/mastodon/lemmy you are connected to one “main instance” and then connect to other instances “through” that instance. In nostr, you are typically connected to multiple relays and access content more directly.
- Nostr is an underlying protocol like AP is for Mastodon/Lemmy. The main use of nostr currently is as a twitter/mastodon clone, but it has other interfaces as well (calendaring, video sharing, etc) that I am less familiar with.
- Both networks are decentralized in nature
AP/Mastodon/Lemmy
- Instance admins on your instance and the instance of the user you are DMing can read your DMs, block them, or modify them without your knowledge or the knowledge of the receiving user
- If your instance goes down, so does your access to the wider network. It will take your DMs with it, and your identity.
Nostr
- Relays cannot read the content of your DMs as they are encrypted. They can only see that user A is DMing user B and approximate DM size. (This upgrade reduces that visibility further)
- Relays cannot manipulate DMs as they are encrypted and will fail a signature check
- No relay can prevent you from DMing another user as your client will automatically route the DM through another relay (unless that user has blocked you, which they can do).
- You can receive DMs from anybody as long as one relay lets your DM through (and you are usually connected to several)
- Your DMs and other content is replicated across multiple relays. Downed relay? No problem. You don’t lose your content or your identity as your identity is a private/public keypair not “user @ instance dot com”
Bluesky
Idk anybody care to fill this section in?
Image source: nostr post
Instances mean you’re at the mercy of the admin not to ban you. No one can ban you on Nostr.
Also, it isn’t crypto bros. It’s only Bitcoiners. No one supports the degenerate pump and dump crypto scams.
Thats exactly the problem with Nostr. You can’t get rid of the bigots. It’s doomed to become a nazi bar.
Also if you don’t like your admin on an ActivityPub instance, you can just go to an instance with admins you trust better or make your own instance.
Ok, how is that different than Nostr? Don’t like your Lemmy instance admins rolling against your Nazi views? Join a different instance. Nazi sympathetic instance gets defederated by everyone else? Make your own instance.
Nostr seems to make it much more difficult to weed out the bigots as they don’t have a single point of origin (an instance). When you get to the point of making your own instance, it becomes easy to filter out all the users from that instance in one go, if the instance turns into a nazi bar. That is the difference.
The entire purpose of Nostr is about true censorship resistance and speech autonomy. That doesn’t exist with AP. Even if you self host, others can block your instance and no one will think twice about why the server is on the list.
Nostr gives you more granular control. You can block the nazis or anyone else. There are projects in the works building the equivalent of a Fediblock if you want to take it that far.
That is by design in AP. If you self host and your instance gets blocked, that’s between you and the other instance. You can still speak all you want, the other instance is just not listening any more. You’ve been excluded from the instance that blocked you because you didn’t follow their rules. So participate in other communities and try to follow their rules and you probably won’t be excluded.
“True censorship resistance” and “speech autonomy” sounds dangerously close to “free speech absolutism” (“freeze peach”).