I've started using the Nostr, Twitter like, app Amethyst because my personal phone is a Google Pixel (which, if you're being judgemental, I got for three reasons - one, lack of wankware because it's pretty much just Android, two, the camera is reasonable/has an option for DNG files, three, security/performance updates. Apple are great. They, like most phone manufacturers, in my opinion, have ludicrous storage pricing - because muggles equate storage price with overall cost, when it's a small percentage of the price of a phone, and reliance on very proprietary protocols. They do things people would have been spitting feathers about if they were Microsoft in 1996. The Pixel is not the fastest. Neither is my laptop. It's not about speed. I'm typing this on a good but old laptop using ed because it's less boring). Other clients are available, web based, iOS, and others will no doubt follow because like POP and SMTP it's an open standard. The world wide web rapidly expanded because of open standards. There can be different software doing things differently with the same stuff. Like email or a browser. Or this text file. I could leap forwards two or three decades and use the much worse Notepad in Windows.

New things, even when they turn out to be very cool things indeed, often don't have many attendees because people don't know they're good yet. By the time lots of people are there it's already happened. It doesn't mean that it's bad, in fact it may be better, just that one gets to see something from its inception and therefore know it a bit more. Basically the same argument against only listening to established acts or bands. I've seen a fair number of bands that turned out to be big culturally or in terms of financial success by taking a chance. Plus it was cheaper. Price played a part. Often, I didn't know anyone there, and people I invited may have been disappointed if it wasn't to their taste. An empty dance floor does not promote dancing. A new social network is exactly like that. Well, not exactly like that, somewhat analogously like that. It hasn't got a sizeable coterie of heavy metal enthusiasts turning up at a hardcore techno rave with bottles of white lightning cider. It has, however, got me turning up and I'm not as interested in crypto currencies as many of the people there.

Don't misunderstand me: I've got a basic understanding of how public key encryption works, and, while sceptical, a very rudimentary understanding of cryptocurrencies, but that's not my primary reason for joining a social network. My primary reason is interesting people and organisations saying interesting things. My immediate follows are Jack Dorsey, Twitter co-founder, because he has interesting, informed, things to say about social media, the creator of the Amethyst app, Vitor Pamplona - because he created the app I'm using - which I could change without losing anything, like the early days of Twitter, and the Iris app because I use that. I'm not saying 'crypto' - I hate the term because cryptography is bigger than that, I recommend The Codebreakers - The Story of Secret Writing by David Khan, Security Engineering by Ross J Anderson, and The Code Book by Simon Singh, to begin scratching the surface (if non-technical and stretched for time The Code Book is very approachable). It's like saying carbon when you mean greenhouse gasses, not carbon based lifeforms or pencils. Sometimes people can be annoying.

Over the time I'll add more people or things. I like recommendations and you don't have to be into the byproducts of computer cryptography, or have any knowledge about it at all, to use Nostr. There is a video, several aspects of which I question or disagree with, but some of it I do agree with:

Social Media is broken. Can we fix it?

I don't wholly agree with anything. Even myself. And some bands are arse or arseholes.

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