NOSTR & Free Speech
Maintaining our rights is not ‘easy’ and we will lose them if we remain idle. They say there is a reason the First Amendment covers speech & the Second covers our right to bear arms. These two rights are critical to maintaining all other freedoms. Our founders understood the power of decentralization when they enshrined the right for the PEOPLE to bear arms in the Bill of Rights. Free speech obviously applies to the people, but until recently we didn’t have a truly decentralized way to amplify our voices.
Legacy Media
The flaw with legacy, corporate media is that it is inherently centralized. While each individual reporter may work ‘independently’ they must get approval from editor who answer to bosses who answer to a smaller & smaller group of people. Even those who are well intentioned could see retaliation for stepping out of line and for many, especially those with family, the perceived risk is too great.
Social Media Platforms
Social media companies were initially the ‘cure’ to the legacy media. The people posting do not go through editors, they can post raw, uncensored material… right? Unfortunately, while that was the initial promise of social media it has been effectively curtailed. Mark Zuckerberg (facebook/instagram/meta) ‘promises to do better’ and openly talks about how the United States government pressured him & his employees to censor Americans, including things as trivial as memes[1]! Elon Musk bought Twitter and shared censorship details with
who published the ‘twitter files’ showing how bad that had gotten. Unfortunately, Musk for all the good he has done and in my opinion still does via X, is also censoring people [2] [3]. A reoccurring theme I have seen is larger accounts being suspended and people rallying successfully to reinstate them. There is no rally for the small random user.The best ‘centralized’ platform in terms of free speech is I believe this one,
. What gives Substack its resilience is the fact that it does not rely on advertiser dollars. Instead Substack takes (in my opinion) a fair share of any subscriber revenue generated. To be clear, I don’t really know of how Substack’s algorithm works but I haven’t seen anyone here be banned. The leadership of Substack actually faced calls to ban ‘nazis’ from the platform and refused, some popular writers abandoned the platform as a result [4]. Everyone says they are ‘for free speech’, but increasingly few stand up for speech they disapprove of. What people & platforms do when pressured is what really matters, so far, Substack is holding strong.Decentralization
In the 2A world, a centralized system would be police, decentralized would be you owning (and hopefully training with) a firearm. It is easier to simply call the police, but you are much safer if you are armed & know how to use a firearm. The difference could very well save your life. It is similar with free speech.
Legacy (corporate) media is the most centralized form of sharing information. It is easily corruptible and almost entirely captured by governments throughout the world. We see how social media platforms, while comprised of decentralized individuals are subject to a centralized control system which shape narratives & opinions. Even platforms that have thus far held strong in favor of free speech like Substack and at least to a degree X, are subject to government force. True decentralization means a system without a CEO, without a board, without advertisers, without corporate data centers & costs. To censor on a decentralized, distributed network is an extremely difficult task, there is no single point of failure.
NOSTR
“Nostr itself is just a protocol; an agreed upon procedure for passing messages around on the internet.” - NOSTR.How [5]
If, like me, hearing ‘it’s a protocol’ doesn’t clear things up for you, perhaps it will help to understand that email is a protocol. You may have seen SMTP/IMAP when setting up your email on different devices[6], these are protocols. To utilize the NOSTR protocol you utilize your choice of ‘client’ which is discussed further below. Think of how you can have an email address & access it through different apps.
Public Key & Private Key
Your public key, often referred to as ‘npub’, is how you identify yourself, it is like your username on other apps. While you can still attach a human readable ‘profile name’ on top of this it is not the same as a ‘username’ and is not how you are truly identified. After asking on the Bitcoin Veterans back channels, one of the many smart people there replied (paraphrasing a bit) ‘everything in NOSTR is an event… so updating profile information is an event that’s set up display name [etc]… the client [primal etc] looks for these events to populate your information’. Looking further into this confirms EVERYTHING is indeed an event and the client [primal etc] is ensuring that you are signing each event (with your private key) [7].
Seriously, if you are interested in this kind of stuff, go sign up at BitcoinVeterans.org (you don’t have to be a veteran), the group there is a great resource! The explanation i got above made researching this much easier!
On Primal, I can search for ‘eomar’ and see results for my profile, but if I went to another app (say Damus), I would need my npub to be able to log in etc.
Profile name:
Eomar - Diligent.news
Public Key: npub1e53z3g8c0cz84t8ca8emx2s6emehzzssxmmnqrd2pwx9m5aswn4sulhrsa
NOSTR Apps
NOSTR is not a company, it has no CEO or board. There is no single point of failure for NOSTR, there are no investors that demand ever increasing revenues. The protocol exists & people can build ‘clients’ to access it. Anyone can make an app built upon the NOSTR network. Popular ones include Primal, Damus, Amethyst etc.. Personally, I have only really used Primal, though I have heard good things about other apps.
Lightning
For some small, or exchange type transactions, the time it takes to verify a transaction with Bitcoin was seen as prohibitive. If you are buying a cup of coffee, you don’t want to have to stand around waiting for the transaction to be confirmed before heading on your way. Lightning is ‘a layer’ on top of Bitcoin. In “Choose Bitcoin” I discussed the idea of ‘layers’ (see screenshot below). With lightning Bitcoin is the ‘first layer’ or base layer, it is the thing of ‘undeniable value’, lightning is ‘layer 2’ on top of that. By operating as a ‘layer 2’ on top of Bitcoin, it is still transacting Bitcoin, but it is NOT on the core chain.
Getting Started
This is looking at using lightning on NOSTR for zaps. You don’t NEED to use lightning/zaps to use NOSTR. The protocol is free to use, integrating lightning just makes it a little better as you can instantly send a few Sats to posts you really enjoy. If you just want a lightning wallet, you could basically follow the steps in ‘option 2’ below. This ‘guide’ assumes you have signed up on Primal (or another client) and have your private/public key.
Option 1
I think the easiest way is to probably use Primal’s built in wallet, due to where I live, I cant do that. BTC_Sessions, who was also a guest on the Bitcoin Veterans X space which I frequently speak on, has a video on it.
Option 2
This is the method I ultimately went with, it was messy getting here (maybe ill add the other notes in if people are interested). I assume you signed up via Primal so you have your private/public key. You can then go to coinos.io to setup a wallet, you can sign in using your NOSTR private key here as well (cool right?). This will create a wallet so you can get ‘zaps’. Click receive (on YOUR wallet, don’t use mine unless you want to donate to me lol).
You can then find/utilize an exchange that moves your ‘on chain’ Bitcoin to Lightning. I’ve heard something like boltz.exchange works well. For any of these, please, please, make sure they are reputable so you don’t lose your bitcoin. As with anything, I recommend small amounts so if you mess up you aren’t hurt too much by it. You can then drop the invoice info from above into the text spot (as seen below) and ‘create atomic swap’. The technical aspects of all this are honestly beyond me, but following these steps was the shortest route I found (without using primal wallet - I assume) to get bitcoin on the lightning network.
Alby
Last piece of this setup is Alby or some comparable alternative. You can sign up for Alby using your email address. Once done it will ask you to sign up for Alby hub which is a paid service (again a more streamlined option, but avoidable). If you followed the steps above, you should see an option to ‘connect a wallet’ It will ask for a connection string which you can get from coinos . Once this is setup make sure you install the browser extension and set it up (I think it requires your NOSTR key) . When you go to primal you can click on the icon on your browser to open & connect the extension to the site.
notes:
this is from memory, so I might be missing something here, will update as needed
Zeus was one of the other options I tried that i generally liked, but coinos seemed simpler and integrated with Alby via NWC
Zaps
If you have your wallet and everything setup, you should now be able to zap in primal. I recommend finding a good post and start zapping, I think I zapped a fellow Bitcoin Veteran to start. Alby should pop up to confirm, you can adjust the threshold for confirmation if you find the extra click too tedious.
Content
The biggest challenge to NOSTR is not everyone is on there yet. This however is also an opportunity, if you are creating great content, people there are hungry for it. I have been making an effort to mirror relevant posts to NOSTR as an effort to ensure more people find value in it. I am admittedly still mostly on twitter despite consistently having to duck & dodge various censorship attempts either by ‘x’ itself or just nefarious actors mass reporting me.
Government attacks on speech
I started writing this back in February (I got too busy to finish it!!), since then the US government under Donald Trump has taken drastic actions to curtail free speech in the United States. Under the guise of ‘combatting anti-Semitism’ (protecting Israel), the US government has established the concept of ‘illegal ideas’. I see this as a direct path to forcing aggressive censorship by social media platforms as described above and worse, increasing legal consequences for American citizens with ‘wrong think’.
Additionally, while those platforms all require & collect identifying information, as far as I can tell, you can maintain anonymity via NOSTR as the only identifier that is required to post is your public/private key (which it provides to you). If managed correctly, it will be much harder to tie your NOSTR posts to you than your centralized social media posts.
Conclusion
The attacks on free speech come from various angles, those seeking ‘advertisers’ & those simply seeking control. NOSTR is decentralized and resistant if not immune to hostile actions by ‘authorities’. There will be no ‘heroes’ or ‘champions’ of your rights that care more than you do. We saw & continue to see how even some of the richest people in the world can be bent to the will of nefarious actors. Decentralization is key to maintaining your rights, decentralized security (firearms), decentralized speech (NOSTR) & decentralized money (Bitcoin). All of them take more work than ‘convenient’ alternatives, but all of them better protect you & your freedom.
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Choose Bitcoin
Perhaps as a sign of how unqualified (legally and otherwise) I am to give financial advice, I will lead with the following: None of this is financial advice.
American Victory
“A passionate attachment of one nation for another produces a variety of evils…And it gives ambitious, corrupted or deluded citizens (who devote themselves to the favorite nation) facility to betray or sacrifice the interests of their own country without Odium, sometimes even with popularity…”
To Save the Soul of America
“Now, it should be incandescently clear that no one who has any concern for the integrity and life of America today can ignore the present war. If America's soul becomes totally poisoned, part of the autopsy must read: Vietnam. It can never be saved so long as it destroys the deepest hopes of men the world over.” — Martin Luther King, Beyond Vietnam
Resources
http://hip-stance-neo-nazis