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Are you joking? There’s huge lockin… you lose all your audience when you move


Molly White wrote this neat piece a few months ago about migrating from Substack:

https://www.citationneeded.news/substack-to-self-hosted-ghos...


https://support.substack.com/hc/en-us/articles/6314498343700...

I checked and "statistics" includes email addresses.


I think you can export all your email list any time at Substack


Well that proves substack is providing value.

It proves the platform, that offers a high concentration of high average writing quality blogposts and a reliable trusted platform (For readers), has more value for readers, than some particular writer's writing.

This whole paid-blog space didn't even exist before substack, except for a handful like stratchery. So clearly its substack/marketplace that made things possible, not the writers. So writers should examine their egos before they complain this way.

Its like the indie game devs who whine about steam, forgetting that before steam, the PC game marketplace was a nuclear wasteland dominated by piracy and MMOs.


They should definitely mine bitcoin. No transmission lines needed. Can use all of their excess power.


Possibly the worst idea for what you can do with excess power.


Most tribal governments have more respect for nature than that.


You sign messages with your key and then publish it to any relays you want. Once your message is signed, it is good to go on any relay.

You manage pubkeys you trust by signing a message with a list of pubkeys you trust, simple as that.

People can learn about what relays you are on by (again) signing a message that states which relays you are publishing to.

If all relays go down you just send your messages to any other relay.

FYI, a signed message is just a simple json object with string of content, list of tags, time, your pubkey and a signature. “Notes and other stuff”


So: You sign your message and then attach the public key and push that to a relay?

How would anyone reading that message know that this was actually signed by you and is your public key? There has to be a trusted exchange of the public key before or the relay could just spoof your message. Some messaging apps do a thing where you meet in person and scan the other persons QR code for example. Otherwise, you have to trust the relay. But as I understand it that is not the idea of it.

Again, if you sign a message with a list of pub keys, what if the relay disappears? How do you get around that problem at all without hosting your own relay?

About the relays disappearing, how will people find you on a new set of relays you choose unless they are reading from those already? Relays don't communicate with each other.

Other protocols like ActivityPub ultimately have the same problem. You have to host your own mastodon server to address these things.

I understand the signed message. But this is not P2P, the relay is the (untrusted) middleman. So how is that in any way different than just sending someone an email and signing it? Or publishing signed messages in any other place online? Is it about the convenience of very quickly being able to switch to another relay without a hassle?


Open AI assistants should really be implemented on open protocols with open payments. Nostr is a perfect protocol for that because of Zaps which can provide a strong alignment signal to the (various different) communities — not just white “western” men.


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