Most people agree that Social Media is broken and that we need to find new solutions. Max DeMarco embarked on a journey to find out more about a new invention called NOSTR. This is his documentary about that journey and his interview with key players.
I’ve actually been on Nostr myself a few months (and did my own video about it). As with most alternative networks, you see who you put in your feed.
Solutions for what? Algorithmically driven “content”, made by people who don’t care about the material they’re churning out, as long as it gets them in front of eyeballs and lines their pockets?
The problem with social media, tech, and most of our other ills in society, is capitalism. Greed. MegaCorpX isn’t building a social platform so that you can have a community. They’re doing it to make money. You’re just a cog in that machine for them, but they make YOU feel like you can be the star of it, and exploit you in the process. Along with it you create parasocial relationships that make literally no one happy, a fertile platform for mobs and harassment, constant self image issues, FOMO, doomscrolling, etc. etc. Not to mention giving a platform to bigots, white supremacists, nazis, etc., and feeding those ideologies, all while pretending like you have to let them be there because of “free speech” or “town square/public commons/whatev”
Social media is a MASSIVE net negative, and the answer shouldn’t be “how do we make new ones after the old ones collapse?”, but rather “how to we move on from the idea that social media is necessary, and just let it die?”
It is not trying to solve “social media” itself. It is trying to address some of the issues that have plagued social media like being locked to a profile/identity that is actually controlled by a server owner, and problems like if a server disables you, you’ve lost your posts and have to start somewhere else again.
You’re going to get bigots, white supremacists, nazis, etc on any site anywhere (even in real life), but they are mainly a problem where algorithms insert something into your feed. Mostly on ActivityPub, AT protocol, Nostr, etc you choose who you follow and that is what you see. If anything pops up you don’t like, you can block that profile. With Nostr you block the profile globally once.
So yes there can be free speech, but likewise there must be free blocking.
The real problem with social media, is not social media, it is the problem humans. Technology can’t fix people. But technology can make your life easier by blocking what you don’t want to see.