A Geminaut's View of Nostr
2026-05-20
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In the mid-2010s, I was quite active on several social media sites: Facebook, Reddit, Tumblr, Twitter, and so on. I began leaving them in 2017, and by 2021, I'd closed nearly every social media account I had. My focus turned to the small Web, such that in 2026, the majority of my general Internet browsing (not including YouTube and direct-messaging systems) happens in Geminispace.
At the least, however, I'm still interested in the concept of social networking platforms and protocols. I haven't joined the Fediverse, but I sometimes scroll Mastodon for tech news and information. GNU Social intrigues me, as does Secure Scuttlebutt, AT, and Diaspora. So this week, I decided to give one such decentralized protocol a try: Nostr.^
I've heard about Nostr for quite a while. It enjoyed significant popularity within cryptocurrency circles, but it currently seems to be steadily expanding to a larger audience. There's even a Nostr subspace on BBS.^^ The protocol has a straightforward architecture: clients create posts of various kinds, sign them with private keys, push those posts to relays, and the relays propagate the posts as far as possible. I love such simplicity, and I wanted to learn more about it.
Last week I downloaded two Nostr clients for Android: Zemzeme and Amethyst.
Zemzeme is not a general Nostr client but a messaging tool that uses the Nostr protocol to send encrypted messages to other users. It also uses Bluetooth, direct WiFi, and libp2p for message transport. My main point of comparison for Zemzeme is Briar, which I don't use regularly but keep installed on my smartphones in case of a natural disaster or other emergency. Zemzeme works well and is highly polished, making the user experience arguably better than Briar. However, the app requires location permissions and location must be turned on the entire time the app is in use, mostly in order to find peers that are geographically close to the user. If push notifications are disabled, then the user must keep location on all the time. This is an automatic deal-breaker for me: unless I'm actively using location services, such as with OSMAnd, I keep location turned off at all times, and I very rarely grant permission for apps to access it.
Amethyst much more closely resembles a full social media app. One can follow other Nostr users, join group chats, browse media in an infinite-scrolling feed, watch live streams, and even download "feed algorithms" that allow users to self-curate what kind of content they want to see. In terms of content, Nostr almost feels like a drop-in replacement for Twitter or Facebook to me. The power of decentralization and user-controlled discovery, though, means that I have much more control over what I see on my feeds and how.
I'm frankly surprised at how powerful Amethyst is and how vibrant Nostr as a protocol seems to be. I could definitely keep myself engaged with the communities there for as long as I wanted--or so I thought. Almost immediately after joining, I started to feel overwhelmed with the amount of content I was seeing. It turns out that my time away from social media, and specifically my time on the small Web, has changed my perception more than I realized.
Gemini is an entirely text-based protocol: all clients render Gemtext and plain text, but most require the user to download any other file type and view it separately. While streaming exists in Gemini, I don't tend to use it. The capsule-driven culture of Gemini means that most of the writings I come across are long-form essays or journals. Gemini asks for greater attention and thoughtfulness than modern social media, because Geminauts give it greater attention and thoughtfulness. I'm invited to reflect and ponder on the things I read--not just take them as-is, feel some quick disposable emotion, then move on to the next item the feed grabbed for me.
Amethyst, by contrast, gave me a sense of whiplash. Like most microblogging services, posts tend to be short, often just a single sentence. Most contain no real point or source of discussion; they're simply random thoughts that are blurted out into the void. I see a substantial amount of AI content in long-form notes, though it doesn't seem to be the majority. Media feeds are a bottomless pit of mindless scrolling, and my brain clearly isn't used to it, as switching context from one video to another quickly wore me down mentally. It's all too much, too fast, too scatterbrained, and too shallow.
Of course, all social media is like that these days. That's a large part of the reason why I've never returned to social media. I see it in my wife: she has a habit of scrolling Instagram while she relaxes, including at bedtime. Sometimes I look over her shoulder as she flicks through videos and pictures every few seconds, music constantly changing, different voices talking about different topics above different text in rapid succession. I know her brain is working hard to keep up with visual and audial information changing that quickly, because my brain works hard to keep up too, and it soon overstimulates me. It's small wonder that she often has trouble falling asleep afterward.
Nostr is a wonderfully robust communication system, and I do intend to use it. I want to ensure, however, that I don't fall for the same addiction patterns that kept me on other social media platforms for years. Fortunately, the fact that I find it so tiring means that I'm probably less likely to do so. Only time will tell how much utility I actually get out of the protocol. I'm glad it's so heavily decentralized: if I choose not to participate, I simply don't, and I retain my identity and keys regardless. That's the power of distributed systems.
For the foreseeable future, Gemini will continue to be my home. Geminispace is quiet, slow, and deliberate--and that's what makes it such a idyllic refuge for me. I hope it stays that way; Nostr certainly isn't.
^ GitHub - nostr-protocol/nostr (HTTPS)
^^ s/Nostr
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[Last updated: 2026-05-20]