Nostr for future generations

You may remember a documentary on Netflix that discussed the negative effects of social media - Social Dilemma. It sparked many discussions in various circles, but nothing came of it.

Well, today I want to talk about making social media healthier, if not for ourselves, but for our kids.

We have a once in a lifetime opportunity with Nostr to reshape social media clients from scratch. Let us not blindly copy existing social media behavior. After all, the definition of stupidity is doing the same thing and expecting different results. Let’s not be stupid and make social media just as, if not more addicting than before.

The big TLDR; is that social media addictive mechanisms harm self image in kids. At the time where they should be building confidence, the mechanics of social media make them feel insecure. I can only imagine the downstream effects into adulthood, but on society level it can’t be good.

Some organizations even exist to supposedly move this subject forward, but after reviewing their content, I see nothing substantial put forward. One such organization “Center for Human Technology” seems to say the right things but puts no effort into offering any actual solutions.

Let’s brainstorm some actual things we can do to limit social media addictiveness, reduce social influence and manipulation.

Boost self-esteem

Vanity metrics can play a positive role but the wrong kind of metric is more harmful than not. Follower count immediately comes to mind. You see people obsessing with their follower count, and even those not realizing they are obsessed are constantly comparing themselves to one another. You are probably one of those people. If you don’t believe me, go ahead and close down your account right now, and create a fresh one to start over. I’ll wait.

Still here? I thought so. Short of constantly deleting our accounts, we can do something else - not showing a follower metric at all.

Remove followers metrics

As drastic as this sounds, removing followers is a huge step forward to better mental health. We don’t need to see how many people follow us. As long as you can see who you follow, it shouldn’t matter who is following you.

This goes beyond Twitter-like apps. Subscriber counts on YouTube channels, on email lists, none of these things need to exist. The number of people you send something to should be irrelevant. Think about it - how does it impact the content of your message whether you have 100 followers or 10,000? It doesn’t.

Avoid algorithms at all costs

Algos are excellent at hijacking attention. They know what you like and keep feeding off you to keep you hooked. Let’s end this stupidity once and for all and say no to algorithms.

I also came to a realization that “algorithmic choice” is an illusion. The “best” algorithm will by definition be the winner and the most popular. Clients will implement the thing that people crave most until “better” algorithms get more users hooked on a client. Who doesn’t want that for their platform? Everyone. Attention is money. Attention is harm.

If we want to create a better future for our children, we’ll say no to algorithms. This means we have to accept that people will gravitate towards “cheaters” who do include “useful” algorithms in their clients. It also means we have to be willing to forgo larger profits.

Perhaps well-thought out policy can be introduced in the future that limits the harm of algorithms, but in the meantime we can take matters into our own hands and simply say no.

Improve happiness levels

Avoid news feeds

Thanks to nostr we can create clients that only handle news feeds, so we don’t really need to include them in social clients.

News keeps people down because negative news gets most clicks. We can avoid this whole issue just by not including news feeds in social applications. Less clickbaity headlines, less rage, more productive conversations.

If you still crave news, go ahead and use that nostr client designed specifically for news consumption.

Of course, we can’t stop people from sharing the news, but we can avoid algos that surface it, and avoid creating feeds specifically designed for news consumption.

News also consumed a lot of time and spreads misinformation. You get scenarios where neither of the arguers read the article in full and are arguing about something that’s not even reported. It’s painful to watch.

Then you have situations where the news is actually a narrative spun by some organization or individual who wants to influence social behavior. They may report correct information or completely misrepresent facts.

News is “bad news”. Just don’t build it into social clients intentionally.

Create happiness clients

One thing I have not seen any social media do is ask whether a piece of content makes you feel positive, neutral or negative.

In theory, we should be able to create clients that prioritize positive content. I know I said avoid algorithms at all costs, but if you wanted to create a happiness portal, you could cheat a little and ask people to market content as positive, neutral or negative, and then surface only the positive.

In my opinion this is not an ideal way to go about it, because you’re creating a different type of bubble, one where people ignore the reality of things. Yet, it is a possibility if we want to alter our mood by putting algos to work for us. At the very least it would be a fun experiment!

Reduce addiction / Save time

Disable notifications by default

You hear countless stories of people feeling better in their lives after disabling notifications. Why not make this the default behavior? “But, people won’t know if the app works!” Yeah.. it has to start some place. If we want change, we need to make tough decisions. If you want to be less extreme about it, you could disable most notifications by default, while not touching the “critical” ones. Personally, I don’t think any notification is critical, you should be completely in control over your attention and that any notification is a major intrusion into your consciousness.

With notifications disabled, we can regain time and attention. Society as a whole might think more clearly and be in the moment. I think it would be a huge step forward.

Delay notifications

Nothing sucks more time than notifications. That tiny red dot begging to be tapped. One solution to make notification less addicting short of turning them off is to delay them. We can purposely set a timer to show notifications in a delayed fashion rather than right away. This way people or kids don’t need to constantly check to see who replied or messaged you. Something as simple as a 3 minute notification delay may be sufficient to curb the constant checking behavior.

Delay reactions

Dopamine is fun, but constant dopamine in real time is unhealthy. Real time reactions force us to stare at our screens waiting for the next reaction.

We can lessen this addictive behavior by introducing delayed reactions to notes. Instead of reactions coming in real time, introduce a delay of 1-5 minutes. If you know that you won’t see any responses to your post for at least 5 minutes, it makes it easier to put down the phone and not have to constantly look to see who liked your note.

Improve Transparency

Once media organizations get on nostr, I think there’s a lot we can do to make them more transparent, accountable, and less manipulative.

One thing we can do is to create meta data for media accounts to indicate their funding sources. Everyone should be able to see who funds a certain organization (as discovered by anyone in the community and voted on by the community in terms of accuracy).

The idea is that someone could dig up funding sources for an organization and add them as meta notes to the account. The community can then collectively decide if this is accurate or inaccurate, giving others an idea if there is a certain bias involved.

Think about the Greenpeace ordeal currently happening. A meta note to indicate that Ripple, a “competing” cryptocurrency is funding them would add a lot of transparency to their claims. I think people would be less likely to believe the nonsense they are spewing.

Create a record of accuracy

Fueled entirely by the community, people could verify the accuracy of claims and indicate that in meta data. Other members can then review those claims and vote on them as well. With enough people involved, you could see if there is a sufficient sample size to indicate whether a media organization has been accurate or inaccurate in the past.

One thing we’d need to watch out here is bot manipulation. Said organizations could hire out malicious services to make it seem they are more accurate than they are typically. We’d have to think of some ways of preventing that.

The sheer lack of ratings on a claim should raise an eyebrow and whether something is to be believed or not.

The right to be forgotten

I know I will catch a lot of heat for this one. “The internet never forgets!” This is what the vast majority of people will say right away. That’s fine… but hear me out…

As builders and developers, we can form a consensus that social media data should be forgotten after x amount of time. Yes, anyone can screenshot it, mirror, put it on their own relay, rebroadcast it, yada yada yada… I get it. But that doesn’t mean we can’t create a consensus by which many builders, relay operators can voluntarily abide. It may not be a bulletproof solution, but it’s an effort that counts.

When we speak in the real world, unless recorded, our words are forgotten. A person should not be judged by a stupid thing they said yesterday, a week ago, a year ago. We can’t be in the right all the time - all people make mistakes and say and do stupid things. However, online, your word remains forever. Various servers cache, duplicate, at zero cost. I totally get that. Yet, we can still design an experience where that information disappears from our feeds, unless actively surfaced with some specific intent to surface it. I think this is a worthwhile effort that developers should consider today.

In cases where information should be saved for good reasons, someone will save it. Entire clients can and will exist to index everything, but that doesn’t mean every single client should surface every single note. People have a right to be wrong and to not be constantly harassed for what they said or did if they no longer feel or act that way.

Let’s have this conversation because no one else will

This article is meant to be a conversation starter. I really think we should weave it into the Nostr conferences as a crucial segment worth exploring and discussing. If we don’t do this, no one will. The world will continue to get gamified, attention hijacked and kids will continue suffering, depressed, lacking confidence and the tools needed to create a better world for their own kids. Let’s not fall sleep at the wheel and actually do something about it.

What other ideas do you have? Share the article and attach your own ideas.