Nostr is rebellion against soft-core censorship
A social media algorithm works by stealth, nontransparent yet all-pervasive. It is an online social credit system, rewarding our adherence to the swimlane of our core social identity, penalizing exploration of our other dimensions not with fines or overt punishment but with the sound of crickets. Movement outside that swimlane, self-exploration or investigation of themes our inherently multidimensional self are rewarded with the soft-core censorship.
It’s not that certain messages are switched off, more that an invisible hand turns down the volume that the ear of others can nearly hear.
Soft-core censorship is as insidious as actual censorship because, through its subtlety, it often skips unnoticed.
Nostr represents rebellion against the very notion of a single core identity or personality beyond which we are invisibly encouraged not to stray, explore or honor.
There is no hidden agenda to keep you on the app. No punishment for linking to links outside the app, nor of speaking about things for which you are not “known”
It is imperfect, new, raw, intimate in ways good and bad, like the bulletin boards of the early 90s. But for all it’s teething pains, I believe it’s rebellion against soft-core censorship is as valuable as it’s rebellion against censorship and centralization itself.