A few years ago, I discovered the Nostr protocol1 thanks to Jack (Jack Dorsey)2. I've been using it actively ever since. I already had an interest in distributed social networks for years. I tried ActivityPub3 for a while, but something just didn't click. Around that time, Jack started ATProto4 within Twitter, but something felt off there too. I hadn't even bothered trying the methods that came before those anyway.
It always bothered me—and many others, of course—that the internet became so centralized when the web is distributed by nature. The main reason for this was social media platforms. The trend that started with guestbooks evolved into forums, then to Friendfeed-like walls, MySpace-like platforms, and eventually Facebook and Twitter. The internet, which had a much more distributed structure with blogs prior to Facebook and Twitter, suddenly started to centralize.
Due to the maintenance costs of distributed structures and unsettled systems, humanity took the easy way out and chose centralization, as always. Facebook and Twitter grew steadily, and many other platforms alongside them transformed into centralized hubs using the exact same playbook.
One of the things people realized too late was that centralized power always possesses the ability to manipulate, a fact that eventually came to light through the Facebook and Twitter lawsuits and similar cases over time.
