-
I heard about nostr on Citadel Dispatch. It sounded like a promising alternative to legacy social media.  Here's the thing: Free speech does not exist. According to Rothbard in [The Ethics of Liberty](https://mises.org/library/book/ethics-liberty), the property owner always has the right to censor.(He gives the example, If you give a speech in a movie theater, the ushers will ask you to leave. The crowd might throw popcorn at you. Therefore you do not have the freedom of speech in a movie theater. The proverbial, "you don't have the right to yell fire in a crowded theater" is a red-herring. The freedom of speech, not freedom of reach argument is another argument for censorship. The information super highway is owned and operated by corporations. It's 2025. I don't focus on stocks very much, but I've seen NVIDIA. The NVIDIA stock price is not the interesting part. The interesting part is how fast AI is becoming ubiquitous. That means writing code is easier. That means a new Internet not built and controlled by corporations. It means development on this new protocol can be funded with donations to a non-profit corporation. Or people can send $1,000 to a corporation to help fund development and get a badge. It's almost like virtue signaling your support for development of an interesting bitcoin wallet. I know virtue signaling gets a bad rap, but it is virtuous to support the development of a bitcoin wallet built for a world where Social Media Apps can be banned by a government with a bill of rights that begins with the words: "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances." I don't know if TikTok is something we should want to ban or not. I've never used it and have no dog in this fight. I'm not informed enough about the issue to give a useful opinion on the TikTok case, but I find it very interesting. Whatever the ruling, I will find the reasons behind the ruling most fascinating. Whatever they are, I would like to run a thought experiment. If the ban is not held constitutional, I want to know if this would set precedence for nostr. If it is the ban is held constitutional, how would this ruling apply to the nostr protocol? ** O am not a lawyer** and do not know the answers to any of these questions, but it's fun to think about.  Nostr is unique because it cannot be owned by a corporation or communist government. It is owned by individuals. Each individual who can afford it can own their own data. Your speech is attached to an npub that can be seen on every nostr client. It is stored on several relays. You can run your own relay. You can run your own client. In the very early days, we all had to be on the same relays to see the same posts, but the outbox model fixes this. It is still early days, but nostr has many implementation possibilities and I suspect the protocol to get better over time. Primal can still censor me. Since I run my own relay, I will not lose my content if they do. I may not be able to be see on the Primal App, but people will still be able to see me on Amethyst or Coracle. If Primal shadow bans me, I can still speak. I don’t think Primal will ban me, but even if the government knocked on Miljan’s door and made him an offer he can’t refuse, I can still speak on nostr. X, Facebook, or any other platform cannot grant the freedom of speech. You must follow their terms and conditions. The government goons can tell platforms to ban certain content by sending a single email. They have to wait on government permission. Mark Zuckerburg must know zaps exist when the United States government stopped him from printing his own stable coin. To ban a nostr user requires shutting down more than just one company or a law that bans a platform. It requires shutting down computers of individuals. It happens from time to time(The Canadian government sucks), but it would be difficult to ban all the computers running nostr. It's not perfect. [John Carvalho wrote a great article](https://medium.com/pubky/pubky-the-next-web-3287b35408f1) about all the problems with these newfangled decentralized tools, but nostr looks promising. ### Freedom Tech Gives Power To The People  "I am fascinated by Tim May's crypt-anarchy. Unlike the communities traditionally associated with the word "anarchy", in a crypt-anarchy the government is not temporarily destroyed but permanently forbidden and permanently unnecessary. It's a community where the threat of violence is impotent because violence is impossible, and violence is impossible because its participants cannot be linked to their true names or physical locations." - wei dai, b-money Nostr is not quite crypto-anarchy, but it is freedom tech. Nostr is free from corporations. This doesn't mean there are no corporations involved on nostr. Much of the funding is funded by a 5013c corporation. Primal is a corporation, but Primal is a small fraction of nostr. Social media is a fraction of [nostr awesomeness](https://github.com/aljazceru/awesome-nostr). It's participants can almost all be linked to their true identity unless they have Satoshi-esque OPsec skills. Nostr does not remove the threat of government violence, but it increases the censorship hash-rate. It will take more work to censor people on nostr than simply sending an email to Zuck or whatever they do. Running your own relay and client is not too difficult. For a few hundred thousand sats and a little elbow grease, you can own your own speech and broadcast from your own computer. It's like owning your own movie theater. You are free to yell fire in your own movie theater. Nobody can kick you out of that theater, but nobody will want to watch your movies either. If you yell fire, people cannot stop you, but they can mute your ass. [Marc](nostr:npub1marc26z8nh3xkj5rcx7ufkatvx6ueqhp5vfw9v5teq26z254renshtf3g0) [878,669](https://mempool.marc26z.com/block/000000000000000000011e78154a4d99f19d0dd2f76655d1e713f5156536e4a1) [Become Marc's Mention Member](https://marc26z.com/become-a-marcs-mention-member/) [Marc's Merch](nostr:npub1marc26z8nh3xkj5rcx7ufkatvx6ueqhp5vfw9v5teq26z254renshtf3g0)