That’s how long the Chinese government let Damus, a decentralized, Apple-native Twitter alternative backed by Jack Dorsey, be on its App Store. Thursday, Damus said that the CAC had ordered the app to be taken down because it broke national speech rules. Apple agreed. Not done with shocking metaverse news, now it’s about a Chinese Twitter alternative app.
Dorsey’s Nostr is a decentralized social media system that runs a number of apps, including Damus. Last year, the co-founder of Twitter gave 14 BTC, which is about $327,000, to help Nostr grow. The app takes payments through the Bitcoin Lightning Network.
With its open-source cryptographic keypair technology, Nostr wants to create a global, decentralized social network that can’t be shut down. Nostr apps can’t ban users or censor posts because clients are run by users. Engineers at Nostr made Damus, a similar service to Twitter that works with Apple, to show what it could do. The protocol is used by Anigma, which is an alternative to Telegram, and Jester, which is a chess program.
Damus went live around the world on Tuesday, after Apple gave its App Store listing the green light.
Nostr can’t be blocked, but Apple can block apps like Damus if a country’s government asks them to. People who believe in free speech, like Dorsey, like the protocol for this reason.
Dorsey has pushed for social media networks that are hard to censor. In 2019, Dorsey helped a small group of people make a decentralized social media system. In September, court documents showed that Dorsey asked Musk, when he bought Twitter, to change it to a “open source protocol sponsored by a foundation.”
Musk has not taken any of this advice. The second richest person in the world, according to The Intercept, took down a BBC show that was critical of Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi at the request of the government in late January. Free speech advocates were outraged that the film, which questions Modi’s guilt in a 2002 massacre of Muslims in Gujarat, was banned.
Edward Snowden tweeted, Elon Musk really shouldn’t be fighting Nostr, since it’s just about the only thing that can save his business. The fate of the old platform model over the next decade is clear.”
Content Source: decrypt.co
Cover Image Source: gettyimages.com
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