It was run: slightly below 48 hours.
That’s how lengthy the Chinese language authorities allowed Damus, a decentralized, Apple-native Twitter various backed by Jack Dorsey, to reside on the nation’s model of Apple’s App Retailer. On Thursday, Damus introduced the Our on-line world Administration of China (CAC) had demanded the app’s removing, because of alleged violation of nationwide speech legal guidelines. Apple instantly complied with the request.
Damus is only one of a number of tasks at present being constructed atop Nostr, a decentralized social media protocol favored by Dorsey. Final yr, the Twitter co-founder donated 14 BTC (about $327,000 at writing) to fund Nostr’s growth. The app additionally integrates the Bitcoin Lightning Community for funds.
Nostr is an open-source protocol based mostly on cryptographic keypairs that goals to grow to be the inspiration of a worldwide, decentralized, censorship-resistant social community. Anybody can construct an app on prime of Nostr; on such apps, customers can’t be banned, and posts can’t be censored, as shoppers are run by all customers. Nostr builders created Apple-compatible Twitter analog Damus as a proof of idea of Nostr’s potential. Other projects constructed atop the protocol embrace would-be Telegram substitute Anigma and chess app Jester.
Damus had solely simply launched globally on Tuesday after acquiring approval from Apple to be listed within the App Retailer.
Whereas Apple, on the behest of nationwide governments, can ban apps constructed on Nostr like Damus, no entity is ready to censor Nostr itself. That promoting level is the principle motive free speech proponents like Dorsey have so vocally supported the protocol.
Dorsey has lengthy advocated for the proliferation of censorship-resistant social media platforms. Whereas performing as Twitter’s CEO in 2019, Dorsey funded a small workforce tasked with making a decentralized social media protocol. In September, court docket data revealed that Dorsey implored Elon Musk, throughout Musk’s acquisition of Twitter, to transition the app to an “open supply protocol, funded by a basis.”
Musk has not but heeded that recommendation. In late January, the world’s second richest man stirred some controversy by censoring a BBC documentary essential of Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi on the behest of the Indian authorities, per a report from The Intercept. Free speech advocates decried the choice to ban the movie, which questions Modi’s function in a 2002 anti-Muslim bloodbath in Gujarat.
“Elon Musk actually shouldn’t be combating Nostr, because it’s nearly the one factor that may save his enterprise,” whistleblower and privateness advocate Edward Snowden tweeted on the time. “The destiny of the previous platform mannequin over the subsequent decade is evident.”
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