Two years ago when I launched Exploding-Heads, Lemmy offered a way to let me play a small role in fighting back against:

  • censorship
  • deplatforming
  • propaganda
  • Big Tech tyranny, and
  • to help spread suppressed stories.

I knew Lemmy had its challenges, but I hoped it would evolve for the better. Sadly after 2 years, the culture of censorship through defederation has only grown stronger.

Meanwhile a better alternative has sprung up in the form of Nostr:

  • it lets you own your own profile - if you move to another Nostr app or site, you still keep your content and followers
  • it makes censorship very difficult
  • it is not perfect, but is evolving for the better very quickly.

As a user you should not be at the mercy of instance operators who are

  • petty tyrants, or
  • benevolent dictators (who may turn tyrannical at any moment)

I do not feel I can alter the tyrannical direction Lemmy is heading in and I want to dedicate my time and resources to a better alternative.

So Exploding Heads is moving to Nostr.

Exploding-Heads.com will go offline August 31st 2023.

Please join us on Nostr.

Exploding Heads address on Nostr is npub1qprptnnuwnqc6h6wxc2q07rfwcmj7cfc6g4r5dgnlkxaysmpr0mqc5365p

Sounds complicated, but it is pretty easy. Here is what I recommend to get started

Amethyst App

  • Lets you follow people
  • Lets you follow #hastags (I have been using communities as a substitute for #hashtags on Lemmy
  • Has evolving support for communities

Habla.news

  • a Nostr alternative for Medium for long form content

Damus app (Apple IOS)

If you have any questions about getting up and running on Nostr, please ask them here https://exploding-heads.com/c/nostrblog

In closing, I sincerely apologize to all of you who are going to lose their profiles and content (please get anything you want off by August 31st), but it proves my warning about the problem with relying on benevolent dictators.

Please make sure to say hi to us on Nostr.

I hope the majority of our wonderful Exploding Heads community will make the move to Nostr with us.

  • Owner_of_donky@exploding-heads.com
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    11 months ago

    Not again. Can’t we just keep the instance and host the Nostr relay on another domain? This will be a big loss for lemmy and the whole fediverse since there are not many free speech reddit alternatives.

    • Alice@exploding-heads.com
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      11 months ago

      Yea I kind of agree. I’m scared EH will fall apart of left on nostr alone. I’m use to it now, but the Twitter style is a huge turn off. I’m just waiting for a legit reddit nostr style app

      • Owner_of_donky@exploding-heads.com
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        11 months ago

        I also don’t like the twitter style or at least I am not too familiar with it. I would much more prefer to stay here untill a better app has been developed.

        • Alice@exploding-heads.com
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          11 months ago

          Yea dude I feel the same. I fucking hate the Twitter style can’t fucking stand it. I only deal with it because it’s like no one wants a reddit clone I don’t get it

    • PraxisGeltabs@exploding-heads.com
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      11 months ago

      yeah, not pleased about this as somebody who set up shop to start a community or two which goes against the current shitlib hivemind consensus 🤷

  • GeraldEstaban@exploding-heads.com
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    11 months ago

    I really wish you would consider keeping Exploding-heads active for a bit longer, Nostr has a lot of potential but the Twitter format isn’t ideal. We need something like Reddit on the Nostr protocol (like how Lemmy is based on ActivityPub) that has communites and emphasis on those communities and thread based discussion, currently on Nostr we don’t have that, I know recently it seems like they’ve started supporting communites but that still seems like it’s in its infancy. Would be great if we could just hold on a bit longer until we get the full forum experience on Nostr, I really hate Twitter and the cluttered feeling of having posts just free-flow and can be about anything at all instead of being organized in communities and having clear subjects in different communities.

    Hashtags aren’t like communities either because they’re just a sorting tool for the random hodge podge of posts spread to the world, they aren’t a place like communities where people deliberately post about specific things, they’re really just fancy flairs for annoucements.

    I know that Nostr has put effort into communites but honestly I don’t think it’s quite ready yet, which is why in my opinion we should try and hang on a bit longer, otherwise I guess it’s goodbye for me on August 31 😢

  • Salamander@mander.xyz
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    10 months ago

    I’m disappointed that federation has not proven to be censorship resistant enough to make your presence here feel worth while. I hope that the Nostr protocol lets you build the community that you want to build without being cut-off from the broader network due to centralized decisions. I think that censorship resistance is an important property that needs to be baked into the infrastructure of our future networks.

    Good luck ✌️

  • logen@exploding-heads.com
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    11 months ago

    Yea, bad twitter doesn’t really seem like it’s fits my style. I’m a simple machines kind of guy, reddit and these reddit clones are close enough to scratch that itch.

    Twitter though? I’ve disliked twitter since the day it came out. Microblogging is the worst and I don’t understand why there needs to be about 15 different versions of this shit. Guess the world fell in love with it that one year when all the news media told us to use it. Seriously, I remember getting a Twitter account, not understand what good it’s for other than status updates, like, when a server goes down. Then suddenly every radio station was blathering about how they can’t stop sharing how they’re eating a sandwich and how many times they shit so far that day.

    Edit:

    Nice meeting y’all, doubt I’ll last on the new platform.

    • Lovstuhagen@exploding-heads.com
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      11 months ago

      I also specifically really liked the reddit style format and thus the very nature of my posting will change in the new place lol

      Oh well.

      Not a bad thing but u know.

      It’ll be different.

  • BreadTanky@exploding-heads.com
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    11 months ago

    Man, and I was trying to get a fathate subreddit rival going. Oh well.

    I’ll check out Noster, but it doesn’t seem like a great forum format. Any instances y’all think I should try and remake fathate in?

  • Masterofballs@exploding-heads.com
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    11 months ago

    Sorry I havn’t gotten the ansible stuff done. I’m not great with ansible which is why. And the command line tool to generate certs took me like 2 hours to set up locally. I’m happy to set up a relay manually for you if you are ever in the mood but you are always welcome to use mine and all the other free ones out there.

  • BreadTanky@exploding-heads.com
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    11 months ago

    I do have a follow up question for y’all, what’s your favorite community and instance (asides from EH) on lemmy?

    Obviously mine is fathate, but my second is probably cooking (on world or shitjustworks), and home improvement. I also like the literature instance, and I hope it grows cause I want more book talk in my life.

  • T_y_rannyLoverLOL@exploding-heads.com
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    11 months ago

    Hey I’m back finally.

    I don’t mind moving yet again, but can one of you please explain why we have to move exactly? other than getting defederated, where is the faggotry coming from? I’m not in the loop. I know @Wigglehard@exploding-heads.com said something about server owner trannies being gay or?

    Also why did the server keep going down?

    What’s the best way to get on Nostr on TOR?

    • Kapow@exploding-heads.comOPM
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      11 months ago

      The server problems started again when we upgraded from 18.3 to 18.4. I spent a few very late nights trying to keep them up without success.

      So I would prefer to invest my time in the future (censorship resistant and user owns their I’d) rather then pouring more time into the Lemmy platform where censorship and defederation are growing in popularity.

  • detoxlife@exploding-heads.com
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    11 months ago

    Man this sucks but I’m glad you at least gave it a shot for all of use to join. I’m guessing this Nostr is similar to Mastodon? If anyone is interested in joining a cool Mastodon instance noagendsocial is having open enrollment to join. If your not familiar with the no agenda show podcast I would just say give it a shot.

  • pawtuger@exploding-heads.com
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    11 months ago

    I just registered my alternate here (just to see the contents here) few minutes ago, and now, this site’s going to transfer, right?

  • LarrySwinger@exploding-heads.com
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    10 months ago

    Since many are expressing disappointment in this site going down, can I take this opportunity to promote my forum, Rabbit Hole? It’s a simple phpBB forum that supports free speech, allows guest posting from Tor, and aggregates the content on the landing page. I’m afraid many won’t make the transition to Nostr and the community will fall apart. I made RH partially as a Saidit alternative, since that site has many problems. However, it hasn’t taken off. Saidit still works so people seem to be sticking to it in spite of the flaws. If this community migrates there, there will be enough activity to make it more appealing for other users to join and I can more easily advertise it on a couple of related communities. My goal is to combine the conspiracy / freedom niche with imageboard culture and an imageboard-like design (but using phpBB for the extra features).