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
    24·
    1 year 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.

  • GeraldEstaban@exploding-heads.comEnglish
    10·
    1 year 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 😢

      • Nerd02@lemmy.basedcount.comEnglish
        10·
        1 year ago

        Hey there. BasedCount admin here! I can confirm, we are not a leftist instance. We are also not a rightist or a conservative one. We are just pro free speech. Our admin team is made of people with different political affiliations and we try to not let that get in the way of how we run the instance. Although I don’t consider myself one, I probably would be a leftist myself, from an American point of view.

        Anyway, we opened our instance to give !pcm@lemmy.basedcount.com a new home safe from the tyranny of the Reddit admins, but we are open to creating new communities. Anyone, feel free to shoot me a PM if you’d like to build anything on our instance.

        • markeuzu@exploding-heads.comEnglish
          2·
          1 year ago

          Any chance you can defederate from the instances hosting iffy material? I would like to host an account there (I like the rules) but some stuff is just plain illegal to have or see in my country and I dont want it on my pc tbh.

          exploding heads has them deferated so its easy to copy them over.

          • Nerd02@lemmy.basedcount.comEnglish
            2·
            1 year ago

            Could you define “iffy material”? Are we talking porn or what? We can discuss it, but generally speaking we are against defederating unless the instance is malicious or is hosting illegal stuff.

            If you are worried about the legal implication of having an account on an instance that (potentially) hosts content illegal in your country you should be alright, we are the ones hosting the stuff, it’s saved on our server. If you don’t visit the bad communities and stick to your “subscribed” feed you aren’t downloading anything illegal. However

            I dont want it on my pc tbh

            Is a more than fair argument.

          • Nerd02@lemmy.basedcount.com
            1·
            1 year ago

            Would you be willing to moderate those communities? That’s our policy, I’m fine creating communities for other people but you have to take out your own trash. That means no illegal shit (our rule 0) and try to keep it not off topic. Plus any other rule you might wish to add as a mod.

  • logen@exploding-heads.com
    8·
    1 year 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
      2·
      1 year 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.

  • Salamander@mander.xyz
    7·
    1 year 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 ✌️

  • BreadTanky@exploding-heads.com
    6·
    1 year 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?

  • BreadTanky@exploding-heads.com
    5·
    1 year 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.

  • Masterofballs@exploding-heads.com
    4·
    1 year 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.

  • pawtuger@exploding-heads.com
    4·
    1 year 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?

  • T_y_rannyLoverLOL@exploding-heads.com
    4·
    1 year 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.comOPMEnglish
      4·
      1 year 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.

  • Lovstuhagen@exploding-heads.com
    3·
    1 year ago

    Kapow, honestly just got a little misty eyed for a minute. You are a champ. Just like master of balls.

    Followed you on Nostr.

    I know the admin and many other users have put a lot of time and effort here.

    Let’s keep it up on Gab and Nostr.

    BTW I have this weird thing where I don’t like to be super active on a dying site when the nostalgia is kicking me in the balls so expect a downturn in posts.