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
    25·
    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
    11·
    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
        11·
        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 [email protected] 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
          3·
          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
            3·
            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.

            • i-liek-french-toast@exploding-heads.comEnglish
              2·
              1 year ago

              I assume that’s what he’s talking about.

              EH block list is super short since Kapow also didn’t like to defed. I think he only did spambot sites and sites with illegal stuff (IIRC, burggit.moe for instance has what most countries outlaw as child porn but was legal in some very specific locale that they set up shop in; have heard others say that loli/shota stuff, while gross, is not illegal do there might be some variance based on country?; discussion of them from another instance, the first comment in turn links to another discussion of them on lemmy.world).

              Current EH blocked instances:

              Blocked Instances Name Software Version

              lemmy.juggler.jp lemmy 0.18.3

              burggit.moe lemmy 0.18.4

              threads.net

              pornlemmy.com lemmy 0.18.4-nsfw

              • Nerd02@lemmy.basedcount.comEnglish
                3·
                1 year ago

                Yeah I’d say we have a similar policy. Child porn is among the stuff I would instantly block without any problem, fuck that. As for Meta I thought I had blocked them already. Evidently I haven’t, time to fix that.

          • 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
    9·
    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
      3·
      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.

  • BreadTanky@exploding-heads.com
    7·
    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
    6·
    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.

    • i-liek-french-toast@exploding-heads.comEnglish
      1·
      1 year ago

      I like all kinds of interests but I don’t tend to spend lots of time on them at most lemmy instances.

      Everything from books/fiction, Linux/tech, reading about piracy on dbzer0, exercise, survival/offgrid stuff. And an insane amount of time on memes but usually I don’t get those from lemmy.

      What kind of books you like? I’m a fiction junkie, especially fantasy. lately I’ve been exploring some xianxia and litrpgs. A lot of it’s trash but I like some more than others.

  • Masterofballs@exploding-heads.com
    5·
    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.

  • T_y_rannyLoverLOL@exploding-heads.com
    5·
    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 @[email protected] 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.

    • i-liek-french-toast@exploding-heads.comEnglish
      2·
      1 year ago

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

      Far from an expert but I think I was reading something earlier on one of the github tickets about that not being possible, at least not at present.

      If MOB or somebody more knowledgeable wants to chime in great… TBH, I would love to be wrong about this as I too am very interested in accessing over TOR.

      As for the rest of it, my understanding was this was mostly a case of switching for a tech that made us more censorship resistant. If there’s a story or more to it than that, then I guess I’m out of the loop too.

      AFAIK, the problems with EH going down sounded like a problem with federation (read: a bug in the underlying lemmy code, possibly only showing up in certain configurations since not all instances appear to be affected). I am not involved in server admin and this is based on what I remember from some of MOB’s comments I saw on the nostrchat.io site before.

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

        I have not ran tor much. You connect to nostr relays only through websockets. I believe you can use websockets over tor so it “should” be possible. I connect over a VPN.

        • T_y_rannyLoverLOL@exploding-heads.com
          1·
          1 year ago

          hey can you help me out? how do i access the EH public address on nostr? all the web clients I tried dont have a place anywhere to past a public key. Am I missing something??

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

            Yeah you can search up npubs in basically any client. You can just search up Kapow’s npub npub1qprptnnuwnqc6h6wxc2q07rfwcmj7cfc6g4r5dgnlkxaysmpr0mqc5365p To get his profile to follow. I have a chat a community with folks from here but both are pretty spamy lately while I test some bots out.

  • 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?

  • Lovstuhagen@exploding-heads.com
    4·
    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.

  • LarrySwinger@exploding-heads.com
    4·
    1 year 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).