I’ve had an awesome experience the last five years running instances for me and friends. So many nice interactions. I recommend running an instance for people you know well. It can still connect to everyone else, but you have your own little corner to feel more connected in.
Everyone else, as long as they don't defederate your server as petty tyrants.
Which has always been the drawback of the Fediverse.
Nostr has delivered what I had hoped to get from the Fediverse: actually decentralized, censorship proof social media (and then some), wherein you actually maintain full ownership of your own identity (as it's a keypair, not an account). Where if you get banned from one relay or other, you just move to a new one, and everything comes with you. Where if nobody wants to platform you, you can literally run your own relay on your PHONE and stay connected to the network.
And yea, there is at least one bridge between Nostr and Mastodon (Mostr), so you don't even have to give up on talking to your Mastodon buddies.
That it also does so much more than social media is icing on the cake. Really leverages its existence as a protocol rather than a platform to use the Internet as it was always meant to be.
