Then maybe they shouldn’t have publicly said they were planning to build this bridge ten years ago.

Nostr identities are entirely self generated, and there’s no need for a traditional registration with each community. A single invite link could theoretically convey all the information required to join a community. Exact implementation will depend on the relay that hosts the community and the software they use to do so, but there’s no explicit need to make users register in a traditional sense, just join with the npub identity they created themselves. Some may make further requirements to curtail spam and other low quality content, but that becomes a decision for each individual community as best fits their needs.

It’s true that nostr as a protocol doesn’t seem to have any real capacity for voice, but given a Discord-like community would probably “live” on a fixed relay, that server could also very easily provide something like a TURN server like Matrix clients use for voice and I think video support. The client could integrate support for it, and the typical clueless user wouldn’t see the difference. For the more ephemeral nature of most voice communications, there’s no real need to publish voice chat through Nostr events. It could be done, sort of, for any talks that need to be archived, but it’s not a requirement for the vast majority of the voice chat happening on Discord anyway.

That’s a moot point because Discord doesn’t even have that. Community discovery happens almost entirely through users sharing invite links. There are third party websites that aggregate and categorize public communities with long lasting or permanent invite links, and that’s about the only other option. Functionally, a user can ignore where the community is hosted. All that matters is that they get the invite they want, just like today with Discord.

I think you see it as a federated system like the Fediverse, but that’s not really the case. Nostr relays are under no obligation to propagate content between each other, and for a Discord-like community, there’s no real need to. Clients are free to connect to as few or as many relays as they like. For something like this, the relay used by the community would be baked into the invite so users can connect without worrying about it. From their perspective, the only real difference is that the link doesn’t start with the Discord domain name.

Call it a server, then. Tons of people already call them Discord servers. And it’d be a lot more true of Flotilla than Discord. Functionally, from a UX perspective, there’d be VERY little difference to an end user. You’d get an invite somehow, probably through a link, maybe combined with whitelisting your identity for more private communities, and you’d be in, using a client remarkably similar to Discord once it’s in a good spot. For most users, they can fully ignore the technical complexities.

Discord does exactly one thing not entirely shittily. It puts all those features in one place. It gets beat out in any one feature, but you can run an entire community within a Discord for free. You shouldn’t because it’s terrible at most of that and mediocre at the rest, but it’s free and just good enough if you bludgeon it into shape with tools and bots and stuff.

I wonder if Flotilla on Nostr will be ready in time. The nostr community can unfortunately be a bit iffy right now, but I like the tech, and I’m always excited to see someone taking a good stab at Discord.

I use a relatively low spec KVM VPS on another continent. Remember, kids, if all your backups are in one location, you don’t have backups. You have copies.

No, they’re upset that the cops themselves flagrantly violate the law to beat and arrest protesters without sufficient cause when they’re leftwing protests, but when it’s a bunch of literal Nazis, everything is handled politely, and suddenly, protester rights are a priority again.

For example, take kettling. The cops make the protesters move in a given direction. Again. Again. Until they’ve pushed the protesters into a dead end or another wall or two of cops. Typically, they keep moving in, tightening the space until there’s no more. When the crowd has no choice to push back, they call it assaulting an officer, say it’s turning violent and label it an illegal protest, and arrest everyone.

Of course, this is illegal as shit, which is why most protesters arrested this way get the charges dropped. The judge knows there’s no case, and neither judge nor cop wants the tactics more widely publicized. But they’ve already broken up the protest. They’ve given these citizens arrest records. They’ve won. That protest, at least, is over, and they’ll just do it again if another starts.

And that’s not even counting the violence. Look at some of the footage from the 2020 George Floyd protests. If you don’t agree with the protests, put aside your differences and just look at what was done to protesters and what they were doing when it was done to them. Some of those protesters that got kettled didn’t just get arrested, some were attacked with less lethal options like rubber bullets. For all their reduced lethality, a couple dozen American citizens still died at the hands of their own police force. More were maimed for life with injuries including lost eyes.

I personally saw dozens and dozens of videos of police ruthlessly abusing those protesters. Things like a man laying face down on the ground when the cop standing over him shot him in the back point black with a bean bag round. An old man shoved over and cracking his head on the ground, only for the cop to just step over him and leave him there. That shit doesn’t happen at Nazi protests. The cops play nice and remember how to do their fucking job for the Nazis, but try to get the cops to stop hurting people unnecessarily and see what they do.

People are upset at the contrast to other protests. Had they been protesting for minority rights, the cops would fucking find a reason to arrest them. And probably beat a few asses along the way.