True. That would be true of any platform which allows tips, you’d have to connect to some source of money whether it be paypal or crypto. Paypal’s fees would be prohibitively expensive but it would be theoretically doable. Either way, it’s a <5 minute setup process if they care to do it.

But people already have Paypal and understand how to use it. Most people don’t understand cryptocurrency, and don’t want anything to do with it because of its association with scams.

Interesting I didn’t know AP supported E2E. I guess it’s Mastodon that doesn’t support that element of the AP protocol then?

Here’s the issue.

Also, I looked in to Nostr a bit for this and do you seriously think profile links like this will catch on with people?

https://primal.net/p/460c25e682fda7832b52d1f22d3d22b3176d972f60dcdc3212ed8c92ef85065c

Say what you want about AP, but usernames like <(at) makeasnek (at) lemmy.ml> are at least memorable. How am I suppose to tell someone IRL about my Nostr profile, say of a 64 bit string out loud?

This assumes platforms win based on technical details, which they don’t. Mastodon will probably ‘win’ (whatever that means) because of network effects and general culture.

Nostr has an optional built-in tipping functionality where you can leave tips for users whose content you like. You can tip a fraction of a penny or $100. And users can tip you. This has a few effects. For one, it incentivizes people to use nostr. Non-profit orgs, for example, can use it to fundraise.

But user have to be technically minded enough, and willing, to set up a crypto wallet to do this.

In mastodon, admins can read your DMs. If you DM somebody on another instance, that’s two instances that can read your DMs, and so can anybody who breaks into their server. In nostr, all DMs are encrypted by default and can only be read by the intended recipient.

E2E encryption is possible with AP. Besides, if what you’re talking about needs to be unreadable to third parties, you should probably use something like Matrix or Signal, especially considering how bad Mastodon’s DMs actually are.

This meme would be so relatable if I had any friends.