The homepage could be a description of ATProto. Except lots of people around me already use ATproto, and a successful European instance has just been launched, Eurosky, focusing on expanding the protocol with apps doing other things than micro-messages (Bluesky).
ATproto is defacto not decentralized and the protocol is about 50x more complicated to get working than NOSTR.
Whereas in ATproto you have to find a place to register an account, say a domain for yourself or use someone else's domain, in NOSTR creating an account is nothing more than a public/private key that is generated on the fly.
Then is the storage of information. Whereas in ATproto information is stored in plenty of different formats and specific folder configurations which are easy to miss, in NOSTR is all JSON from a single base template file.
Third is the absence of global moderation and islands. Whereas in ATproto only a few (I think 3 main providers) exist, you can be kicked out from them and effectively stop reaching your audience. In NOSTR if a relay stops receiving your texts it is a bummer but there are hundreds of other volunteer-based servers to where you can send your texts, so it is very difficult to block people from reading texts of the authors they are interested.
Simplicity is the key. NOSTR is the first and only network that I've seen so far where content/authors are truly disconnected from the servers hosting their data.
So then you go around using "maelito@lemonde.fr" and anyone can find your public key on the official Le Monde site, verify that you are indeed someone associated to that domain.
The nice thing about open, federated protocols is that it is relatively easy to connect them together. There actually is a Mastodon to Bluesky bridge already for example. These protocols should compete on merit. There's no good fundamental reason for them to not federate each other's content. But there are lots of non technical reasons. For example mastodon users particularly are quite picky about how their content is filtered and used. Even implementing a search engine is something that gets a lot of pushback.
The reason people might care is taking ownership of how they filter and curate their feed. Instead of outsourcing that to some algorithm owned by a company, having a federated network allows you to pick and choose or even implement your own filtering if you self host. It also gets advertising as the primary revenue mechanism out of the way and that removes a conflict of interest between what users want to see and what advertisers want them to see.
Of course the drooling masses on Tik Tok, Instagram, etc. seem to be perfectly happy to have their endocrine system manipulated by self tuning algorithms. But there are some legitimate concerns about whether that's actually healthy for them. Federated social networks provide an alternative to this.
I actually agree with you. Nostr is a new, unique technology, akin to a simpler XMPP with social features already baked in at an early stage. It’s not a messenger or a social network, yet it includes features from both.
Extensible, resilient communications without the threat of a central third party silencing you is quite appealing.
Dang can ban you, or me, or anyone. Doesn't make HN a bad forum. On the contrary, HN's moderation quality is widely praised and appreciated. Now imagine if it was free for all anarcho-libertarian forum. Or as another example a mastodon, where decentralization is touted as a huge benefit, but in practice it is a collection of extremely strict centralized islands, where a ban can lead to one's identity account forever lost, but unlike on HN, there is no public accountability to the instance mods there.
Mastodon is indeed a collection of small social networks with limited interoperability. Federated toots are second-class toots - you won't see all their replies. Think of how iMessage degrades when someone in the conversation isn't using it.
Why should I care ? Honest question.