AI, Addiction, and the Internet We Actually Want

Summary

Soapbox Sessions: “AI, Addiction, and the Internet We Actually Want”

April 2, 2026
Hosts: Derek Ross & Heather Larson

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Episode Overview

In this lively installment, Derek and Heather dig into the entwined futures of artificial intelligence (AI), addiction, and decentralized social media, focusing on how these forces are reshaping jobs, creativity, and our online lives. Their recurring theme: the push for a more ethical, user-owned Internet—especially via Nostr—plus strategies for thriving in a rapidly changing digital world. The conversation weaves together personal anecdotes, reviews of new AI tools, healthy skepticism, practical optimism, and plenty of playful banter.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. The “Replaced by Claude” Experiment & AI Self-Reflection

[02:23–12:35]

• Heather and Derek both test out replacedbyclaude.com, an online tool that profiles users and rates how much of their work could be replaced by AI, even generating playful “identity” and “soul” summaries.
• Results highlight the nuance in AI’s capacity to mimic or replace certain roles:
  • Derek, as a developer relations professional, is less replaceable because in-person connections aren’t easily automated (yet).
    • “AI can’t go build these relationships at conferences and events and then meet space. We can’t do all that kind of stuff yet.” — Derek [03:32]
  • Heather’s roles in content, community, and yoga leave her at higher ‘risk,' at least per Claude’s algorithm, but live presence and trust still matter.
    • “Open Clock can replace a startling amount of the product marketing and content machine here. But the live radio timing, community trust and actual yoga class human presence keep Heather annoyingly employed.” — Heather (quoting Claude) [03:56]
  • The tool also "roasts" the users with witty, sometimes cutting personality and job summaries, sparking both laughter and insights.
    • “The social web is a rigged clown car. I like that. That is good.” — Derek [08:25]
• Both hosts remark on how AI can codify personal identity and skills with surprising accuracy—but also how it misses some human subtleties. - “I bridge technical teams and audiences without pretending I'm the smartest engineer in the room...Wellness matters to me. But I prefer useful calm over mystical branding sludge.” — Heather [10:02]

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2. AI, Social Media & Addiction: Are We Losing Control?

[12:35–20:29]

• Discussion pivots to social media addiction in the context of Taylor Lorenz’s recent work and legal cases against Meta:
  • Heather recounts her past work in addiction counseling, points out that behavioral addiction (like gambling or social media) can be just as compulsive as substance use.
    • “You can use something addictively and it’s like you don’t have to detox from gambling...but it does have a detrimental effect on our behavior.” — Heather [14:30]
  • The hosts talk candidly about compulsively checking phones and the psychological hooks behind legacy social platforms.
    • “I want to know if I have any notifications or I'm watching TV and, as soon as a commercial hits, boom. I pull out my phone...Like, we're absolutely addicted to this.” — Derek [16:29]
• They explain how Nostr and similar decentralized projects intentionally avoid addictiveness—retention may suffer, but well-being improves: - “We're literally building apps that are not addictive because we know it's bad. So we really can't complain if retention is bad, because we're not making people addicted.” — Derek [19:41]

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3. Decentralization, Monetization, and the Internet We Want

[20:29–23:41]

• Nostr’s radical contrast with legacy social networks:
  • Built-in digital payments, user-owned identity, no shadowbans or forced audience-juggling; platforms not designed to hijack attention.
  • Monetization models under experimentation: Ad-based models (simply for research), paying users for attention with Bitcoin, and authentic content paywalls are all discussed.
    • “If Taylor Swift did it...it’s all over, everybody.” — Heather [23:01], on the hypothetical of a big creator launching gated content on Nostr.
• The "landlord class" critique: Traditional Web 2.0 platforms profit from creators’ work while exerting control; Nostr aims to subvert this.

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4. AI’s Impact on Jobs & Company Structures

[25:18–36:41]

• Jack Dorsey’s “AI as middle management” manifesto:
  • Derek summarizes Dorsey’s comparison of corporate and Roman Empire hierarchies; AI as an “intelligence layer” could replace entire strata of mid-management.
    • “Jack’s take is to use AI as an intelligence layer...that is moving everything up and down the chain, disseminating information.” — Derek [27:28]
  • Block (Dorsey’s company) is reorganizing around this concept, dividing staff into specialists, problem-solvers, and player-coaches.
• Practical examples from Soapbox Sessions itself: Everyone uses AI for data and metrics, but human oversight and judgment still matter. - “If you're not crunching data to make your decisions at this point in time...what are you even doing?” — Heather [29:16]
• Widespread agreement on key takeaways:
  • AI will make some job categories obsolete (e.g., middle management, repetitive data tasks).
  • Success in “the AI future” will require adaptability and human skills.

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5. The “Chameleon Skills” for AI Survival

[36:41–40:31]

• “Chameleon Skills”: Derek’s “three Cs” required to thrive alongside AI:
  • Critical thinking
  • Creativity
  • Communication
    • “Those three things together will make you successful in the AI future.” — Derek [36:51]
• Personal stories about job reinvention and burnout:
  • Both hosts discuss moving on from repetitive, formulaic jobs thanks to AI, but caution that digital burnout is also a risk.
    • “Now you have the bot do...the work that you're maybe good at, or maybe it augments it for you. And then you go, ‘okay, well, what do I do now that my brain's a little fresh?’” — Heather [39:14]
  • Importance of “detoxing” from tech.
  • “I think AI is going to allow us to touch more grass.” — Derek [40:33]

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6. Digital Detox, Community Features & Product Updates

[44:26–54:58]

• Heather and Derek joke about building a “Say Less” digital detox app that helps Nostr users moderate their activity—tongue-in-cheek, but echoing real concerns. - “You overdid it today on Nostr. You shared too many Kirsty Gnome memes. Heather, you need to go touch grass.” — Heather [45:34]
• Discussion of gamified features: Badges, letters, “pokes,” and even virtual pets (Blobbies) on Ditto; playful jabs at how they break things, suggest tweaks, and enjoy the process.
• Monetization critique continues: Cost comparisons between Nostr and legacy “pay to play” models (LinkedIn, Twitter), emphasizing Nostr’s free/open ethos.

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7. State of the Nostr-verse: App Updates and Inside Jokes

[60:07–63:44]

• Recap of major updates to Nostr apps: Amethyst, Wisp (a.k.a. Ditto), and more.
• Jokes about the Wisp logo’s resemblance to “a sperm” or video game sprites, and whimsical app April Fool’s posts.
• Ditto’s evolution: “badges are first-class citizens,” pokes, Blobbies, and letters. Invitation to join “Doug” (Ditto User Group) is made via in-app letters—a nod to transparency and direct engagement.

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8. Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

On AI & Uniquely Human Work

• “I will meet you in the meat space and I will sell you on decentralization and all these freedom tech tools. AI can't do that. So I'm good for now.” — Derek [03:32]

On Self-reflection via AI “Roasts”

• “My vibe...more of a roast: ‘Like if your most online friend escaped the bitcoin conference hallway track and somehow became useful...then casually imply the current social web is a rigged clown car.’” — Derek [08:25]

On Addiction

• “If you are facing negative consequences due to the use of these things and you're still doing it anyway, that's the technical definition of addiction.” — Heather [15:45]

On Nostr’s Core Principle

• “On Nostr, value flows as freely as ideas. We’re hooked on decentralizing the web and we think you will be too.” — Heather [01:00]

Playful Banter

• “I want for Apple to grow up and put the Inter Miami games on my ical. Like, you have the technology…That’s why I call Apple a lazy trillionaire.” — Heather [59:18]
• “I couldn't do that. What if somebody is bearish on Nostr and they need me to give them the…The Pro vita?” — Derek (about phone detox) [43:04]

Framework for the Future

• “Critical thinking, creativity, communication. Yes, but we need to think of something fun—the chameleon effect, the chameleon steps…” — Derek [55:01]

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Timestamps for Key Segments

• [02:23–12:35] – Replacedbyclaude.com, identity “roasts” & AI self-assessment
• [12:35–20:29] – Addiction, social media, the “ethics of attention,” Taylor Lorenz discussion
• [20:29–23:41] – Nostr’s alternative incentives and monetization experiments
• [25:18–36:41] – Jack Dorsey’s AI management manifesto, job restructuring, Block’s reorg
• [36:41–40:31] – “Chameleon” skills, adaptability in the AI era
• [44:26–54:58] – Digital detox, gamification, badge and feature talk
• [60:07–63:44] – Nostr-verse app round-up, inside jokes, Ditto enhancements

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Final Takeaways & Tone

This episode is energetic, irreverent, and opinionated—mixing technical insight with skepticism, humor, and advocacy for rebuilding the internet with open protocols and healthy digital habits. The hosts champion adaptability, user empowerment, and not taking oneself (or the legacy web) too seriously, continually urging listeners to embrace new tools but remain critically reflective.

To join the fun or help shape the ecosystem, send Derek a letter in Ditto asking for a Doug invite—and consider which of your skills are most chameleon-like for the future AI “meat space.”

Transcript

[Derek Ross]

We're officially calling it Derek's three steps to success. Using AI isn't sexy, but the chameleon something is. We just need to find out what

[Heather Larson]

we are talking about. AI so hard. You just activated my Siri. Was something you said My phone just lit up. My phone was talking to you.

[Derek Ross]

I hate Apple.

[Heather Larson]

I think this is where like we're starting to see the downstream effects of AI because it's more than just like the self checkout thing replacing the cashier at the grocery store. Now welcome to the soapbox sessions. Imagine this. An open and free Internet where voices are never silenced, where causes aren't shadow banned, and where no one can be deplatformed. It's real, it's here and it's happening on nostr. So what exactly is nostr? It's a worldwide community of everyday people working to decentralize the Internet. On Nostr, you can build websites, communities, social networks, apps and more. Onelogin works everywhere. You own it and no one can take it away. No more juggling dozens of platforms, chasing audiences, or managing a giant password list. And the cherry on top nostr allows for built in digital pay that can come from anywhere in the world. On nostr, value flows as freely as ideas. We're hooked on decentralizing the web and we think you will be too. So now let's hear from your hosts, Derek Ross and Heather Larson, who are working to grow Nostr one vibe at a time. The world is on fire. Derek Ross, we have a lot to talk about.

[Derek Ross]

I think the World is on Fire. Isn't there a song about that?

[Heather Larson]

Yeah, I think it's like Billy Joel or something. I'm sure we have, we actually have songs about it on Wave, Lake and Fountain. But you know, that's a whole other podcast that we, we could just play all of those songs and just shut up and call it a day. But no, the, the world's kind of changing and I think that's something we need to talk about. You know that I, I would say the, the theme here today is how, you know, AI and social media are changing society. So where does that leave us? Why not prepare, lean in, but also be like cautiously sk. Skeptical because there are some early horror stories and you know, I'm. I'm thinking let's lean into it. Let's find ethical and healthy ways to deal with our, I guess, online life, social media and AI tools. We talk about these things a lot. But did you see. I sent this to you so I know you saw it. The replaced by Claude.com, the website. Just, just to kick it off.

[Derek Ross]

Yeah, that's really interesting. Right? That website's really interesting. It's really cool. So you go there and you enter your, your name, your identity, you give it information about you and then does this deep dive on who you are, where you come from, all about you, and then figures out, well, hey, can this person be replaced by AI? What, what is their worth in terms of AI? And it gives you a score based on all it can find about you to see if, if you can be replaced. And, and then there's like, you know, some will say that. Well, I don't remember. Was it like 44 or 64%? I don't, I honestly don't remember.

[Heather Larson]

Mine's 76.

[Derek Ross]

I think I was safe, though. Okay, well, I think my. Maybe mine was 64 then, I bet 64. So I'm safe for now. But what was really interesting is it went down through, you know, me and my developer relations role and looked at all the things that I do and I've written and I produce and it's like, well, AI can't go build these relationships at conferences and events and then meet space. You know, we can't do all that kind of stuff yet. So. So, sure, it can absolutely help facilitate some things, but so I'm safe until we have a Derek robot. Once we have a Derek robot, then it can go into the meat space and it can build these relationships and then, and then, and then I'm fully replaceable. But right now I'm good. I can go to meet space and I will meet you in the meat space and I will sell you on decentralization and all these freedom tech tools. AI can't do that. So I'm good for now.

[Heather Larson]

Lean into the meat. It says I'm like almost gone. It gave me a big bread number 76. You're almost gone. It says I'm already a bot. I'm in a vibe moat. I don't know what that means. Public footprint job is just text, really. I'm talking, you know, this isn't text. So it's, it's, it's, it's also doing a deep dive. I gave it my LinkedIn and so I did a deep dive into like, it made a comment. Open Clock can replace a startling amount of the product marketing and content machine here. But the live radio timing, community trust and actual yoga class human presence keep Heather annoyingly, annoyingly employed. I don't do radio anymore. I do radio detox and I do this. But you Know, like I have it on my LinkedIn. So it's. We've been talking about radio people being replaced the entire time. I've been in radio since like 28 years ago when I started doing radio. We were entering the automation era. So yes, we eventually got replaced.

[Derek Ross]

What I think though is really cool is that it writes an identity MD file for you and a soul MD file for you. So if you have an open claw bot, you can take all of this stuff and you can give it to an open claw bot. So you can essentially turn yourself into AI by using your voice and your content. So it probably I could actually do this and then maybe I would make my Twitter bot and my, my, my LinkedIn bot better. Oh, I did read it. I thought it was actually really good. Like, like the soul md. Yeah, like I, I read it and I was like, you know what? This is me. Yes, I do this. Yes, this sounds like me. Like I, I thought that it was actually pretty good. And what I want to do is, is I want to take all of this and put it into, put it into some of my AI tools to help me out to get more of my voice.

[Heather Larson]

Like, I would call you a Nostra shill turned dev rel. Like, but you. What would you, what would you call me if you were to write my identity MD file? I would, that's how I would, I would phrase you. You. What would you call me?

[Derek Ross]

Because I would, I would say you're my friend.

[Heather Larson]

But I, but it's.

[Derek Ross]

I would say journal journalist turned bitcoin marketer.

[Heather Larson]

Like, here's what it called me. Okay, this is again replaced by Claude.com. it says Heather Larson as a creature, a Phoenix signal pirate turned open protocol yoga bat flapping between B2B SAS launch copy Bitcoin Noster evangelism and, and nervous and nervous system triage with Boston University online earnestness and X radio timing. I like went after my college degree, man, but oh my God, an open protocol yoga bat. That's what I am. I'm an open protocol yoga.

[Derek Ross]

So, so you fed yours your LinkedIn. Is that, is that right?

[Heather Larson]

Which is pretty lengthy. Okay, job I've ever had is on there. Go look. It's open source. What's LinkedIn?

[Derek Ross]

You know, I fed mine. All I did for mine was Derek Ross from Noster. That's all I did. Yeah. And it, well, it, it found my website, I guess, which talks a lot about Noster and decentralization and deverel stuff. But it. So my creature is a purple pilled conference Nostrich with sysadmin, scar tissue, mobile journalist pattern recognition, and the slightly dangerous confidence of a man who has explained open protocols to chamber of Commerce civilians and then gone back to a bitcoin events for fun. And I'm sitting there thinking, wait a second, that hits. That hits. I like it. What was your vibe? What did your vibe say?

[Heather Larson]

Like your friend who escaped legacy media, learned enough DevOps vocabulary to stop annoying engineers, now teaches yoga, runs on async voice notes, and keeps explaining why platforms are a landlord class for creators. Surprisingly grounded for someone who voluntarily says Noster Phoenix out loud. It's like it's roasting us, Derek. Well, yeah, yeah.

[Derek Ross]

Mine is a complete roast. Listen to this. My vibe is which I said is more of a roast. It says like if your most online friend escaped the bitcoin conference hallway track and somehow became useful, he will explain NOSTR relays, zaps, AI builders and digital identity with missionary patience, then casually imply the current social web is a rigged clown car. There's a strong I give this same practical talk to both nerds and normal people energy plus the unmistakable R of someone who has built side projects because the ecosystem was annoying. Annoyingly incomplete. But do you a social rigged clown car like that? The social web is a rigged clown car. I like that. That is good.

[Heather Larson]

Oh my God, these are good.

[Derek Ross]

That is really good.

[Heather Larson]

If you go to your soul md, what are your core truths?

[Derek Ross]

I have explained Noster to enough beginners that I can feel the exact moment their eyes glaze over at Relay and recover before losing the room. Right. I'm really good at reading people. So. So when I when I'm talking to somebody and I can tell that they don't understand the technical words that I'm saying, boom. I'll go into dumb it down mode and I'll dumb down the tech for them. But if it picked that up somehow, it knows me.

[Heather Larson]

It takes about 90 seconds. Oh yeah. My mind says I bridge technical teams and audiences without pretending I'm the smartest engineer in the room. I'm not an engineer. I care about creator ownership, open protocols, and reducing dependence on platforms that extract value. It is ascertained this about Me Legacy media taught me speed, structure, audience instincts and how to ship under pressure. Well, that's true. Wellness matters to me. But I prefer useful calm over mystical branding sludge. That's true. I hate gimmicky in yoga. Hate it. I'm multi threaded by nature, marketing, journalism, podcasting, community, yoga and research. Which really just means that I worked in radio so long that I always had to have three, three jobs at once. Seriously. Because they fire you every two or three years. You have to have multiple ways to create income. So it's really just a work gypsy.

[Derek Ross]

Listen to this one. I have pro. I have probably said some version of users should own their identity and social graph. Often enough to be accused of being fine tuned on myself.

[Heather Larson]

Fair. Oh my God. Oh, this is. This is interesting. This is. This.

[Derek Ross]

These are good. Like there's every single one of these. I'm like. Well, like you said, it's more of a roast. It's more of a roast. But they're really good.

[Heather Larson]

Better than my clog knows me, you know, better. I could work with Claude all the time. It has no memory, right? From day to day, it doesn't remember, you know, from session to session. It doesn't remember anything that you've asked it. But like, how did this thing take my LinkedIn profile with every job I've ever had on it, Every legal job anyway? And it's somehow ascertained that my. My vibe is dry, clear, direct, warm, but not gushy. Journalist brain with marketer execution, skeptical of platform captured corporate fluff, calm delivery, occasional side eye. It's like you listen to the podcast.

[Derek Ross]

Occasional side. I've seen that. I've seen that side eye.

[Heather Larson]

You were side eye inducing.

[Derek Ross]

Oh man. So.

[Heather Larson]

Holy shoot. Wow. So.

[Derek Ross]

So I would say go to this website replaced by Claude, spelled C L, A W D. And put in your information if you want to laugh. But, but maybe you'll learn a couple useful things too, right? Like you might be able to put some of this to work. But everybody needs a good laugh.

[Heather Larson]

So check it out. I put it. I'll put it in my, my cloth. I'll put it in my Shakespeare and my open code and God, I have a lot of AI tools but not, not more than other marketing. The marketing people. Deep.

[Derek Ross]

Put it in all the tools.

[Heather Larson]

Yeah, put it in all the tools and. And then it will share my voice better. Confuse it more probably. That's. That's just amazing. That's funny. Okay, so. So right now we know our odds of being replaced. That's what we're going to talk about today. In a minute though. Yes. I wanted to do a follow up though because we talked about Taylor, Taylor Lorenz, who we like and she's just put out a new user mag podcast. The media lied about the social media addiction trial because we talked about her work last week. We talked about the Facebook, the meta trials and how there's like all these 1600 lawsuits. Yeah, you made. They weren't really bitching about the content, but they were bitching about, basically the platforms were so addicting and they knew this and they unleashed this technology on kids and kids are addicted. And now Taylor Lorenz says, wait, wait a minute, let's talk to this expert here. You know, are we really quote, unquote addicted to AI and social media, you know, if it's not really possible? Because what, what she's saying is that social media and AI aren't technically substance substances, so they don't actually hijack your dopamine like an addiction would. So I'm gonna, I'm gonna agree and disagree. I'm gonna, I'm gonna go into a gray area here because I worked in the addiction field for four and a half years in Wichita, Kansas. And so I have seen all of the forms of crazy addiction, right? And like the craziest one to me is gambling addiction. There's, there's no substance in gambling. You're, it's a process addiction, right? It's, it's, you're not eating a food, so you're not overeating, you're not using an actual substance. You are addicted to gambling. And this, this was, I worked in this field well before we had the sports betting that we do on our phones. And now that is like almost everywhere and especially I live in Arizona. So you see a lot more here because I guess it's, there's, there's something about it that's more legal here. I'm not a gambler, never got into it. One of the things I never got addicted to, oddly enough, I preferred substances. But you actually can get addicted to these, these process addictions and it's, it's gonna have, you know, he gets into, I won't get into the whole study, but like you can use something addictively and it's like you don't have to detox from gambling addiction, right? You're just going to go to jail and you're just going to self exclude from all of the neighborhood casinos, right? That's how you deal with gambling addiction. Because that's the result of gambling addiction, right, is you commit a bunch of financial crimes, you get caught, you go to jail, your life is ruined, and you're probably going to, you know, get out of prison at some point. You continue to self exclude from casinos, you never get to go to them again, or you shouldn't, but you will and you'll get caught. You know, it's, it's a It's a bad flywheel to get going, right? So, you know, we're not going to self exclude ourselves from AI or social media, but it does have a detrimental effect on our behavior. Right? The platforms, the legacy media platforms are designed to be addictive. And then when we talk to people about getting on, you know, any Nostr app, they say, well, it's not addictive. It's not sucking me in. It's like, yes, that is the whole point and why I say we can make healthier, more ethical decisions. And if we're going to use AI, if we're going to consume social media, I think there's a better way. But I, I, I think it is addictive still. I, I think the media is, you know, technically centered on the addiction story. And I think it is also fitting that Taylor Lorenz calls it out and says, hey, wait a minute, this is not how dopamine works. Okay, but you can't have an addictive behavior. You know, why are, why are you using, why are you using social media? What does it do for you? And then if there are consequences, negative consequences to using social media or AI, either one, if you are facing negative consequences due to the use of these things and you're still doing it anyway, that's the technical definition of addiction. So it comes down to why are

[Derek Ross]

you, I was gonna say that's the 100% the definition of, of addiction. I mean, we know that social media is addictive. We know that it's gotten increasingly addictive over the past decade. We can literally see it. People, I mean even, even us, we're sitting here, you know, watching TV or touching grass, being outside. How many times do we pick up our phone because we're addicted to it. We're so used to doing it, we don't need to do it. I've caught myself being outside and I mean, I'm enjoying the weather and I'm like, hey, wonder what my phone's doing. I pick it up, you know, just to see something. I want to know if I have any notifications or I'm watching TV and as soon as a commercial hits or something, boom. I pull out my phone and then look at it. Or I come out of a movie theater. The first thing I do when I get outside, boom, boom. I pulled my phone to see what I missed. Like, like we're absolutely addicted to this. We want to know if we've, it's, we're in a hyper connected world and if we lose this connectivity is in our brain to figure out what happened during the time when we were disconnected and we want to reconnect and that disconnect. I'm not saying it's. It's healthy, but it's. It's. It's kind of unhealthy, this state that we're in. I think ignoring it is. Ignoring it is. And saying it doesn't exist is. Is not the way to make it better. We need to recognize that it is an actual problem.

[Heather Larson]

It is a problem. There. There's a. There are, you know, bodies in this country that decide, you know, how addiction works, how it's diagnosed. You know, one of the things that I, you know, some would disagree and agree with as well. Addiction's complicated and at the same time, not compliment complicated, because what it comes down to is you don't want to feel pain, right? That's why you get addicted to something, because to stop doing it causes you pain. To stop drinking alcohol causes you pain, to stop doing opiates causes you pain. You use them in the first place because you had pain. Look at Tiger Woods. He just got a dui. Turns out it was probably opiates. You know, I'll say allegedly, because I was just reading an article about it. It wasn't alcohol. It was, you know, and what do we know about Tiger Woods? Because I was walking, watching the documentary. We know that he injured his leg, had a bunch of surgeries because he wasn't taking care of it when it was injured. He was golfing when it was fractured because he was at the, you know, height of his career as a golfer. And so now he has to deal with pain. I've seen this over and over again. You know, working in the addiction field is there was some pain in your life, whether mental, emotional, physical, you subdued it with a substance, or somehow you got into gambling. You know, you got into social media, you got into AI. It's the same story. If you're doing it to avoid pain and if it's causing you consequences with your job, your social setup, your family, your friends, then, yeah, it's. It's becoming a problem. So I think that's one of the things that Taylor Lorenz is mentioning that like, oh, this is.

[Derek Ross]

This is.

[Heather Larson]

This is not the addiction that the media thinks it is. Well, the media doesn't know crap about addiction. I've seen this go on for years. They. It's a great story to tell people, right? And I think this is a point that she's making, that, oh, it's so addictive, it's so harmful. So is anything else that we do to excess. You know, we as humans have trouble.

[Derek Ross]

Why I love some of the apps that we're building, Heather, because we're not building addictive apps. Like, we know the problem with legacy social media. So we're building apps literally that don't have addictive metrics into it. And then it's kind of. Then it's kind of ironic then, because people. People look at Nostr as having the daily active users in the fall off and retention being horrible. And we're like, well, that's kind of how we're building stuff, though. Like. Like, we're literally building apps that are not addictive because we know it's bad. So we really can't complain if retention is bad because we're not making people addicted and we're selling people on anti addiction. So it's a. It's a little bit of, you know, six, one away, half dozen the other. You can't have it both here.

[Heather Larson]

No, it's a different mindset because we have no incentive to make the apps addictive. Yes. We want you to use our apps like, there's no business model here. Like, we're not making money off of ditto at this moment in time, first of all. And to make money off of ditto, we're also not interested in putting up ads, right. Which, because we want to do the ad model which ruined Twitter, obviously, that then we have to sell ads, which means we have.

[Derek Ross]

I still want to see a Twitter app with ads.

[Heather Larson]

You want to see you.

[Derek Ross]

I want to see how it does.

[Heather Larson]

You want to see a Noster app with ads?

[Derek Ross]

A Noster app? Yeah. I'm sorry. Yeah, I want to see a Noster app with ads. I think all I. 100%. I mean, I'm not going to use it. I'm sorry. But I think. I think that every business model should be tried and, and no one has tried that. I think I think someone should try it, see what happens.

[Heather Larson]

People are trying it the opposite way. People are flipping out on its head. Like our. Our friends Ian and Monda, selling an attention economy where, like, for example, if I want to advertise soapbox sessions, this podcast that we're on, I would have to pay people for their attention using Bitcoin. And so like people.

[Derek Ross]

I like that model, but I think. I think that model has a lot of potential and can be very successful. But I think traditional ad models, I, I literally. I hate it. I don't want to use it, but I, I think that it should be tried just to see how so we'd have that data point, right. Right now, we're assuming it would fail. It would crash and burn. But, but, but would it, though? We. No one's tried it on Nostr.

[Heather Larson]

Yeah, I get what you're saying, but that's the key selling point of Nostr is if, like, I write an article and I share the link with people and people want to read my article that I wrote and published on Noster, they're not going to have to do the cookie banner, they're not going to have to have five pop ups to sign up for my email list or any of that. You know, they're not going to be told to turn off their ad blocker and they can just read the article like the Internet, the way it was in 1995 when we had cool stuff and blink.

[Derek Ross]

But you can pay for content, though.

[Heather Larson]

You can.

[Derek Ross]

Like, like we have apps in the ecosystem, such as Fanfares, that can produce gated content behind a pay wall. And you could pay for the podcast, you could pay for the article, you could pay for the note, you know that. You could pay for the photo. I think that those type of use cases need to be explored more. They're. They're just in its infancy, I think in this ecosystem. No one's really. No one's really, I'll say, done it on a large scale yet. We have, we have some people testing it and some people producing little pieces of content, but we haven't had a large creator come in and try it. I think that would be interesting.

[Heather Larson]

That would be funny. I mean, if Taylor Swift did it. Good night. Like, it's all over, everybody.

[Derek Ross]

All right, fine.

[Heather Larson]

I'll.

[Derek Ross]

I'll send her a text. Hold on.

[Heather Larson]

Send it to Travy. Send it to.

[Derek Ross]

Yeah, so, you know, you know what? I was wet. I'm gonna go down a Derek rabbit hole real quick. I was wearing a sweater last week that I, that I really, really liked, and I thought I looked good in it. And my wife comes up to me and says, you know that sweater, it's from the Travis Kelce collection. And I was like, oh, my God, I need to take it off and never wear it again.

[Heather Larson]

What? Just because of that? You liked it?

[Derek Ross]

She bought it for me. It looks great.

[Heather Larson]

Yeah, she.

[Derek Ross]

I do. It was a joke. It was a joke. I liked it. I looked good in it. I liked it. I'm going to, I'm going to wear it again. I don't even know who the he is. He plays like foosball or something, right?

[Heather Larson]

Podcast with A nerd. And I'm in his sports. I know who all these people are. I watch sports.

[Derek Ross]

I know who he is.

[Heather Larson]

Okay, I was gonna say, like, you know who he was.

[Derek Ross]

I know who he is.

[Heather Larson]

He's Taylor's husband.

[Derek Ross]

Are they actually married now? I don't pay attention to celebrity married.

[Heather Larson]

They're getting married soon. I only pay attention to the funny ones, like Kristi Gnome.

[Derek Ross]

Oh, man.

[Heather Larson]

My hobby today is consuming Christy Gnome funny content.

[Derek Ross]

Her and her husband recently became celebrities, though, didn't they? That has not. That has nothing to do with Noster and AI and all the fun stuff, because I was.

[Heather Larson]

I was off. Off the podcast. I was bitching to Derek that we need more Christy Gnome memes on. On Noster. We just. We just need more Normie content. That's the hill. I'm gonna die on that.

[Derek Ross]

That is true. We do need more normie content. We do need more fun content, more memes. And if that meme is your husband wearing prosthetic. Prosthetic parts, then so be it.

[Heather Larson]

Prosthetic balloons. The podcast is going in a weird direction.

[Derek Ross]

I'm.

[Heather Larson]

Anyways, bring it back to the very.

[Derek Ross]

Bring it back. Bring it back. Heather.

[Heather Larson]

The topic that I wanted to dive back into, now that we've talked about the addiction thing. We've talked about addiction a lot, but we've also talked about this other thing, and it goes back to the world being on fire, everybody being replaced by an AI. And there. There's good and bad here. So if you're a Gen Z listening and you hate AI, don't tune out just yet. I've got something for you here because our good old buddy Jack Dorsey has put out a big, like, I don't know, manifesto online on. It's on the. It's on his Twitter and it's on the blog website. It's Jack's manifesto.

[Derek Ross]

It was good.

[Heather Larson]

I think he's got some points here because he. He's saying that, like, AI is more than just a productivity hack. Because I think that's where we are, right? I think we're at a place where that's what we're looking at AI as. It's just a productivity hack at this point in time. Like, it probably saves me time. It probably saves me, you know, cognitive disruption, whatever. It helps me do three things at once. You know, I'll have the. I'll have the open code going. I'll have. I'll have the ghosty terminal with Claude code. I'll have the Claude co work going. If I really Want to, you know, over tax myself and go a little nuts and get a little addictive with it. I can do those three things at once because the point is I can and it makes me more productive. Productive. But there's another layer, according to Jack Dorsey anyway, Block is replacing middle management with AI. Did you see this, Derek?

[Derek Ross]

Yeah, I read the whole article yesterday morning. Or no more.

[Heather Larson]

No more.

[Derek Ross]

Yeah, it was really interesting. I've worked at places where there were more middle management management, more middle managers than employees, where like middle managers had middle managers and those middle managers had other middle managers. And it's very, very innov. It's very, very inefficient. But Jack started off this article talking about the Roman Empire and how thousands of years ago they were able to disseminate information from one end of the empire to the other end of the empire just by communicating things up and down the chain, up and down the line. Saying that basically that people could manage anywhere between three to eight people and then those three to eight people would be managed by one person, then that person would report to another person and they would manage three to eight people reporting to them and so forth and so forth. And then eventually they're able to control entire battalions of people. Yeah, absolutely. They, they had, they built this hierarchical scheme that has been perfected over the past two millennia and has been modernized to corporations. And if you ever worked for a large corporation, you absolutely know that this exists. And while at times it seems efficient, it also seems extremely inefficient at other times. So Jack's take is to use AI as an intelligence layer, to essentially act as the mechanism that is moving everything up and down the chain, up and moving things down the line, disseminating information up and down. Absolutely. Well, it acts as the ladder. But the neat thing is maybe Block is a data company. They have an incredible amount of data. They know what transactions people do in stores, in retail. They know what transactions do people, people do on their phones. With cash app, you put all of this data together and now they, now they have so much financial transactional data that they can use that customer specific data to facilitate all the information and move things around from project to project where it needs to go just by looking at the actual data and doing analytics on it and they're using intelligence or are going to use intelligence. I mean do that. It's really cool.

[Heather Larson]

I mean I'm the person who crunches our soapbox data but because we all, we all crunch the data because we can, because it's easy now like, if you're, if you're not crunching data to make your decisions at this point in time, given that we have, you know, all of this AI stuff at our fingertips, like, what are you even doing? Like, you're making things up, right? Because, and, And I make sure that the data is good too. Like, I babysit it. I make sure it makes sense. I don't just let it tell me things because I, I definitely. I argue with my Claude a lot of the time, and it seems to appreciate that, but it doesn't seem to make it smarter. But, you know, like, why would you not be using some of these things? First of all, because, like, I can still do, like, the metrics, but I can do them faster. And also, like, I'll be honest, I have dyscalculia. So I'm gonna, like, transpose some numbers at some point. Like, I know I'm gonna do it. So, like, this has prevented me from doing that. And as bad as I am with math and numbers, I could still catch Claude, like, fudging some things sometimes that just don't even make sense. But, you know, it misses some things. So you, you know, definitely, like, cleanse

[Derek Ross]

your data, make sure people were still needed. Right? Like, so every company is going to be different. Maybe this doesn't work work for your company, but block with their reorganization, they're splitting everybody into three separate roles. So there'll be specialists that, that build specific things. You know, maybe that's building applications, build tools and so forth. Then there'll be people that owned very specific problems for set periods of time until that problem is fixed. And then these problem solvers will then move on to the next. The next problem. And then there'll be these. Then there'll be these player coaches, which are people that build and develop people simultaneously. And I was reading that, and I'm like, oh, is that like, is it like my role in the future? Is that like a devrel? Like, I'm building relationships, I'm going out and working on these edge cases, right? Because you need. You still need people to do that. You still need people to make the human connections and then go back to the engineers and be like, hey, hey, AI, hey, engineers, do the thing. So I think that this is still the hu. The very, very human element of this

[Heather Larson]

whole new hierarchy into, like, specialist who builds things. But then you also, like, I think we could all fit into these roles at different points in time. Like, sometimes your player.

[Derek Ross]

Well, they're, they all sound very similar. A lot of overlapping.

[Heather Larson]

I'll say so like, like the, the traditional job structure is shifting. In other words, I, I felt it with my job. I'm sure you felt it as well. I mean we use AI, obviously at Soapbox we built an AI product and also we, we all have the ability to run the metrics through AI. We all create this intelligence layer individually and as a company we have an intelligence layer as well. And you know, like Alex has his, you have yours, I have mine for our different functions that we do in this company. But we're different. We're not like Block. Right, right. Like Block is a major corporation with many arms. And then we're just so box. We're like a mom and pop baby startup that does probably a lot more R and D than anything else, which is why we have a lot of freaking data.

[Derek Ross]

I think for a massive company this makes sense to do it. I mean, I mean for a small company it makes sense for four reasons. Because you're small, you don't have the manpower, the human power. But then for a large company it makes even more sense because in large corporations a lot of time to act, to do things, you have to wait for approval, you have to wait for PRs, you have to wait for, you have to wait for sign off on things, but you have to wait for studies to be done. But if you could have an intelligence layer that just goes out there and says, hey, we noticed a problem over here in section A. Here's all the different data points that prove that section A has a problem. Here's all the places you need to go to fix it, just go do it. And then you, you essentially assemble and assign the teams. They go out and do the work. They don't have to wait for four different managers to approve the work to get done. It just, you had the intelligence layer essentially do all that approval for you in a much more efficient way. So it sounds like the company structure should be much more efficient and be able to get things done faster with less like corporate red tape.

[Heather Larson]

I think this is where like we're starting to see the downstream effects of AI because it's more than just like the self checkout thing, replacing the cashier at the grocery store. Now it's, it's, it's not only just that, you know, tit for tat, it's replacing humans. It's more like it is augmenting your job. It might be improving your job, but it's also changing your job and changing your role to where, hey Heather, if you don't like working for Hours on metrics. You don't have to do that at like, oh, God. Do you know how horrific of a job that was at a marketing agency to do metrics for clients? And how freaking boring that is and how time consuming that is? Because, you know, you gotta. You gotta do the metrics and then you gotta make sense. Yeah, like, make a deck. It was recommendations. Like that. That is a whole operation now.

[Derek Ross]

Your robot can do it now.

[Heather Larson]

My robot does it for me so I don't have to actually work with the numbers. And that's great for me, but it's also like, okay, so if I have all this AI at my DEs, then maybe I look at my job and the efficiency of it, and I'm not doing dumb manual labor anymore, and I'm not doing things that take time. Maybe I'm more of a builder. Maybe I'm more of a problem solver, and maybe I'm more of a player coach. Maybe I'm developing people and maybe I'm helping develop talent. And I have more of a human being role. You know, that I have a number crunching role. Or, you know, it can help me with my copywriting. I mean, I say that loosely because sometimes it writes really bad copy. But I. And. But it can save me time because it will outline something for me at least. And then I'm like, okay, I've got a skeleton of what I want to write. Or it gives me ideas. And I go, your ideas suck. Mine are better. Thanks. You know, glad we had this talk. And, you know, but it's. It is a helper and a time saver. And also, if I can get it to do the things I don't want to do. Like, you have a. You. Your bot posts on Twitter for you. You don't want to do that. You know, it's. It's. I don't.

[Derek Ross]

Yeah, I don't do it.

[Heather Larson]

Yeah, but it's. It's taking content that you wrote at the place you like, Noster, and it's, you know, reposting it to the place you don't like.

[Derek Ross]

Let me. Let me read something. Posted something on its own today, and it told me it did it. I didn't tell it to do this. It says, this morning at 10am it messaged me. It says, April Fools were shutting down Noster. You. And then the next line, you can't. It's a protocol. I. I didn't tell it to do that. It did it on its own.

[Heather Larson]

Fool's jokes. That's. That's great.

[Derek Ross]

It probably saw Me talking about April Fool's jokes on Noster, and then it made its own April Fool's joke. Yeah, like, but I guess I can see that's. It's like, hey, Derek mentioned an April Fool's joke, so I'm gonna make one, I guess. But, yeah, I see. I see your point. Yeah. Yeah, I see your point.

[Heather Larson]

That's a. That's a win. You know, if it works for you, it works for you. If you get value out of that, then great, you know? So, like, I. I just think that it's. The shifting job role is like, okay, if you want to be a middle manager when you grow up, that's probably not going to happen. Or. Or it will.

[Derek Ross]

But, yeah, that. That job is. Is going away.

[Heather Larson]

It's. It's.

[Derek Ross]

That job's going away.

[Heather Larson]

So then the question becomes, how do you become. I don't know, indispensable is probably the wrong. How do you become like a chameleon.

[Derek Ross]

We've talked about this on the show before, though. It's. It's actually, you know, we're going to rebrand Derek's three Cs to how to be a chameleon. We've talked about this. We said you need to be. You need. Yeah. You have to have critical thinking, you have to have creativity, and you have to have communication skills. Those three things together will make you successful in the AI future. Have we chameleon skills? We'll.

[Heather Larson]

We'll start calling it is. Is AI waking me up a little bit? Because have we had jobs in the past where we've just done crap work and we've been asleep and we've lost.

[Derek Ross]

Repetitive.

[Heather Larson]

Repetitive. Because now I feel like

[Derek Ross]

100. I. I will tell you, I. I loved my old job. I was there for 16 years. I absolutely loved it. It was a great place to work. But I did the same thing all of the time.

[Heather Larson]

Yeah.

[Derek Ross]

Every day.

[Heather Larson]

And you could tell.

[Derek Ross]

And I felt like I was losing my creativity in my critical thinking unless there was, like, a major problem I had to fix. But generally speaking, I wasn't allowed to be creative. I still had to have good communication skills. But when it came to critical thinking and creativity, like, didn't really happen every single day. But now with AI.

[Heather Larson]

Yeah.

[Derek Ross]

In. In my new role, I. I have to. I have to have these skills and I have to use them every single day. Job where before it was almost like a novelty.

[Heather Larson]

Yeah. Jobs have been maybe a little formulaic or maybe we get comfortable at a job and we don't.

[Derek Ross]

Comfortable. Yeah.

[Heather Larson]

Because we because you get into a cycle where like on Mondays they do this. On Tuesdays I do this. Like I'm in that cycle, right? The last day of the month was yesterday. So today I can go do all the metrics for all of the things and, and I'm all about that. And I'm like, oh, it doesn't have to be, this doesn't have to be a huge process now because I'll just have, I'll feed Claude a bunch of CSVs and be like, tell me, tell me what you got. And then I'll evaluate it and do the thing and do the thing and then I'll move the on. And it doesn't have to be this big time sucking activity. And so it's like, okay, well then I, that frees the brain up too, because then I could come up with new ideas because my brain isn't constantly like churning numbers or, you know, social posts or copy or whatever kind of things or it's like you get caught in. Because you do them and you do them well as a human being and then that becomes your job and it kind of. You get pigeonholed there and then it gets hard to try new things because you still got to do all this work. Now you have the bot do like the work that you're maybe good at or maybe it augments it for you. And then you go, okay, well what do I do now that I'm. My brain's a little fresh because I think I got a little burned out for a while, right? Because there's, There were too many notifications.

[Derek Ross]

Well, that's AI. That's the.

[Heather Larson]

I admit that I got burned.

[Derek Ross]

That's the path of, well, that's the path of the, the honeymoon phase, right? Everything is new and exciting and you, you dive into it and you love it for a while and, and it's, it's super exciting. But then, sure, maybe you kind of need to detox from it. Yeah, you, you know, I mean, I, I obsess over things over, over technology. I obsess over things I become passionate about and, and then I go like balls to the wall with it and I love it. And every. And then sometimes I'm just like, okay, listen, I've been doing this non stop for how many days? Hours, weeks, whatever. I need a break. I need to go touch my grass, touch some water, get on a boat, and then I do it. I, I think that everybody needs to do that. Like we. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Visit my family. No, everybody needs to do these things. We need to we need to step away from the tech and have less screen times.

[Heather Larson]

And, well, you know what I did.

[Derek Ross]

I'm still under the argument, Heather, that in the grand scheme of things, AI is going to do this for us. I really think AI is going to allow us to touch more grass.

[Heather Larson]

I. I realized, I don't know, like, a month or so ago, I was like, I'm really, really burned out. And I deleted all of the messaging apps off of my phone, and I started turning off my phone when I would leave the house at, like, 6. I'm like, I want my phone in case I, like, see an accident or so. I don't know.

[Derek Ross]

I couldn't do that.

[Heather Larson]

No. But I would start turning my phone off when I went out at night, and I would just turn the phone off. So they have this brick in my bag, right. And I'd just be like, this is cool. And then, like, apparently I missed a text message from my family one night, and I. I didn't know that they texted me while I turned my phone off. And then the next morning, they start texting me again. And I was. I was out on the golf course, and I didn't want to talk to them. Love them, but I didn't want to talk to them while I was at the golf course because I was taking a golf lesson. And so then they were, like, panicking. And so then suddenly I'm getting, like, texts and calls because I hadn't answered in 12 hours. I didn't receive the first text. And so, like, they were all upset that I'd gone 12 hours without talking to them. Derek. They thought I was dead. So you know what they did? It came to my house.

[Derek Ross]

They came in a wellness check.

[Heather Larson]

Yeah. They did a welfare check. And. And they're like, she's not home. And so then my cousin sends in big guns. She sends in my nephew. Auntie, are you okay? Yes, yes, son, I'm coming. I'm at the golf course. Oh, okay. You know, because she knows I'll answer the kids, so. So my family was fully freaked out.

[Derek Ross]

Yeah, my. This happened to my sister recently.

[Heather Larson]

You can't. You can't.

[Derek Ross]

She and her friend. Well, her and her friend were on vacation in Costa Rica. And I don't remember how many hours it was, but she didn't get back to a text from my parents. And then my parents, like, texted, like. Like, my other sisters and was like, hey, have you heard from Stephanie? And. No. And then all of a sudden, like, everyone's texting my sister, staff and my calling Her. And, like, then she gets back to her phone. Like. Like, sure. After like 12 hours. And she's like, what the. Like, like.

[Heather Larson]

Because in my mind, I'd missed the first text the night before, so I was like, you just texted me an hour ago. Why are you coming in glued house? I didn't know they went to my house because I didn't. I did not check my phone and check all the messages until I was done golfing. And. And then my. My cousin was like, like, you need to check your phone. We. We went. You had a package delivered here. We. We took it in your living room.

[Derek Ross]

Oh, my God.

[Heather Larson]

You went to my house?

[Derek Ross]

I don't know if I could do that. Like, I don't know if I could do that. What if somebody is bearish on Noster and they need me to give them the. The Pro vita?

[Heather Larson]

Your kids are under 18, so you don't get to really turn off your phone in that situation. Like, dad has to be available.

[Derek Ross]

No. Yeah, yeah. My. Yeah. Yeah. 100. Like, my son. I don't think he left. I'm recording the podcast, but he wanted to go somewhere earlier and like, yeah, like, I. I have. I have the phone and I'm. I always have it on me when the kids aren't here. My wife's not here. Like, sure. I wanna. I wanna make sure they're okay.

[Heather Larson]

Yeah, mine are all adults, but they still call me. Like, they need something, like. Or my niece, who is bossy, like her mother, she'll. She'll call me. And one day it was raining, which, you know, is a big deal here in the desert, and the streets were flowing well.

[Derek Ross]

Yeah, that's like a. Yeah, you have a celebration when that happens, right?

[Heather Larson]

Call me. No, she called me. She was. She was. You need you. You need to stay home. You can't go out. Excuse me. Excuse me. 23 year old. Yeah, it's raining. The streets are flooding. You need to stay home. She. She did not want me to go out and probably drown. Auntie doesn't know. This kid doesn't understand that I lived in the, like, Kansas. There were tornadoes and floods and all kinds of things. But no, she was. They freak out here so much when the weather changes. Auntie, you can't leave the house. You can't go out. The streets are flooded.

[Derek Ross]

All right, Heather, I'm going to nerd snipe you. I'm going to nerd snipe you. I just thought of something, and I know that you built something similar to it, but it's been A long time since you've built something. You need to build some, some type of detox app on Nostr. Some type of digital. Digital detox app. And that sounds like an oxymoron because we're using digital to detox from digital. But, but I, but I think you can figure this out. I can think that you can figure it out. Maybe it is. Well, well, I'm. I'm thinking outside the box here now. What if it tracks your. How. Well, what if it tracks how. How active you have been or haven't been on Nostr? Right. And so. So you now have a goal.

[Heather Larson]

Yeah.

[Derek Ross]

Your digital well being. Google calls it, I assume iOS calls it the same thing. So it's a, it's a away from Noster.

[Heather Larson]

You've tracker. You overdid it today on Noster. You shared too many Kirsty Gnome memes. Heather, you need to go touch grass.

[Derek Ross]

You've. You've posted on Noster too many times. You know, 30 days consecutively. You posted on Noster. You now need to take three days off to digitally detox something fun like that.

[Heather Larson]

The say Less app, Heather, you've overdone it. You've over posted. You talk too much about radio detox and soapbox sessions. Like, shut up. It should just stop working. It should be a digital lockbox.

[Derek Ross]

No, I like that. I like it. Call it say Less. And if you have a streak of like seven days or two weeks or 30 days, whatever you come up with, and you be like, okay, clearly you need to touch grass for a little bit. Say less. And you get this notification and it's like, yo, you need to say less.

[Heather Larson]

Who? Who? Nosters. More. More. Who posts more on Noster, me or you? Who's worse? That's the app we need to tell to analyze our end pubs and say who posts way too much and replies.

[Derek Ross]

You could gamify that.

[Heather Larson]

Who's worse? Derek? Or.

[Derek Ross]

And then you could, well, you could gamify it and you could assign badges then to people for winning awards as being, you know, more addicted or less addicted and so forth. Who's worse at these different feats? Well, ditto. Ditto's bringing it back, man. We are bringing back. It's actually, it's a third renaissance of badges. The first Noster renaissance of badges was three years ago, almost to the day. And then about a year and a half later, Sir Sleepy said, hey, we need more badges. And Sir Sleepy just started blown badges up all over the place. And that was the second renaissance. And then badges died off. But Ditto is making badges fun again or for the first time and starting. Starting this renaissance. Well, we're, We're. We have badges are first class citizens in the app. You can create badges, you can accept badges, you can view badges, you can earn badges.

[Heather Larson]

I gave it badges. It's actually really cool.

[Derek Ross]

You did well. You did something that broke my notifications when you gave me a badge too.

[Heather Larson]

I am such a good bug finder. Did you guys fix that bug that I found? Because I broke it yesterday.

[Derek Ross]

Yes. Alex fixed it. Yes. You literally. You literally broke my ditto to where for like two hours I would see the notification dot and I'm like, huh? Notification? And I click on it and like, no. And the app would crash and then I'd be in the app five minutes later. Hey, I have a notification. Click on the dot.

[Heather Larson]

No.

[Derek Ross]

I did this so many times. I was like, I, I knew it was broken for hours, but I kept clicking on it.

[Heather Larson]

Someday when the world comes to Noster, my. But someday, when the world comes to Noster and we have the history of Noster and how it came to be, it's going to be like that girl, that Heather Larson chick that makes songs longer girl. She. She's the reason why everything works because she broke it off first.

[Derek Ross]

She found the bugs. Well, she found the bugs

[Heather Larson]

on the podcast.

[Derek Ross]

Oh, we're. We're also in the Ditto user group, which, if you're a Ditto user and you want to help shape the future of Ditto, slide into my DMS and I'll slide right back and I'll get you an invite to the Ditto user group. We have about. I don't know. I don't know. I know. We, we have. We have several people in there. There's dozens of us. Actually, there's probably about two dozen people in there. We're like two dozen users in this user group. And everybody that's in the user group will get a badge for contributing to making Ditto great again.

[Heather Larson]

So I, I made some cool bad. I made a badge that said that you and I are pains in Alex Leon's ass. I mean, I made you a badge.

[Derek Ross]

I think that badge is accurate.

[Heather Larson]

100 broke the nostril, and then I made it.

[Derek Ross]

Yeah, you broke the Noster when you made that one.

[Heather Larson]

I would look, but I can't see now because I, I. Something happened to my eye and, And. But I, I made a badge. You're the Soapbox sessions host. You're a pain in Alex's ass. What else did I give You, I can't remember now.

[Derek Ross]

We should make badges. We should make badges for soapbox sessions listeners.

[Heather Larson]

Yes. That's a lot of badges.

[Derek Ross]

Yeah, we should.

[Heather Larson]

Can we. But make it easy so that I can give it to, like all of the listeners who want one at once. Like, they need. That's the one thing that's always been missing from badges is that they're very manual labor. So how can I send a mass amount of badges at once? Because I used to make them for Wrigley. Every time we had a block party, I would make a badge. And I think I did that a few times. And I was like, God, this is laborious. Because I would, I would say everybody who replies to this post will get a badge. And it was so hard to go through on nostr. It was a lot of, like, back and forth. There's a lot of backpacking to go through and make sure I didn't miss a single person. So there's got to be an easier way to award badges to the masses. Especially in this age of AI where I could do anything in like 30 seconds or one minute with my quad code. Like, I just need to award.

[Derek Ross]

Well, it looks like we have the user interface for that. So you can go down through and click on people and just start adding them. Yeah. So. So you. So you can do this.

[Heather Larson]

Yeah. Cool. There's. There's just, it's just got to be easy. Like, this is. That's the best part about Nosters. We just keep making it. Like, if you don't like something in Ditto and you want us to make it easier, that's what Ditto is all about. Or just do it yourself if you know how. Because you can do it with Shakespeare. Remix the hell out of it. Give it whatever feature you want. Like, who else makes a social media app that can do all of the things that Ditto does and then says, hey, by the way, you're kind of autonomous here. You can, you know, make your own features too. With our other product that's actually a truly open piece of AI. Like who. Who else does this? And it doesn't charge you money. It's because, again, Nostrs is a cost free.

[Derek Ross]

Nostrs. Nostr is the embodiment of free and open source protocols and software. So yeah, there's, there's not really people that charge you for doing a lot of things now. There are people that can charge you, and that's beautiful too, because they have the option to if they want to.

[Heather Larson]

You have the choice. You can, you can Send people your money if, if you want to. Or you can just be on Noster totally for free. Never pay a single sat. Dime, whatever, and you'll probably receive some money, but you, you know, you never have to give up your money where it's like, I did a cost breakdown the other day of like, what do you have to pay to use all of the leg. Legacy social media apps? And it's like just, just to be seen on Twitter, you got to pay like three or eight bucks a month. Right. And then, like, just to, like, get seen on LinkedIn, it's probably about 40 bucks a month. So, like, who's paying for. So if you're looking for a job,

[Derek Ross]

they do, they do have a cost, right? You have to pay. That's insane for.

[Heather Larson]

For most of them.

[Derek Ross]

Well, actually, actually, Heather, maybe that. Maybe it's worth it if you are actually looking for a job, right? Like, yeah. Is that, Unless. Is that when it becomes viable?

[Heather Larson]

Well, what if, what if you're unemployed and you don't have any money coming in and maybe, maybe you're. You're like desperate to find a job and that's insulting that you would have to pay 40 bucks a month.

[Derek Ross]

Okay.

[Heather Larson]

To be seen.

[Derek Ross]

I think that's have to pay pay to play at that point. Yeah, yeah.

[Heather Larson]

The more you pay on LinkedIn, the more, you know, features you get. Like, I think it goes, it goes up to like some obscene amount a month. But we know it's overpriced. We know LinkedIn's overpriced. Like, how many scammers are there on LinkedIn? You know, not that it doesn't happen on other platforms, but I mean, it's. LinkedIn is scammy as hell. I guess it's not helping you in this, in this day and age when you can use your cloud bot to, to find new jobs. I know somebody who's done that who's actually, like, applied.

[Derek Ross]

Yeah, I had a scammer, I had a scammer try to recruit me on LinkedIn. They sent me a LinkedIn email telling me that, that they were starting. I don't remember the name of the. Some, some AI platform. And they needed me to be on their platform. And I was curious and I went and looked at it. They literally just want people to say yes, so then they could say, hey, all these people are on this platform to have, using AI to find people work and stuff like that. And, and I was looking down through it and I thought it was really, really, really scammy. And I was like, Denied. Denied.

[Heather Larson]

I get text messages with, like, images attached to, like.

[Derek Ross]

I mean, scans exist everywhere.

[Heather Larson]

Yeah, it's. It's. It's a. It's everywhere. And it's going to just be worse now because there's. The bots to do it are more accessible. But we've been getting spammed by bots for job searches for a long time. Like, it's nothing new. Like, it's just. They have new ways to do it now.

[Derek Ross]

That's.

[Heather Larson]

That's the shitty part. It's for the people who are desperate for whatever it is. You know, you're just going to have to be really discerning about whatever comes through, really discerning about information for sure. It's a time like you can't outsource your thinking to AI you still have to critically think, which you mentioned.

[Derek Ross]

That's. That's one of the chameleon steps.

[Heather Larson]

The chameleon. Oh, yeah, we call it. We're calling it the chameleon thing now. You know, what is it again? Critical thinking.

[Derek Ross]

Creativity. Critical thinking, Creativity.

[Heather Larson]

Creativity.

[Derek Ross]

It's another C. Communicate. You don't have good communication. You can't. Yeah, you have to be able to communicate.

[Heather Larson]

Okay, there we go. Critical thinking, creativity, Communication.

[Derek Ross]

Yes, but we need to think of. We need to think of something fun, like the chameleon. What? The chameleon program. The chameleon.

[Heather Larson]

Put it through AI chameleon. Chameleon steps.

[Derek Ross]

Yeah.

[Heather Larson]

Wasn't exciting enough?

[Derek Ross]

The three C. The three saying that the three Cs isn't fun, but the chameleon effect. The. The chameleon steps. I don't know. We'll put it through AI and next week we'll tell you what, we're offic. We're officially calling it Derek's three Steps to Success. Using AI isn't sexy, but the chameleon Something is. We just need to find out what that something is.

[Heather Larson]

Are talking about AI So hard? You just activated my siri. Was something you said.

[Derek Ross]

Oh, no, my phone. I hate Apple.

[Heather Larson]

I couldn't see what it said because I took one contact out a couple minutes ago, so I can't really. I can see.

[Derek Ross]

No, I'm. I'm so sorry to do that. I'm so sorry to do that to you and to myself. Like, I hate Apple. Like, what did I do to deserve this Apple?

[Heather Larson]

And I love Apple. I've been an Apple customer for 21 years, but Apple has stopped. When did Apple stop innovating? Like, when was truly the end of it? Because all I've Gotten this year is liquid glass. And I'm not excited about liquid glass and Apple Intelligence.

[Derek Ross]

Didn't Johnny, I've like. Well, didn't Johnny I've like step. Step down or do something years ago? I don't know.

[Heather Larson]

Yeah, that was probably it.

[Derek Ross]

Well, Apple, Apple Intelligence. Steve, Apple Intelligence is based off of Gemini.

[Heather Larson]

Oh, yeah. That's why it sucks. But like, Steve Jobs is rolling over in his grave because this, this was the most innovative stuff years ago. And like, it's just little things that don't. That Apple could do that. It won't do that. Just it's. It's a lazy trillionaire. Right? Because, you know, I, I a lazy trillionaire. It's a lazy trillionaire. I love Apple tv. I'll die on this hill. Because Apple TV shows are actually very good. Most of them are some of the best things I've watched on tv. And I'm almost purely an Apple TV and HBO girl. But you know what, Apple I on this because think about it. Like, I have an iPad, a MacBook and an iPhone and it will send me push notifications about shows. Okay, you could just put that on my Apple ical so that I know that my show is debuting or whatever. But. But Apple also does sports, right? With mls. It could. It knows I like Inter Miami and that's my team.

[Derek Ross]

Because like, like Marmot.

[Heather Larson]

Like, like marmot. I don't know what Marmot does, but no, Apple.

[Derek Ross]

The marmot. The Marmot protocol uses mls.

[Heather Larson]

No, I'm talking about Major League Soccer. You non.

[Derek Ross]

I know you're talking about soccer. I know you're talking about soccer. But ML. But we. We've talked about MLS on the show. It's just a different kind of mls.

[Heather Larson]

Heather. Different. No, I'm talking about soccer. So like, I like Inter Miami and Apple.

[Derek Ross]

I love soccer. I used to play soccer.

[Heather Larson]

I don't hear kid play soccer. I want for Apple to grow up and put the Inter Miami games on my ical. Like, you have the technology. You have Apple TV and Apple Sports and push notifications on my calendar. Like, I'm trying to follow all of the sports. I'm trying to follow the Suns. I'm trying to follow the Mercury. I'm trying to follow mls, the soccer kind with Inter Miami. I want to know why. Why can't al Apple just put the MLS games that I want to follow? Why can't it put it on my calendar? Why is it just a push notification for Apple TV on all my devices?

[Derek Ross]

Do you know why? Because Apple doesn't Use Noster. If Apple use Noster we could have one of our beautiful devs solve this problem.

[Heather Larson]

I could, I could have you. We could Calendar app. You could solve this and be like

[Derek Ross]

if there's Nostradambi which literally open code Claude Plectose and I would solve this.

[Heather Larson]

You could fix my consumption of media for me. Be like Heather doesn't want to miss this thing on Zap Stream so my Plectos calendar will let her know on her phone that she can watch this thing. Because I love. Yeah, I know the sports is on tv. I'm just bad at remembering which game is on when and then I gotta go to the schedule. Then I need to push notification the schedule. But like why can't Apple just put it on my ical? Ical has never changed in 21 years. It has never improved in 21 years. That's why I call Apple a lazy trillionaire. So yes, I love Apple but I also recognize that it has a lot of room for improvement there. Are you happy now? I went off on a tangent.

[Derek Ross]

All I heard was Apple sucks. All I heard Apple sucks.

[Heather Larson]

Never going to Android though because it's a pain in the ass.

[Derek Ross]

Let's you know, we're about out of time here. I want to hit on a couple real quick things from the Noster verse. We had some major app updates this past week and we're just going to, we're just going to say our friends at Amethyst, which is basically just Veer. Veer and his team of open source contributors have put out like eight, eight different releases I think over the past week. That's awesome. That means we're innovating and we're fixing bugs. There's some UI changes for videos you now have the right to disappear and all sorts of new exciting things for that wisp. Ut. Ut. Well yeah, but now like there's a nip for it. WISP put out all sorts of new updates. Wisp. WISP is getting really good. It really is. And WISPs latest update today is Ditto was renamed to Wisp. If you go to Ditto Pub it says Wisp. It has the WISP logo. The best WISP update came from Ditto. Yes, today is April 4th, fools. So that was funny.

[Heather Larson]

I don't have wisp. So I'm asking this morning, I'm like why does our logo look like a sperm? And so that. Because I. I don't know what WISP looks like because I don't have an answer right now. I was so lost this morning. I Was like, what did you.

[Derek Ross]

Listen. Okay. The wisp logo literally does look like a sperm. It does, but it's supposed to look like. It's supposed to look like a wisp. A wisp is a. I know what I mean. And so when I think of wisp, I think of the. I think of the bouncy, floating spirit of a night elf that is floating around in a video game. That's what I think of a wisp.

[Heather Larson]

What does that even look like? It looks like.

[Derek Ross]

It literally looks like. It literally looks like that. It's a. It's a little glowy floating sperm thing.

[Heather Larson]

I guess he could have gone with the fart emoji. That little. When you. When you type wind.

[Derek Ross]

No, no, I like. I like the wisp. I like the wisp logo, actually. I. I like it a lot.

[Heather Larson]

We love. We love you, utxo. We love you, UTXO Webmaster. We love you wisp.

[Derek Ross]

Got a whole bunch of updates because it's an active development and ditto. Got a whole bunch of updates because it's in active development. We. We shipped a whole bunch of badge updates. We shipped letters over the past week. Letters are actually really cool. I would say check out the letters and send a letter. Yeah, they're really. They're really. They're cute. They're pretty, really polished. Ui. Yeah. You know what you did? You did send me a letter.

[Heather Larson]

See what he's like, See, he's like.

[Derek Ross]

That's just how that goes.

[Heather Larson]

That's just how it goes more. I wrote Morgan a letter and she answered. What it. What? What? We can't answer.

[Derek Ross]

Morgan has wrote to me two different letters, and in both letters she said I stink. I smell.

[Heather Larson]

I said, drink your water. And she's like, I have not been drinking my water. And so, yeah, I need to send

[Derek Ross]

her a letter back and tell her that she smells. You know, that's not very nice.

[Heather Larson]

We are so.

[Derek Ross]

Okay, Heather. I will.

[Heather Larson]

The people building your.

[Derek Ross]

I will. I will. I will send you a letter, Heather. It's just going to be like a. Can you attach audio files to.

[Heather Larson]

No longer. It erases it. By the way, that's. That's a bug. If you. Where you type your name at the bottom. It has to be short or it goes blank. Just. Just so you know. That's something I broke today. Forgot to tell you.

[Derek Ross]

Okay.

[Heather Larson]

Glad we brought this up.

[Derek Ross]

We have a whole bunch of other. Other neat little things. So. So, so, you know, remember back in the day you used to be able to poke on Facebook. You can now do pokes on. On Ditto. They're just emoji reactions. But. But they're emoji reactions to a profile. You did poke me.

[Heather Larson]

You did.

[Derek Ross]

But didn't you give me the finger?

[Heather Larson]

No, I suggested it.

[Derek Ross]

Isn't the finger it. Oh, you suggested it. Okay, okay.

[Heather Larson]

To be a middle finger. So when I poke you, get to this. Because that would be. That would be, like, perfect for our friendship. Every time we poke each other, we're just like.

[Derek Ross]

And. And we. On. Another big feature you should check out besides letters and the new badges is the blobby. Blobbies are now live on Ditto. So blobbies are like Tamagotchi Neopets, virtual pets. So you can go. You. You can go play with your pets. And I think. I think that's about it. I mean, tons and tons of bug fixes. Tons of bug fixes and UI enhancements. But check it out. Let us know what you think. And if you want to get in the Doug, slide into my dms and Derek will. Derek will dig you.

[Heather Larson]

I guess Derek will slide and just slide into Derek's dms, get on Ditto, and send him a letter. Make him answer.

[Derek Ross]

Send me a letter. Actually, actually, actually, that's. That's. That's what I should do. If you want to get in the Doug, send me a letter with a formal request. And Doug invites will only be sent via letter.

[Heather Larson]

What. What is Doug? What is that again? Did you explain this? What is a Doug, Derek?

[Derek Ross]

Yes, a Doug is a. No, no, no. Ditto. No, no, no. Ditto user group.

[Heather Larson]

Ditto user group as a Doug. Okay, that's. Is that our little chat on signal that we invite people to so they can give us feedback? Is that what you were talking about?

[Derek Ross]

It's literally the name of the chat.

[Heather Larson]

It's a very active chat. I can't. I look at it once a day because it's like.

[Derek Ross]

It is an active chat and so

[Heather Larson]

much is going on. Well, that is fantastic. We have things.

[Derek Ross]

Thank you, Heather.

[Heather Larson]

We have to get ready for Vegas, Derek.

[Derek Ross]

We do. Vegas is coming up. Nos Vegas. We're having speakers. We're having musicians, we're having chain Duel. We're having nostritches. We will see you there in a month.

[Heather Larson]

Let's do it.

[Derek Ross]

Oh, yeah.