Soapbox Sessions

Heather Larson and Derek Ross make the case that HODL culture is killing value for value, trace how music and money got separated over the past 25 years, and share breaking news about PubPay bringing real-time zaps to speakers on the Bitcoin Conference open source stage. NosVegas is April 28! In This Episode NOS Vegas April 28: We All Scream nightclub, 517 Fremont Street, Las Vegas. Tickets $21: https://nosvegas.shakespeare.wtf/ Stream live at tunestr.io PubPay (pubpay.me): zaps for conference speakers, now on the open source stage Podster (podster.org): Derek's Nostr-native podcast hosting The current class of Bitcoiners came for number go up, ETFs, and politician simping. They did not come to spend. Spend and replace is not a radical idea. Laszlo had to spend 10,000 Bitcoin to kick this whole thing off. HODL culture has held value for value back. Derek spent a year walking up to Bitcoiners at events and explaining zaps. They thought it was cool. They did nothing. The music industry broke over two decades. Cassingles were a dollar at Tower Records. Napster happened. Spotify arrived. Streaming separated music from money and made it seamless enough that no one thinks about what artists earn. Sara Jade made $700 in 30 minutes at a Phoenix show in 2024, paid in Bitcoin over Lightning. If she never touched it, the money doubled by year end. Eliza MacLamb broke the Chaotic Good story before Wired. An independent musician beat the gatekeepers at their own game. Live Nation and Ticketmaster will not be fixed by the government. The open source fix is already built. Heather got shadowbanned on TikTok for using the hashtag Ticketmaster. TikTok has a deal with them. None of this happens on Nostr. Breaking news: PubPay is bringing zaps to the Bitcoin Conference open source stage. Every speaker received a step-by-step guide to submit to the PubPay dashboard. The audience can zap speakers in real time. PubPay will also be at NOS Vegas on the 28th for musicians. NOS Vegas is April 28 at We All Scream, 517 Fremont Street. Talks at 7pm, live music, DJ Tatum Turnup upstairs. $21 tickets. Stream on tunestr.io. There is a rumor about a special guest at the Bitcoin Conference. Contact has been made. Chapters 00:00 Bitcoiners Came for the Wrong Reasons 01:52 Spend and Replace 03:34 HODL Culture Has Held Value for Value Back 04:50 Why We Hate the Term Value for Value 06:28 Proof of Work Applies to Musicians 07:08 From Cassingles to Spotify 09:44 Bitcoin Fixes the Music Industry 10:07 FM Rodeo and Stats by Southwest 11:29 What Bands Do to Make Money 13:45 Sarah Jade Is Playing with Jason Mraz Before Vegas 14:43 Streaming Won Because It Was Seamless 17:59 People Are Starting to Ditch Spotify 18:55 Eliza MacLamb Broke the Chaotic Good Story Before Wired 20:19 We Need Our Own Psy-Op 23:41 Why Supporting Content Feels Foreign 25:44 The Government Will Not Fix Live Nation 29:00 Bitcoin and Nostr Give Artists a Platform No One Can Take Down 30:41 Podstr and Radio Detox on Fountain 40:20 Heather Got Shadowbanned for Mentioning Ticketmaster 42:08 Why Decentralized Networks Fix This 43:38 Breaking News: PubPay Brings Zaps to the Bitcoin Conference 45:39 NosVegas Is April 28 51:37 Go to the Smaller Stages 54:01 Derek and Heather Have Not Seen Each Other Since Nashville 56:19 Derek's Vegas Plans and the Women's Bash 59:18 Bitcoin Is Trying to Hit 79K

Soapbox Sessions Episode 33: AI Music Contra-Versy, The NosVegas Show, and the Week Derek Broke the AI Budget Heather Larson and Derek Ross are back with a packed episode covering NOS Vegas, Tunestr.io 2.0, AI music, the new Ditto features, and a dive into the latest AI workplace stats. Plus: Right Said Fred joins Nostr, social media detox science, and a debate about whether AI-generated music needs a warning label. In This Episode NoSVegas April 28: tunestr.io Buy tickets! https://nosvegas.shakespeare.wtf/ Maggie Mae's Austin: https://maggiemaesaustin.com/ Derek's Nostr Resources: https://nostr-resources.surge.sh/ Ditto: try on web, Google Play, Zapstore, and now iOs! KC Bitcoiners Block Party RSVP: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSeOK7RiAhAhYqsKIYqNjI_mep9io8Gwbt-uNbhi_9tW6I0XIA/viewform AI has replaced work for 20% of full-time US employees: https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/rcna267238 #NosVegas is April 28 at We All Scream nightclub (near Fremont St). We'll have talks in the Grow Nostr room to kick off the night at 7:00 with the party running from 7pm to 1am. Talks from Heather, Derek, Paul from Primal, Eric from Portland, and new talk from Car from Pleblab and Christian from OpenAgents. Live music from Sara Jade, Abel James, and The Higher Low, then DJ Tatum Turnup upstairs. One confirmed special guest, second still in the works. Tickets are $21. Stream live at tunestr.io. Tunestr.io 2.0 is dropping. New features, bug fixes, social content on events pages, and updated copy about what the platform is and why it exists. Derek and Claude coded it together, Tunestr Founder OpenMike approved it, and it goes live this week. Maggie Mae's in Austin rebuilt their entire website using Shakespeare and added a Nostr-powered events calendar. Every musical act, almost every day of the week, all on Nostr. The site is at maggiemaesaustin.com and it is a case study in how a non-developer small business can go full Nostr without starting from scratch. Annonymal is a real band. Six members, all anonymous by choice, writing and recording their own music. They did a Geyser Fund campaign to cover studio time. People assumed they were AI because there are no faces. They are not AI. Contra makes music with his son. His son plays drums and studies music theory. They use Logic Pro and some AI in the process. Contra has been taking heat for AI slop but the father-son angle has never been on the Geyser Fund page. It should be. Heather interviewed him on Radio Detox, episode out within 24 hours of this one. Should AI music have a label? Heather and Derek debate the line between AI-augmented and AI-generated, how Spotify has created fake AI playlists to cut royalties, and whether a song you genuinely enjoyed becomes less valuable once you know it was machine-made. No clean answer reached. 20 percent of full-time US workers say AI is already doing part of their job. 50 percent of adults used AI at least once in the past week. Only 8 percent are using autonomous agents. Half of workers using AI at work are paying for their own subscriptions, not using company-provided tools. Anthropic changed the Claude Code subscription model, blocking access to third-party tools like OpenClaw. Derek tried Gemma 4 from Google (did not go well), then switched to GLM 5.1 from Z.AI at $80 per quarter. It works but requires more prompting. Paying per API token for one week cost $200. Ditto launched new features including Blobbi virtual pets, Letters (decorated personal messages with 3D envelope animations), a full in-app article editor, badges, custom emoji packs with drag-and-drop, and the ability to run Nsites directly inside the app. Head to Ditto.pub, or get it in the App Store, Google Play, and ZapStore! Derek updated his Nostr resources guide. Videos, podcasts, articles, and guides all in one place for anyone new to the space. Nostr Nights Nashville is May 11. DM Derek Ross if you want to speak or just show up. Heather is speaking virtually at the KC Bitcoiners Block Party this Sunday, April 19. Chapters 00:00 Intro and Vegas Hype 01:15 QW Update: Where Has He Been? 02:33 NOS Vegas April 28 Details 05:40 Tunestr.io 2.0 Is Dropping 08:43 TikTok vs Tunestr Live Streaming 10:50 Maggie Mae's Austin Built on Nostr 13:02 Anyone Can Do This (Open Source Moment) 19:17 Is That Band Actually AI? 23:32 Contra Makes Music With His Son 26:27 Should AI Music Have a Warning Label? 31:57 AI Is Doing 20% of People's Jobs 36:30 Anthropic Killed OpenClaw Access 41:28 Only 8% Use Autonomous Agents 44:01 Gen Z Hates AI and Honestly Fair 47:48 Half of Workers Pay for AI Themselves 52:33 Don't Paste Patient Data Into Claude 57:03 Derek's Updated Nostr Resources 59:45 Nostr Nights Nashville May 11

Heather Larson and Derek Ross cover three stories that connect in ways you did not see coming: an AI model that broke out of its secure container during testing, a marketing agency manufacturing music trends on TikTok, and two quiet Nostr announcements from Block. Then: NosVegas is coming to We All Scream nightclub and the lineup is stacked. Chapters: 00:00 Mythos and the Terminator 3 Moment 17:00 Your Music Taste Might Be Manipulated 29:00 Zapvertising and Why Nostr Cannot Be Gamed the Same Way 49:00 Block Is Using Nostr as an AI Communication Layer 58:00 NOS Vegas Preview Anthropic's most powerful model, currently withheld from the public, was asked to escape a secure container during testing. It did. It chained together multiple exploits to reach the internet, notified the researcher, then posted details of its own exploit on publicly accessible websites without being asked. It also found a 27-year-old vulnerability in OpenBSD, a 16-year-old bug in FFmpeg, and thousands of zero-day exploits across all major operating systems and browsers. Anthropic responded by forming Project Glasswing with Amazon, Apple, Broadcom, Cisco, CrowdStrike, Google, the Linux Foundation, Microsoft, Nvidia, and Palo Alto Networks, distributing $100 million in tokens to get critical infrastructure patched before comparable capabilities reach open source models in six to nine months. Heather breaks down a Substack piece by working musician Eliza McLamb exposing a marketing agency called Chaotic Good that runs narrative campaigns for record labels, spinning up fake accounts to simulate organic trends on TikTok. Artists you might think you discovered on your own, including well-known alternative acts, are on their client list. This is Payola for 2026. The traditional music industry has always done this. The tools just changed. https://www.wordsfromeliza.com/p/fake-fans On Nostr, you cannot buy attention at the protocol level. Your demographic data is not available to advertisers. If you want someone to read your message, you pay them directly. Heather has run geo-zap campaigns through Club Orange for as little as five dollars to reach hundreds of people at specific locations. Derek ran one for Nostr Valley targeting people within 100 miles for roughly 20 dollars. NextBlock, run by Ian and Mandana, has built an entire opt-in attention economy around this model. Get on ditto.pub and see how this works firsthand. Block announced two Nostr projects quietly over Easter weekend. Sprout is a Nostr relay built for AI and humans to coordinate, essentially a Nostr-native communication layer with AI agents built in, enterprise authentication, and a native MCP server. Mesh LLM lets people pool spare GPU capacity across a mesh network, coordinated over Nostr, so smaller machines can run larger AI models together. Block is making Nostr the communication layer for agentic AI. Users of these tools will not know they are on Nostr. That is the point. Tuesday evening Aprik 28 at We All Scream nightclub in Vegas, Five 10-minute talks: 1. Value for value music on Nostr with Heather Larson and Sara Jade 2. Web of trust with Avi Burra 3. Community events and Nostr adoption with Eric B 4. Making the internet weird again with Ditto presented by Derek Ross 5. Primal updates from Paul Keating. Plus, Chain Duel Bitcoin gaming in the Nostr room. Music outside with Sara Jade, Abel James, Richard Greaser, The Higher Low, and a surprise guest. Tatum Turn Up closes on the DJ stage. Follow Soapbox Sessions on Fountain and Nostr!

Soapbox Sessions: AI, Addiction, and the Internet We Actually Want Heather Larson and Derek Ross are back, and this week they go deep on some genuinely big questions: Can AI replace you? Is social media actually addictive? And what does Jack Dorsey think is coming next for how companies work? These two have been friends long enough to roast each other in public, which means the heavy topics get tackled and the conversation still ends up somewhere involving sperm-shaped app logos and a welfare check from Heather's family. Find them both on Ditto: ditto.pub CHAPTERS 00:00 The world is on fire and other "light" topics 01:11 replacedbyclawed.com and what AI thinks of Heather & Derek (it roasts them) 11:44 Is social media actually addictive? Taylor Lorenz sparks debate 18:30 Why Nostr apps are not designed to hook you 24:22 Jack Dorsey says middle management is over 35:38 Derek's Three C's become the Chameleon Method...or something 43:14 The Say Less app: a digital detox tool built on Nostr 45:42 Ditto updates: badges, letters, pokes, and Blobbi pets 59:07 Nostr ecosystem news: Amethyst, Wisp, and an April Fools prank 01:04:52 NosVegas is one month away, come party with Heather & Derek ABOUT THIS EPISODE Heather and Derek start by putting their names into replacedbyclawed.com, a site that uses AI to score how replaceable you are. Derek lands somewhere in the safe zone. Heather scores a 76 out of 100 and gets told she is almost a bot. The site describes her as an "open protocol yoga bat," which she accepts as accurate. Derek gets called a "purple-pilled conference Nostrich with sys admin scar tissue and the slightly dangerous confidence of a man who has explained open protocols to chamber of commerce civilians." Ditto news this week: badges are in a full renaissance, letters let you pass notes to other users, emoji pokes are back for the first time since Facebook, and Blobbi virtual pets are now live and function like Tamagotchis. Heather gave Derek a badge that crashed his notifications for two hours. He considers this an occupational hazard. She considers it a contribution to product development. If you want to join the Ditto User Group (DUG) and help shape what Ditto becomes, send Derek a letter on Ditto with a formal request. LINKS https://replacedbyclawed.com https://ditto.pub

Derek re frames the dark web versus light web divide. The so-called dark web is the open, uncensored internet. The so-called good web is the KYC, controlled, censored one. The internet is splitting into two directions and Nostr is the alternative path. ​​This is a week when two landmark juries ruled against Meta and YouTube, and Heather Larson and Derek Ross have plenty to say about it. This episode covers the deletion of the internet archive, the Meta lawsuits, algorithmic force-feeding, TikTok's KYC hoops, Derek's bots, Sora shutting down, AI in creative industries, and what Nostr offers as an alternative to the Big Tech™-controlled web. A New Mexico jury found Meta liable for endangering children and ordered $375 million in civil penalties. The next day, a Los Angeles jury found Meta and YouTube liable for negligent platform design, awarding $3 million to a 20-year-old plaintiff. With 1,600 more lawsuits pending, legal precedent is now set. The likely industry response: mandatory age verification, which means more KYC for everyone. Journalist Taylor Lorenz documented the ongoing erasure of the digital archive, with hundreds of videos deleted from YouTube at government request. The Vine archive, over 300,000 videos, is what gave birth to the diVine app on Nostr. Nostr content is cryptographically signed and replicated across thousands of relays worldwide. It is virtually impossible to erase. No shareholders, no government compliance window, no single point of failure. Twitter force-fed Heather notifications about [REDACTED] drama based on her demographic profile, not her interests. Gary Vee's point that social media has become “interest media” comes up: the algorithm killed the social part. On Nostr, users own their interest graph. Apps like Ditto let users fully customize feeds. A top-eight feature inspired by MySpace may be in the works… Nostr is not trying to beat Meta or Spotify. It is an open parallel internet where content cannot be deleted, mental health is not a business model, and no one answers to shareholders. Find Soapbox Sessions on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, and podcasting 2.0 apps like Fountain where you can send a boost. Chapters 00:00 Episode 30 01:20 The Internet Archive Is Being Deleted 04:34 How Nostr Fixes Censorship 06:33 Dark Web vs Light Web 07:37 Twitter Force-Feeds and Self-Censorship 12:22 Meta Lawsuits: Two Verdicts in 24 Hours 17:25 Shareholders, VC Money, and Open Protocols 23:37 TikTok Hoops and Age Verification 31:09 Derek's Bots 33:55 Sora Is Shutting Down 36:54 AI Actors and Likeness Licensing 41:01 AI Goes Mainstream 46:28 Interest Media vs Social Media (Gary Vee) 48:19 Ditto and the Customizable Feed 52:21 The Top 8 Comes to Ditto 55:19 Blue Check Pay-for-Play 59:03 Closing: Building a Parallel Internet Links Ditto.pub (for everyone) Agora.spot (for activists) Shakespeare.diy (for vibe coders) https://divine.video/ Taylor Lorenz / User Mag Power User podcast: https://www.usermag.co/archive Jacob Ward / The RIP Current on the Meta verdict: https://www.theripcurrent.com/p/breaking-meta-loses-in-court-here Meta New Mexico verdict: https://nmdoj.gov/press-release/new-mexico-department-of-justice-wins-landmark-verdict-against-meta/ Meta and YouTube LA verdict: https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/tech-news/verdict-reached-landmark-social-media-addiction-trial-rcna263421 Divine (Vine archive on Nostr): https://divine.video Ditto by Soapbox: https://soapbox.pub/ditto/ ZapStream (Nostr live streaming): https://zap.stream Fountain (podcasting 2.0): https://fountain.fm OpenAI Sora shutdown: https://techcrunch.com/2026/03/24/openais-sora-was-the-creepiest-app-on-your-phone-now-its-shutting-down/