The whole premise of Nostr is that you consider your access point hostile, yet its provider is still offering one. That contradiction just incentivizes bad and toxic actors to participate and dominate this network.

That's why, it seems, the developers actively conflate what one would expect from a private communication platform and a social media platform. But this isn't an alternative to Mastodon or Twitter, it's an alternative to Berty, Cwtch, Speek, Briar, Anonymous Messenger, and maybe Matrix if you use it for encrypted communication only.

It has a legitimate use case for people who may be forced to switch relays very often due to government censorship but still want to continue to talk in public. To anyone else the quality and culture of the moderation system is what defines the quality of their platform, but Nostr undermines the former by design.

As such, it comes to no surprise that the free speech warriors from the crypto community are the main drivers of this protocol. It's just a pity that Snowden seems to have become one of them as well - and it isn't that he supports it, but how. He's just repeating the devs' own flawed narrative.

Decentralization is the right path forward, but you want social media on federated platforms as you need to take care of communities with enforceable rules and provide a service to users, while for private interpersonal or group communication you can opt to federated or peer-to-peer networks.