I have some thoughts:
Let’s say I make a great legal analysis post on twitter on something very topical. The other day I made two tweets (one being a thread) that garnered over half a million views. Pretty good! But what was my reward for that and—more importantly—how am I incentivized to continue?
Well, my post was punchy, topical, and a little controversial. So it went “viral” (for me). I gained a lot of new followers that will hopefully stick around. And i got a nudge into the realm of being able to make money based on the content I produce here—15 million impressions gets you in the door nowadays
But I’ll tell you something I’m struggling with. This model incentivizes clickbait, dramatic, and stubbornly opinionated (read: poor quality) content. Because if I get you to merely click on and view the content, then I’ve won. And so has Elon. But the public discourse on whatever topic I’m promoting probably lost.
I see this with top “influencers” all the time. The content is largely thoughtless, recycled, unoriginal, and needlessly combative. It’s the worst kind of debate. If you already agree with what’s being said, you love it and share it. If you disagree, you yell at it and passively attack it (i.e. “check out how dumb this idiot is. Let’s attack them, HomeTeam”). Either way, though, the impressions grow. And so does the creator’s wallet and so does Elon’s.
How do we stop this? Enter the nostr model created by @jb55.
Nostr is a lot like Twitter, except it‘s decentralized and, accordingly, a little clunky (for now). But more importantly, in being decentralized it didn’t sell out and create some scam token to bootstrap the network effects. It’s doing the hard work of organic growth.
And it is Bitcoin native, which permits micropayments for quality content. Not just provactive content.
This creates an amazing incentive structure for creators and public discourse more broadly. They are rewarded not just for having outrageous and objectionable content, but for producing something people actually find interesting.
How?
Because the user controls what creators they reward with micropayments on Bitcoin’s ligtning network, and what content they merely share, and what content is obviously trash. And unlike Twitter, the trash isn’t rewarded.
Take my small example below. I made a legal analysis post. It got a small amount of traction on nostr and some anons rewarded me with a few micropyaments. Thanks Anons!
That’s tangible value in my pocket for my content. And it didn’t have to go viral for me to experience the reward.
World changing in and of itself? No. But it could be. Imagine a world where good content is elevated to the top of discussion on its merit, rather than trashy content because it’s outrageous and objectionable? And further, imagine content creators are rewarded for the good content, and punished for the bad (via no payments from the users)
Perhaps it could could lead to the long overdue destruction of clickbait. Perhaps it would improve internet (and real world) discourse. And perhaps it will minimize the influence of our clearly unqualified gatekeepers in determining what is elevated to the top of public discussion.
Who knows. But I’m glad it exists, and I hope it succeeds.
Tired of clickbait and trash influencers? Maybe, just maybe, Bitcoin Fixes This.
