I would charge a small, hormetic, amount of money for each post and a smaller amount of each action taken on that post. I believe people originally proposed this for email, but decided against it, if I understand it correctly in part because the implementation options were difficult at the time.
Micropayments have been difficult in the past, but there’s some cryptos that can do them now with very small transaction fees (e.g. $HBAR).
The some of the money could go to the poster so people could make income from social media, some to the platform so they would rely less on advertising.
This would also create small amount of friction for posting content and make users stop and think for a second as to whether it’s worth it.
You raise good points. Society would benefit through the re-aligning of incentives
If this was done and it was done like with royalties, it represents a form of long-term income for people who create things of value and put them on the web and similarly discourages people from creating “the next clickbait hot take” that will typically have no lasting value and has no net benefit to society. The pro-social incentives are better aligned there.
Think of it like music (pre-Napster). Musicians either (1) wanted to make pop music that will get played to a large audience so they collect larger royalties or (2) if they can’t go for mainstream pop they try to find or create a niche audience and dominate there.
I’m not sure if you’re an old like me. But it makes me think of this KMFDM track, Fairy, on their album Xtort. In 1997 playing that in one of your friends car discmans was this crazy experience of “Oh my god I can’t believe they put that on an album!” But by comparison to most of the web now, it’s so tame that it’s boring.
When incentives are aligned you’re more likely to get more people trying to make an album like Abby Road, and a few people following the strategy to make albums like Xtort. The artists like KMFDM will be around but, will be in the counter-culture margins where they’re still both cool and profitable. There is no mechanism to incubate a real counter-culture anymore—anything that’s cool that gets created gets discovered and becomes part of the mush that is the completely permeable borderless Internet. It’s like when someone has a broken jaw an has to eat through a straw, so they just blend what could be a four course meal in to a shake.
When incentives are misaligned like they are now, art and creativity are mistaken for or replaced by vice and base pleasures. I’m not a prude, vice and base pleasures have their place, but there’s good reasons why you shouldn’t have chocolate cake and cocaine for breakfast.
Well, yes, basically. Here are some sugestions for exploration. I am not saying all of these are good ideas, and some of them conflict, but they’re things you could look at.
Don’t allow responses, by which I mean replying, retweeting, liking, forwarding, or whatever, until the base material has been up for something like a couple of hours. That includes responses to responses.
Adjust that delay so that a response that will be seen by few users can go through faster than a response that can be seen by many users… but there should always be at least a few minutes of delay for any response that is public, goes to a very large audience, or could be in any way be forwarded to become public or go to a very large audience.
Limit the number of responses a user can post per hour. Put heavier limits on responders who don’t generate a lot of original posts. Put still heavier limits on people with large followings.
Combine the above so that the delay or audience limits applied to you depend partly on how many posts or responses you generate in general.
Downrank prolific posters.
Downrank clusters of posters who frequently amplify one another, especially if nobody outside the clique seems to amplify them to the same degree.
Aggregate reposts of the same link or substantially the same text, and treat them as a single object that is show to each user at most once.
When you’re ranking material to display to a user, uprank material from accounts that user follows that have fewer other followers (like family and friends) over material from accounts that have more other followers (like politicians and media). On edit: heavily uprank posts from people who reciprocally follow the reader.
Provide downvotes, and have them actually sink material rather than upranking it as “controversial”.
Uprank long posts and maybe posts with multiple links… especially links to sources that do not usually appear together in other posts on the platform.
Uprank material that’s grammatically correct.
Eliminate avatars and emoji
Consider eliminating user identity and “following” in favor of an anonymous rumor mill.
You can provide overrides for those, but they should be things that have to be selected every time you visit the site. Better yet, provide access to all the content using an API, and allow users to use clients other than the official ones… including clients that aggregate different services.
I am suggesting applying things like that globally, to all users, not just users who have done something to get noticed.
Does 4chan have reply delays?
By the way, I think I’d like to amend that “response delay” thing to be “after the responding user first sees the material”, rather than “after the material goes up”.
Removed.
I would charge a small, hormetic, amount of money for each post and a smaller amount of each action taken on that post. I believe people originally proposed this for email, but decided against it, if I understand it correctly in part because the implementation options were difficult at the time.
Micropayments have been difficult in the past, but there’s some cryptos that can do them now with very small transaction fees (e.g. $HBAR).
The some of the money could go to the poster so people could make income from social media, some to the platform so they would rely less on advertising.
This would also create small amount of friction for posting content and make users stop and think for a second as to whether it’s worth it.
Thanks.
You raise good points. Society would benefit through the re-aligning of incentives
If this was done and it was done like with royalties, it represents a form of long-term income for people who create things of value and put them on the web and similarly discourages people from creating “the next clickbait hot take” that will typically have no lasting value and has no net benefit to society. The pro-social incentives are better aligned there.
Think of it like music (pre-Napster). Musicians either (1) wanted to make pop music that will get played to a large audience so they collect larger royalties or (2) if they can’t go for mainstream pop they try to find or create a niche audience and dominate there.
I’m not sure if you’re an old like me. But it makes me think of this KMFDM track, Fairy, on their album Xtort. In 1997 playing that in one of your friends car discmans was this crazy experience of “Oh my god I can’t believe they put that on an album!” But by comparison to most of the web now, it’s so tame that it’s boring.
When incentives are aligned you’re more likely to get more people trying to make an album like Abby Road, and a few people following the strategy to make albums like Xtort. The artists like KMFDM will be around but, will be in the counter-culture margins where they’re still both cool and profitable. There is no mechanism to incubate a real counter-culture anymore—anything that’s cool that gets created gets discovered and becomes part of the mush that is the completely permeable borderless Internet. It’s like when someone has a broken jaw an has to eat through a straw, so they just blend what could be a four course meal in to a shake.
When incentives are misaligned like they are now, art and creativity are mistaken for or replaced by vice and base pleasures. I’m not a prude, vice and base pleasures have their place, but there’s good reasons why you shouldn’t have chocolate cake and cocaine for breakfast.
Well, yes, basically. Here are some sugestions for exploration. I am not saying all of these are good ideas, and some of them conflict, but they’re things you could look at.
Don’t allow responses, by which I mean replying, retweeting, liking, forwarding, or whatever, until the base material has been up for something like a couple of hours. That includes responses to responses.
Adjust that delay so that a response that will be seen by few users can go through faster than a response that can be seen by many users… but there should always be at least a few minutes of delay for any response that is public, goes to a very large audience, or could be in any way be forwarded to become public or go to a very large audience.
Limit the number of responses a user can post per hour. Put heavier limits on responders who don’t generate a lot of original posts. Put still heavier limits on people with large followings.
Combine the above so that the delay or audience limits applied to you depend partly on how many posts or responses you generate in general.
Downrank prolific posters.
Downrank clusters of posters who frequently amplify one another, especially if nobody outside the clique seems to amplify them to the same degree.
Aggregate reposts of the same link or substantially the same text, and treat them as a single object that is show to each user at most once.
When you’re ranking material to display to a user, uprank material from accounts that user follows that have fewer other followers (like family and friends) over material from accounts that have more other followers (like politicians and media). On edit: heavily uprank posts from people who reciprocally follow the reader.
Provide downvotes, and have them actually sink material rather than upranking it as “controversial”.
Uprank long posts and maybe posts with multiple links… especially links to sources that do not usually appear together in other posts on the platform.
Uprank material that’s grammatically correct.
Eliminate avatars and emoji
Consider eliminating user identity and “following” in favor of an anonymous rumor mill.
You can provide overrides for those, but they should be things that have to be selected every time you visit the site. Better yet, provide access to all the content using an API, and allow users to use clients other than the official ones… including clients that aggregate different services.
Removed.
I am suggesting applying things like that globally, to all users, not just users who have done something to get noticed.
Does 4chan have reply delays?
By the way, I think I’d like to amend that “response delay” thing to be “after the responding user first sees the material”, rather than “after the material goes up”.