Dossy Shiobara
Aug 24, 2017 · 1 min read

This right here is the key point. It correctly de-incentivizes people from creating sockpuppet accounts to “clap up” posts to try and game the economic system

It lets the audience “vote with their wallet” to directly reward content creators, as opposed to the old (traditional) model where ad buyers controlled who received money for their content.

I do worry that, if a degenerate worst-case scenario plays out, that Medium largely becomes a monoculture echo chamber because the majority of people willing to pay for a subscription are largely made up of a specific narrow type of audience and that feedback loop results in the creation of the bulk of the content towards that audience. (Before you call this crazy edge-case conspiracy theory, look at what happened to Ev’s other creation, Twitter.)

I’m optimistic, though, that Ev’s really smart and has learned lots of important lessons from Twitter and will steer Medium to avoid them as best he can.

I wasn’t sure how I felt about the claps vs. recommends, but now I’m more decided: Claps are the future and it’s a good one.

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    Dossy Shiobara

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    Living la vida startup, doing professional services consulting, and trying to support my wife and two daughters. Free time? What's that ...