Social Media is Broken, Bitcoin to the Rescue.
Internet comments are terrible. When talking to friends on Facebook, disastrous levels of disagreement are far too easy. For a giant public linkshare like reddit, the situation is toxic.
The problem with social platforms is:
- It doesn’t cost anything to be terrible
- It doesn’t reward to be good
- It doesn’t pay to moderate
- Nothing is easier than going along with the crowd
I propose an implementation of a site like reddit that uses a bitcoin backend. I will describe how this model fixes reddit’s problems. This model is extensible to other social sites like Facebook as well. Feel free to build it. In fact, I encourage someone to do so.
Consider a site like reddit. To register, a user links their account to some amount of bitcoin (or other store of value). This is like how we currently link our email addresses.
For the site to accept any user interaction, the user must include a dynamic fee amount from the BTC account. Most of these fees would be tiny. This requires a divisible currency like bitcoin. Most interactions should be inexpensive enough that the average user doesn’t consider the fee.
A new user pays a registration fee to dissuade spam and a proliferation of artificial users. Registration fees are low enough an average person wouldn’t care. But spammers making lots of accounts would have a financial barrier to entry.
Users pay to vote up or down, and the fee is proportionate to the absolute value and ratio of existing votes. The more upvotes a post gets, the higher the fee gets to upvote it. The lower a post gets downvoted, the higher the fee assessed to each user who downvotes it. As users interact with one another, the fees change in response.
This creates a natural asymptote to a post’s popularity. How much are you willing to pay to “like” a post? If it’s $0.000001 you won’t mind. If it’s $0.1 you think about it. When the fee reaches $1 most people won’t pay. This enables motivated supporters to show their support if they want to. At the same time, it limits spam. The actual pricing function is modifiable depending on the site operator’s preference.
Charging a dynamic rate based on the vote patterns resolves all the problems I described. This simple framework tweak fixes social platforms.
Working back to front, in this model, it’s easier to go against the crowd. If a post is highly upvoted, it will cost a lot to upvote it. At the same time, a downvote is inexpensive, and doing nothing is free. If a post is highly downvoted, it will cost less to upvote it than it would to downvote it further. Going with the crowd is now the expensive option.
The more interactions a thread has, the more moderation it needs. As demand for moderation increases, so does its value. On reddit, mods of high-traffic subs are volunteers who devote lots of time to the site. Good moderators are already employed and can’t volunteer their time working for another company. This leaves two pools of talent:
- Unemployed basement dwellers who obsess about the only source of power in their life
- People employed by media sites to control and manipulate popular subreddits
But now that the site is making money in this model, moderators get paid. The forums can now afford professional janitors and firefighters. The more traffic a sub has, the more revenue it generates, and the more the mods get paid. Good moderation will increase traffic which will increase interactions which will increase revenues. Good mods could earn enough to make a living from moderating in this site model.
In this model, being popular is rewarding in ways more than just satisfaction. Content submitters receive a share in the fees that their posts and comments generate. The more upvotes they get, the more they get paid. The more it costs to upvote, the larger each payment. When you upvote a content producer, you are paying them for their content. Users who make popular content could make a living off of just submitting good content. Now being good is rewarding.
Finally, with this site model, it costs to be terrible. Users whose posts or comments get downvotes don’t receive the fee-sharing. Upvote fees are split among the submitter, the operators, and the mods, but downvote fees only go to operators and mods. The more negative a user’s vote count, the more each interaction costs them. Not only does it cost unpopular submitters to interact, they don’t get paid either. It’s costly in this model to be terrible.
Meanwhile, it costs money to operate a platform. Despite being one of the most popular websites reddit isn’t profitable and has changed hands repeatedly. In this model, popularity generates revenue through user interactions. User interactions are inexpensive, but with millions of daily users and interactions, the small fees add up.
Most casual users would would never have fees high enough to notice. Regular users would pay tons of small fees but the occasional popular submission would pay a handsome bounty. Lucky users who make it to the front page may end up thousands of dollars richer from a popular submission. Entertainers and journalists could make a living from submitting good content.
Despite billions of transactions, there’s little risk of abuse or theft. Push payments mean you always control your payments. There is no escrow or intermediary to steal your funds. It should be implementable with HTTP 402 and bitcoin.
I think this framework would resolve many of the problems that plague existing social sharing platforms. It would also be profitable for the operators, moderators, and content producers.
This site model is adaptable for many different kinds of social sites. I can see sites like Facebook, Soundcloud, Pinterest, Kickstarter, and porn with this model. Any kind of site that relies on content could be implemented this way. By modifying the interaction fee function, the framework could suit a vast number of price models.
Oh… and it also pays for itself without advertising. Did you catch that part? I guess I forgot to mention that until now.
Now go build it and make tons of money, I’m busy building other stuff.
