I have a friend over there who's participated since its inception. A lot of what you see over there now are schemes that essentially involve paying people to u

I have a friend over there who's participated since its inception. A lot of what you see over there now are schemes that essentially involve paying people to upvote content. At first, I was surprised they allowed people to bribe others to vote. But, when you think about it, that's exactly what the site itself is doing (bribing people to participate). And, bribing people to upvote is not exactly the best way to encourage good organic content. I tell my friend the model is unsustainable in its current form, as it destroys the value it's trying to create. Worse, that value is what it's trying to redeem to entice more people to participate. So, it'll inevitably run out of gas (they apparently jump-started things by subsidizing initial posts, which sparked early excitement, but payouts sharply declined thereafter). Some might argue that it democratizes content production, but the value creation effect is not the same as paying a smaller set of producers for valuable content that a larger set would consume. So, instead, it's more like a perfect case study in tragedy of the commons.