5 ms·

This is an interesting phenomenon in general.

ceejayoz 9y ago
It's something the major social network sites are going to have to wrangle with. Someone who expresses even a tiny interest in conspiracy theories or extremist views gets pushed progressively deeper into that rabbit hole over time.
- vkou 9y ago
  The problem with conspiracy theories is that we have no shortage of well-documented, actual, real conspiracies - alongside bullshit about how George Bush was a reptilian from the planet Xoros. The former absolutely need to be talked about...
- notahacker 9y ago
  Depends a bit on your susceptibility to believe such things in the first place. If you're a little sceptical of some foreign policy incident and YouTube keeps surfacing the works of Alex Jones and David Icke as possible answers to the questions you've just seen a compelling video ask, there's a good chance it'll make you less questioning of the mainstream in future.
loceng 9y ago
I've heard lots of coverage and excitement for Bitcoin et al on the radio, TV, etc - however they oddly never mention or talk about the Pyramid-Ponzi scheme, they never have an 'expert' on to counter the hype. Obviously there are more people incentivized to talk positively about these incentivized crypto-assets (assuming they own crypto-assets structured as Pyramid-Ponzi schemes), so they learn and get good talking about the hype and talk about the "positives." The reason these are more powerful than say a single stock broker running a Ponzi scheme, is that you have all of these unrelated, decentralized and people that are global that are indirectly collaborating. It's why it's so much more dangerous as well. It's continued in part for so long too, because with a stock broker, you arrest/charge the stock broker. With incentivized crypto-assets, you have a lot of different parties/systems that must work together, indirectly, for it to act like the Pyramid-Ponzi schemes that they are. This being convoluted like it is seems to be causing regulators and enforcement to lock up -- along with all of the people and organizations actively lobbying to "educate" regulators around the world with the version and whitewashing to see how they can try to fiddle their way to fit within the laws countering this kind of pattern. Or maybe they're being bribed with "$1,000,000" worth of "Bitcoins" (per year?) that they're promised will become worth 10-100x within 10-20 years. The solution is a crypto-asset that isn't incentivized, that is government mandated, and that CONVERTS their fiat currency into the crypto-asset -- not simply exchanging it, e.g. the "paper" currency gets destroyed, instead of given to the seller. With incentivized crypto-assets, the cost of the future value is transferred to the future holders - and even though it may be subtle, it will become a very substantial amount; it already is a substantial amount that's been transferred, however there's a bigger base of holders now who want to at minimum get the money back they bought them for - and so becomes the marketing force behind it all, disregarding or ignorant of the negatives for society as a whole. Edit: To add, can there be incentivized crypto-assets that are structured to be legitimate? It seems the angle that is being taken to legitimize this structure is that they perhaps mimic the structure of stocks on a stock market, however one major difference is that stocks on the stock market aren't used a transactional layer - and therefore don't have (hopefully) under or uneducated people making the trades/purchases; the whole purpose of these incentivized crypto-asset blockchains is of course to get general consumers/the masses a.k.a. highly likely under educated people buying/using them for their platforms as a transactional layer; people could otherwise simply pay fiat currency for access to identical services, without them adopting/vesting into these Pyramid-Ponzi scheme structures though (all who should be being educated that others must adopt/use the service in order to maintain the value for their crypto-asset; however is that education then too close to admitting it's a Ponzi-Pyramid scheme?). There are more differences than this example.
- proofofmoon 9y ago
  If we define "pyramid-Ponzi scheme" is that the value goes up if more people talk about and buy it, then every asset is a pyramid-Ponzi scheme. Startup shares, lottery tickets, stocks, US dollars, oranges, everything. It's not a very useful definition.

It's something the major social network sites are going to have to wrangle with. Someone who expresses even a tiny interest in conspiracy theories or extremist views gets pushed progressively deeper into that rabbit hole over time.

vkou 9y ago
The problem with conspiracy theories is that we have no shortage of well-documented, actual, real conspiracies - alongside bullshit about how George Bush was a reptilian from the planet Xoros. The former absolutely need to be talked about...
notahacker 9y ago
Depends a bit on your susceptibility to believe such things in the first place. If you're a little sceptical of some foreign policy incident and YouTube keeps surfacing the works of Alex Jones and David Icke as possible answers to the questions you've just seen a compelling video ask, there's a good chance it'll make you less questioning of the mainstream in future.

loceng 9y ago

I've heard lots of coverage and excitement for Bitcoin et al on the radio, TV, etc - however they oddly never mention or talk about the Pyramid-Ponzi scheme, they never have an 'expert' on to counter the hype. Obviously there are more people incentivized to talk positively about these incentivized crypto-assets (assuming they own crypto-assets structured as Pyramid-Ponzi schemes), so they learn and get good talking about the hype and talk about the "positives." The reason these are more powerful than say a single stock broker running a Ponzi scheme, is that you have all of these unrelated, decentralized and people that are global that are indirectly collaborating. It's why it's so much more dangerous as well. It's continued in part for so long too, because with a stock broker, you arrest/charge the stock broker. With incentivized crypto-assets, you have a lot of different parties/systems that must work together, indirectly, for it to act like the Pyramid-Ponzi schemes that they are. This being convoluted like it is seems to be causing regulators and enforcement to lock up -- along with all of the people and organizations actively lobbying to "educate" regulators around the world with the version and whitewashing to see how they can try to fiddle their way to fit within the laws countering this kind of pattern. Or maybe they're being bribed with "$1,000,000" worth of "Bitcoins" (per year?) that they're promised will become worth 10-100x within 10-20 years. The solution is a crypto-asset that isn't incentivized, that is government mandated, and that CONVERTS their fiat currency into the crypto-asset -- not simply exchanging it, e.g. the "paper" currency gets destroyed, instead of given to the seller. With incentivized crypto-assets, the cost of the future value is transferred to the future holders - and even though it may be subtle, it will become a very substantial amount; it already is a substantial amount that's been transferred, however there's a bigger base of holders now who want to at minimum get the money back they bought them for - and so becomes the marketing force behind it all, disregarding or ignorant of the negatives for society as a whole. Edit: To add, can there be incentivized crypto-assets that are structured to be legitimate? It seems the angle that is being taken to legitimize this structure is that they perhaps mimic the structure of stocks on a stock market, however one major difference is that stocks on the stock market aren't used a transactional layer - and therefore don't have (hopefully) under or uneducated people making the trades/purchases; the whole purpose of these incentivized crypto-asset blockchains is of course to get general consumers/the masses a.k.a. highly likely under educated people buying/using them for their platforms as a transactional layer; people could otherwise simply pay fiat currency for access to identical services, without them adopting/vesting into these Pyramid-Ponzi scheme structures though (all who should be being educated that others must adopt/use the service in order to maintain the value for their crypto-asset; however is that education then too close to admitting it's a Ponzi-Pyramid scheme?). There are more differences than this example.

proofofmoon 9y ago
If we define "pyramid-Ponzi scheme" is that the value goes up if more people talk about and buy it, then every asset is a pyramid-Ponzi scheme. Startup shares, lottery tickets, stocks, US dollars, oranges, everything. It's not a very useful definition.