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A social platform where you get paid for being helpful
- cw12574 5y agoSorry to post this again, but it got moderated down a couple of weeks ago. We've had a good group of users since last time this was posted, and there've been some really interesting discussions on there. Come and join us!
- anotha1 5y agoI'll give it a try, but I'm already turned off by the "free speech" mention which has become synonymous with "give people a place to be a racist" and "all things Q." Edit: for clarity, I believe everyone, including the racists, should have freedom of speech. Though, forcing companies to host that speech is not freedom of speech. And the speech that is supposed to be protected, dissenting views, seems as protected as it's ever been. Freedom of speech is not there to protect objectively harmful hate and conspiracies that intend to manipulate the vulnerable.
- crowf 5y agowhen you hear the word democracy do you think "give undesirables a say in our government"?
- anotha1 5y agoDemocracy doesn't work when the citizens are manipulated due to their lack of intellect.
- Bancakes 5y agoSo your idea of democracy is "only these people should rule you, whether you vote or not."?
- anotha1 5y agoIt's disingenuous that you're using quotes to represent something I never said. Education is lacking, democracy is suffering because of it. Anything else you interpreted is based on your own biases.
- cookiengineer 5y ago> Education is lacking, democracy is suffering because of it. We can only re-balance the power of manipulation through developing technology that values identity and transparency over fraud and misconduct (or social acceptance aka likes). Currently, the economics behind misinformation are only feasible for a handful of institutions; and that unbalanced the power of acquiring knowledge online. The Web has failed us as a technology, in the sense that its intention liberated knowledge to the people at first but then gradually pushed control over its discoverability and "trustworthyness" away from the people.
- Bancakes 5y agoDemocracy is doing just fine. Anyone can vote, fool or laureate. That's democracy, and nothing more.
- the_only_law 5y agoHow much longer can that keep up until we see some sort of strange Balkanization and increased secretarian violence. I don’t see how we can keep up the facade of a united nation where more or less two factions bubble up that are clearly opposed along irredeemable lines (personally I believe there are more than two factions but they tend to bubble up and ally into just two in a way that makes differentiation basically meaningless)
- Bancakes 5y agoI think the USA's current opponent are lobbying corporations, not terrorists or domestic insurgence.
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- jfengel 5y agoYep, I sure do. And I'd always thought that undesirables were a relatively smallish percentage of the population. As long as they are, we don't actually have to decide who's undesirable. They get outvoted. It's pretty clever. Until the point where mean, angry, stupid people become a majority -- or worse, a near-majority with ancient thumbs on the scale favoring them. Then we've got a lot of very uncomfortable decisions to make.
- xgulfie 5y agoYeah as a Mastodon user whenever I see someone touting "free speech" as a feature of their social media platform it's a huge red flag that usually just means "alt-right, racists and transphobes welcome"
- fleacircus 5y agoYeah, that was an immediate red flag for me too. It's the same kind of rhetoric used by sites like Voat and Gab which are immediately taken over by the far right (and I definitely don't want a single cent of my money going to them). I've honestly never understood the appeal of a completely unmoderated space. I'd prefer a site that was moderated fairly and competently so I didn't have to wade through extremist dross looking for content.
- anotha1 5y ago> I've honestly never understood the appeal of a completely unmoderated space. Unmoderated sounds good on the surface only. If dang and the other mods weren't present, I'm sure none of us would be here either.
- oefrha 5y ago> it got moderated down a couple of weeks ago. Not completely sure what you mean by this, but if you’re saying HN moderators “moderated down” your submissions — no one was moderating them down, they simply didn’t have enough votes to stay on the front page. Also, https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html asks you to not use HN exclusively for promoting your products.
- sabertoothed 5y agoI like the idea. How do you finance yourself? Could not see a business model in the FAQs.
- tyingq 5y agoIt doesn't really appear to be a business. "100% of the subscription fees are redistributed so we are running this at a loss." "We are doing this because we want to create a social place on the internet where..."
- sabertoothed 5y agoThat was my impression. Which makes me doubt the concept again. Operating social platforms costs money.
- jfk13 5y agoTwo weeks ago you said: > Sorry to repost. This was up for 20 mins last week then got taken down by the moderators (I think because there was a waitlist). We've removed the waitlist and would be grateful for feedback. But it looks like the waitlist is back...
- crowf 5y agoCan I lurk for free? I would like to see how the community looks like before paying to participate.
- akvadrako 5y agoI understand paying to comment (or vote) but not to read.
- tyingq 5y ago"You start with 10 reputation points. 1 reputation point is awarded for each question/answer given. 4 reputation points is awarded for each like received on an answer." It would be really interesting to hear how you guys arrived at this model, any testing you did, etc. I see, for example, there's no downvoting. I assume because it didn't model out well.
- neogodless 5y agoDoes each user have unlimited votes to give to others? Could a small party spend all their time voting for each other and skew the intention of the site?
- istinetz 5y agoAnd further, could this become implicit? E.g. if a large enough cultural group - woke brigade, christians, alt-right, whatever - seeds the website, and they upvote mostly each other's posts and comments, I can imagine that this creates a very strong echo chamber effect. Even stronger than reddit, because any contrarians would have to pay for the privilege of being shouted down, and because you don't yet have segmentation of the website, and because there are no downvotes. I can't imagine anyone staying, if they're not a member of the dominant tribe. I know OP pictures "being nice and helpful" the Schelling point around which activity crystallizes, but it doesn't have to be so, and it won't necessarily remain constant, imho. It might as become a libertarian hub, and the only discussions will be about libertarian talking points and memes. Or a hub for any of the other major sides in the culture war or other strong internet subcultures.
- nakodari 5y ago"The majority hold the power (minority mobs can't cancel users)" What if the minority mob becomes the majority mob one day? Suppose 51% majority are cancel mob and 49% are others, what happens then?
- josephcsible 5y agoThe reason that the cancel mob is a problem is that it's a tiny vocal minority convincingly pretending they're the majority. If an actual majority of people wanted something cancelled, then it probably should be cancelled.
- abrahamolson 5y ago" If an actual majority [of an internet forum] of people wanted something cancelled, then it probably should be cancelled." I added to your statement lest people think simple majority is a good way to determine what viewpoints should be allowed to be presented!
- istinetz 5y ago>If an actual majority of people wanted something cancelled, then it probably should be cancelled. I encounter this sentiment on hackernews all the time, and it's honestly baffling to me. Apply this logic to the fifteenth century - the vast majority wants blasphemers "cancelled", there is no Enlightenment, no Renaissance, Galileo is banned from Facebook for hate speech [against religion]. I would assume that you don't think blasphemers should be stoned, now or in any age, right? Then why do you trust the majority to make moral decisions now, but not then? Do you think that we've achieved perfect understanding of society and ethics exactly when we invented the internet?
- josephcsible 5y ago> Apply this logic to the fifteenth century - the vast majority wants blasphemers "cancelled" I'm not convinced this is the case. Anyway, I agree following the majority isn't ideal, but I don't know of a better solution.
- kuu 5y agoThis seems pretty dark to me: - I cannot see the community before joining - I have to pay a price that varies based in some complex formula
- autarch 5y agoThe subscription fee is $5/month. The payments _you receive_ back are via a formula. So the maximum you will spend is $5/month.
- kuu 5y agoI see. That's not clear to me when reading the FAQ. Anyway 5$ for not knowing to what I'm joining is a bit strange.
- autarch 5y ago> Anyway 5$ for not knowing to what I'm joining is a bit strange. Agreed.
- duckfang 5y agoEven Hollywood feature films offer from 30 sec to 2 minute trailers. And that even goes for the mega-hits like the Marvel Universe. These folks think they're better than Hollywood at buying before you try.
- woodgrainz 5y agoI am hopeful for this concept, but what is your content moderation policy? What happens if your user base upvotes things that I might not think are "helpful" and could in-fact be deemed dangerous or cruel?
- minikites 5y agoWhy is it always up to the users to moderate online content instead of the host? If someone is acting like a jerk in a restaurant, it's not the job of the other patrons to eject them, it's the job of the staff.
- josephcsible 5y agoIt's basically the difference between a democracy and an oligarchy.
- JJseiko 5y agosounds like something that could potentially be built on top of Ethereum smart contracts (not sure if it should though ...)
- seigando 5y agoI actually just tried to sign up and when I click on the "Pay $5.00 and Subscribe" button, I get a little popup that says "K is undefined" and nothing happens.
- darepublic 5y agoNot sure whether this model could work. But not sure it won't either. Maybe it would help to know what topics will be covered? For programming I could prove helpful but maybe not as much for other domains. Good luck with this experiment
- fludlight 5y agoWhat is your plan for transaction costs?
- the_lonely_road 5y agoI didn't see a way to browse the content. There is no version of the world where I would pay before I see the content. If I like what I am seeing I will be driven to want to join the conversation and maybe would pay for it then.
- duckfang 5y agoSo this is a comment variant of an account tontine. The only reason to join is if you think you can make back your $5/mo or more. And because some people make more and others lose money and that sum equals 0, makes this a 0 sum game. And thats not even discussing the echo chamber eventualities of $bad_group taking majority stake. I pass.
- citizenpaul 5y agoHate to be that guy but unless the payouts are reduced for “dumb” answers. The site is doomed to become same as any other answer site because top answers will always be something like. “Is it ok to switch from tide to gain in my washing machine”. Actual difficult questions will never make money so the premises will not bring anything new
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- yabones 5y agoDoesn't this encourage reddit-like power users that have multiple people operating the account? Look at any of the 1M+ karma accounts and you'll see what I mean. As soon as there's money involved I expect this to get even worse.
- joshka 5y agoSo this is free speech that you have to pay for? In contrast, the media is free speech that advertisers/oligarchs pay for.