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We’re going to see a bigger rise up of independent media, and that means that Substack, Patreon, and other platforms that exist to spread a message to paid subs

• mr_important 1y ago
  There's some kind of missing link here between p2p and "I write for a living" that I don't think is going to be bridged any time soon. Funding and p2p / independent might not be compatible organisms in today's social and economic environment. We've had the tools for this for decades and it's never been achieved at scale and sustainably. I don't think it ever will.
  • p2detar 1y ago
    > in today's social and economic environment. True. I don’t think it was ever successful, because it requires a strong ideological point of view from the people who are supposed to support this idea. With so much distraction in the digital world today, this seems close to impossible.
• squigz 1y ago
  Wouldn't any system that enables funding be susceptible to influence by the rich? Why would any sort of P2P/decentralized/etc system be impervious to that?
  • terminalshort 1y ago
    Because there is no "the rich." There are millions of them and they have many competing interests.
    • mr_important 1y ago
      > class war isn't the driving force of society wrong
      • terminalshort 1y ago
        In the sense that war between opposing factions of the upper class is what you mean by "class war" then you would be right.
    • sjxjxbx 1y ago
      True, but they also have a combined interest in growing their wealth that comes at the cost of leaving less pie for the rest of us. I can’t think of many (Massie maybe?) rich (no black and white definition) that are using their wealth to better their fellow citizens to their own detriment. Most of them see it as another tax to prevent keep their heads attached.
      • terminalshort 1y ago
        A combined goal (growing wealth) is much different than a combined interest because the ways they go about it are very different and in many times conflicting. Taking pie from other rich people is many times a much superior strategy to taking it from the poor. e.g. OpenAI just launched a competitor to Chrome. And talking about "growing wealth" is much too general here because that applies to everyone, not just rich or poor.
        • sjxjxbx 1y ago
          They have a shared interest in using their wealth to enrich themselves (or their true home nations) instead of their countrymen. Taking pie from other rich people is only lucrative because the wealth gap is so massive and consistently increasing. My point is rich people should be utilizing their wealth to enrich their fellow Americans (or whatever country they live in), but all the existing ones do not have this as a primary goal. They throw some pittances - just enough to keep people from revolting. The majority of us are growing wealth so we don’t die on the streets. The rich have already cleared this goal post, and instead of making it their primary goal to give back they continue to take. Those in power could use their power to prevent this but don’t. That is their shared interest. It’s why every politician in America becomes more wealthy after entering office. It’s why corruption is rampant. It’s why we have no borders and let corporations abuse workers. The system is setup (this is the shared interest) to empower a few at the top.
  • apgwoz 1y ago
    It’s less about being susceptible to influence by the rich. Nothing can truly stop that. It’s more about ensuring that platforms can’t silence dissent. You can dissent in an echo chamber but it doesn’t do any good.
• skeeter2020 1y ago
  This supposed "independent media" in hostage to about 4 or 5 centrally controlled platforms that dictate discoverability, delivery. Payment controlled by even less. How would that turn out any different?
  • apgwoz 1y ago
    That’s exactly the point. Right now, “independent media” (across all political spectrums, mind you) is trying to rise up, but they’re doing so on platforms that _could_ easily turn them off. There’s a ton of multi-million subscriber Left leaning, independent media channels on YouTube that could easily become irrelevant by a simple “change to the algorithm” that squashes them. Patreon, Substack, etc are no different. We’ve seen people be silenced on X. We’ve also seen payment processors disallow payments to organizations and whatnot. This is all a problem.
• slightwinder 1y ago
  > We certainly need a more P2P, version of this type of platform and a way to fund and scale it such that it can’t be messed with by billionaire hacks. We already have that. Selfhosting is possible, and today even simpler than ever. And there is a multitude of systems and platforms which one can use to collect money as long as it's not doing something too critical, like porn or terrorism. Influencers have those field already covered well, and will continue building them to avoid the hefty shares on their usual platforms.
  • apgwoz 1y ago
    Patreon, Substack, etc have benefits in discovery. Self hosting requires that you figure out how to get discovered. That’s the main problem here.
    • slightwinder 1y ago
      That's a different problem, and won't be solved by any P2P-platform. There are more than enough ways for discovering selfhosted content, people just don't use it.
      • apgwoz 1y ago
        > people just don't use it. … which means it’s a problem.
        • slightwinder 1y ago
          No, not really. You want to change the world, but bring up a technical solution, when it's a social situation. If you want to strengthen indymedia, then work on the social level, not technology. Reinventing the same thing again, will not change anything.
          • apgwoz 1y ago
            You’re not wrong to bring up the social level, but you also have to combat the technological level as well. The systems that already exist don’t work not just because of social reasons. Mastodon/ActivityPub was gaining decent traction, despite its usability problems … and then the more usable, better funded BlueSky stepped in. There are lots of options for running your own Mastodon/ ActivityPub implementation, etc—it’s not easy, though. This is purely a technical problem. Of course, I am not really talking about Chirp clones here, but this is a pretty good analogue for comparison.
• terminalshort 1y ago
  Independent media is not vulnerable to buy and squash because another will just rise in it's place every time you squash one. Supply follows demand, and there are no barriers to entry. It is vulnerable to the much more insidious force of audience capture, though.
  • apgwoz 1y ago
    The problem is that we don’t have distributed systems of discovery. Patreon, Substack, etc, are all centralized. You have to migrate your audience, and you’ll lose some every time. So yes, another will rise up. But even better would be a distributed network that actually _works_, immune to the threat of centralization.