No one is born knowing it all. People learn along the way, people change, people get greedy for a moment then have more time to relax once they've arrived to a comfy state, then reflect and either get more greedy or have enough head space to realize what they've done and regret. Granted, Rare are those who regret and what to do better, but yes, I can give credence to such sentiment.
It’s strange that he has apparently felt this way a long time, started Twitter as a “protocol”, was at the helm of Twitter, but now that he’s a billionaire thinks it was all a mistake. He could have made what he describes or apparently believes in but at the cost of becoming a billionaire. It’s a little too convenient isn’t it? Sounds like a billionaire just wanting to be the smartest person in the room. This is a common pattern amongst all these billionaires.
I think there is evidence that Dorsey was bothered for a long time. Scott Galloway, shareholder in Twitter and public figure, has been calling him an absent CEO for 10 years. He was largely disengaged and the board had to drag him into the room to make decisions, which many times he did not do.
Bring back Costello. At least he appeared to give a shit. Dorsey seems to thrive on the image of being a tortured and begrudging de facto CEO, a genius saddled by his creation.
It's possible to be both successful and remorseful. Maybe when he says "protocol," he means "stayed with an open API" so third party clients could have stuck around.
Were there plenty of times/chances to see the writing on the wall? Sure... but I really do think when you're in that deep, the money isn't really a factor, its the "life." Twitter ran Jack more than Jack ran Twitter.
True, cheap talk from him now. I only meant to push back against the idea that "they are locked in their business/company/VC model and can’t get out of that", which is directly contradicted in the source we're discussing.
Considering Dorsey's active participation and evangelising on Bitcoin and the Lightning Network, I expect that he will be working in that direction; building a messaging protocol based on the Lighting Network that allows users to upvote with satoshis. This monetises the user engagement and makes bots less feasible, aligning user incentives.
Dorsey has been hitting at that for a while but AFAIK never delivered.
Meanwhile some guys created Nostr[0] that is so simple and functional its comical. Basically you sign a message and broadcast to one or more relays. Its not even p2p.
Keet/Holepunch[1] are based on DHT and some bittorrenty things. Basically serverless and p2p as far as I can understand. There is some scrutiny about the source code not being available but they said the project is really nascent and as soon as they clean the code they'll release it. I'd like to see that.
If you could do that effectively then what is the point of spending money to upvote?
Also look into the current state of play to earn games [1] and some NFT auction methods where people are selling their participation quite openly [2]
It’s no longer a Sybil attack if it is real people who value their moral “vote” less than the market rate of that vote. It’s just an open market encouraging wealthy participants to on-board buyable users.
The idea would be a fixed price for an upvote. Not to create a market, but for two other advantages.
It creates a cost for bots and hence a cost for massive spam campaigns. And it creates compensation to the system for processing and displaying the content.
As for people selling their vote, this occurs even without costs in the form of vote brigading, and seems pretty controllable on e.g. reddit.
The market isn’t the price of the vote, it’s the price to buy someone’s vote. That’s a race to the bottom.
Right now the cheapest option is a bot. A perfect anti-bot solution shifts this so that the cheapest option is the global poor.
Zoom out, is the problem is manipulation not bots. Bots are just the best weapon today. Does this new scheme present a sustainable solution to manipulation?
I don’t believe it does. over time, power and wealth will be more able to pay the per vote cost and raising it will disproportionately deny real peoples voice.
Looping back, this is why I asked if any of it was needed once we assume the presence of a working moderation scheme (which you credit as the protection today from vote buying).
I don’t think that works either as direct democracy results in lots of mediocre content getting massively upvoted.
I think the key is to have individual sets where each user has particular people whose upvotes and downvotes count for more and use that to filter content. This would be transparent at least to the users involved so there’s no black box algorithm.
It kind of reminds me of overlaying vectors and for any given user there would be particular vectors to overlay to rate every thing according to its value to the user.
It sounds good at first, but then the biggest issue is that a platform like this becomes really susceptible to manipulation/pushing an agenda etc.
Anonymous 'vote buying' is even worse than working with ads.
It's funny how you can take a multi-billion dollar idea, write it all out for the world to see, and it still gets ignored or ridiculed by everyone.
It's also funny how you can take two of the greatest minds in our generation and dismiss them out of hand, mostly due to your previous biases of what you think they are all about.
If email cost the sender 1 cent per email, spam could have been eliminated.
This system would do the same thing. 5 cents to post, 1 cent to comment, 1 cent to upvote. 80% of money goes to poster and commenters. 20% pays the bills. Maybe a downvote option that costs 2 cents?
Influencers make money. Users pay a small proportional amount to interact, free to read.
Decentralization is the key, just like for crypto. No one controls the content. No one censors Hunter Biden's laptop posts.
You load up with $5 and add more when you are depleted. Everything in sats or ADA, etc. It stays in your "wallet" so it can't be frozen or taken from you.
You can have a tipping and buying system as well, all built in.
Mentioning BTC/LN on HN has a way of provoking irrational group think. It’s frustrating that proposing a v2 of the ad-laden hellscape that is the current internet economic structure is so vehemently opposed. But then again most folks here are probably paid in some way, shape, or form from this status quo.
You can read the same idea, time and time again in this same website, I even have heard this exact multi-billion dollar idea from my drunk cousin who is into crypto but has no idea of the complexities of running a tech business. So like always the common wisdom is that more than the idea, what matters is the implementation.
And while I also share the negative outlook on these 2, I'm aware that they are part of the group who could get it done, as they have the business know how, the connections and the money. Yet like Trump before with his social network, I still don't think they can beat the network effect.
> Be kind. Don't be snarky. Have curious conversation; don't cross-examine. Please don't fulminate. Please don't sneer, including at the rest of the community.[0]
Dorsey seems to have figured it out.