
A Social Network That Costs 10¢ to Post - apo
https://www.yours.org/content/why-we-built-a-social-network-that-costs-10--to-post-content-b82af95f96bf/
======
alexanderdmitri
As an American kid born along with the digital epoch of the 90s, I'm a bit of
an oddity because the only social media I've ever used (& still use) is
LinkedIn, which feels like sharing a room with a vipor. I have it set up with
a dedicated email address and I only interact w/it in a sandboxed browser on
VPN with a dedicated email address. (I guess you could add HN, StackExchange
and GitHub to the list since there are pretty social aspects to all three, but
I don't know if they count.)

Because I am this weirdo, I can't help being astounded at the level of
comfortability people have in ecosystems like the ones Facebook and Google
have cultivated. These are really creepy and dystopian models at their core.
And they are not helping your damn social life! Believe me, people don't mind
being in touch and coordinating through more direct means, in fact most people
respond more genuinely to it.

So this is awesome right? Here's something proposing a fresh new model. Except
nothing in this article/pitch addresses my concerns/issues with current social
media. Like, as a paying member, are they aggregating "marketing" data on me?
Are they going to try to follow me around the web and ID me with tracking
scripts and under the table data trades with other players? Will they organize
my data and sell it on as an "anonymized" individual profile ("Emperor
{username}, we bring you new clothes. This is a magical anonymization cloak,
making you invisible to any unsavory entities we sell your data to").

In fact, now I have even more questions/concerns! For example:

1) can toxic or just plain wrong information simply be brute-forced to the top
with money (or digital tulips or whatever)?

2) how is this not just buying popularity and influence in a contrived
environment?

3) do they cap the value of a post / vote or is this susceptible to weird
bubbles?

4) if you do break the rules, do you pay to get out of trouble?

This whole thing sounds like someone's been spending a long time getting
investors on board and now can't seem to remember what the pitch to the
consumers originally was.

~~~
joehewitt
I used to feel that social networks were a waste of time (even when I worked
for Facebook) but in the last couple years that has changed. My social life
has been dramatically improved by Facebook because I started using it to
socialize with people who share my hobby (growing fruit). Through Facebook
groups I've made a number of new friends I never would have met otherwise. We
communicate and share details of our hobby on a daily basis. It's great fun. I
hardly use the site to socialize with my family and old friends - it's
basically a glorified message board.

~~~
alexanderdmitri
That's great and that is a positive contribution to your life, but it follows
the same formula I'm very used to hearing:

usecases = ["group events", "messaging", "staying in touch with people",
"networking", "checking in once a month", &c()];

singleUsecase = pickWhatevs(usecases);

otherStuff = pickNotWhatevs(singleUsecase, usecases);

responseStr = "Well, I only use it for " \+ singleCase + ". I rarely use it
for " \+ otherStuff + "."

As a former employee you might have more insight than I do, but how exactly
has a glorified message board which doesn't charge its users become one of the
richest companies in the world?

Sure they're a bit interested in the fruit growing hobby and that network, but
they're also very interested in the ways you "hardly use the site" and they're
even more interested in the things your doing when you don't even know they're
still watching you. Even more interesting, you're actions on and off their
platform can be correlated with heavy users of the site to infer traits
they'll assign to you and sell on, true or not.

At the end of the day, the way the species is evolving with the internet,
giving someone permission to follow you around the web and collect that data
on you is the same as giving them insights into your inner psyche, the
majority of what composes your reality, and the things you value most in your
life, among other things.

These are things we should have a right to offer explicitly, not implicitly
surrender.

[edits to elaborate on a couple points and add helpers to the why I use FB
excuse]

~~~
Joe-Z
>...but how exactly has a glorified message board which doesn't charge its
users become one of the richest companies in the world?

Because, as you just demonstrated with your programming example: For HIM it's
a glorified message board. Other people may use it in completely different
ways and appreciate it for them.

I'm not the greatest facebook-fan either, but I think you're really
overstating the control they have over people's lives here and at the same
time understating the value it can provide to people. Unless of course all
people using facebook are just damn idiots and don't know what they're getting
themselves into!

EDIT: 'control over people's lives' might be better phrased as 'knowledge
about their activities/preferences'

~~~
alexanderdmitri
I think you're missing my point. Google and Facebook are conditioning the
population to say no big deal. It's creeping normalcy. Remember when Sergei
was trying to make peeps comfortable with Gmail? [para-phrasing here:] "It's
not a person reading your email, it's just a robot." Well now the robot is a
neural net and I'm pretty convinced (if it's not already) that neural net will
start feeding data to other nets built by other powerful institutions that
decide whether you get higher education, loans, whether you're likely to be
guilty or innocent, &c. Didn't provide enough data, well hell, that's
suspicious, throw a red flag.

And people will accept it because we're pragmatic. And those who don't just
need to grow up and start pleasing the AI.

A whole new industry will pop up from the ones training nets in the first
place. Hey do this and that and our calculations will read you better, you'll
get the results you want. We just suggest you don't talk about these things at
all, don't shop at these stores, don't have this name or be associated with
that demographic ...

~~~
nicklo
Google no longer reads gmail emails:

[https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-06-23/google-
wi...](https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-06-23/google-will-stop-
reading-your-emails-for-gmail-ads)

Though I'm guessing that they are only now okay giving up on email data
because they have so many other sources of tracking your behavior.

~~~
sgs1370
Google is no longer using email data for _gmail_ ads. They might still use it
for their google search ads or anything else they want.

------
trott
A problem with "social networks", and perhaps the Internet in general, in my
opinion, is that they encourage groupthink.

> Each vote costs 10¢ and the payment is distributed amongst earlier voters.

This sort of pyramidal scheme actually gives people a monetary incentive to
try to vote how others will vote, regardless of their actual opinion. Like
other gambling, it may be a good business model, but it serves to exacerbate
the groupthink problem.

~~~
dps7ud
I had similar thoughts about the following:

> It costs 10¢ to post a comment and the money goes to the original author.
> Our users enjoy paying the original creator to post a nice comment next to
> their work.

Which would seem to discourage discourage diversity of discussion since
profits go to the OP.

~~~
mc32
What if they tweaked things so if you reply with an agreement to an opposing
author, that money is,either split or goes to the opposing opinion's author
outright?

------
microcolonel
I encourage you all to check out Minds.

In my opinion, Minds has a much more interesting compensation model: you can
directly send money to creators (feature called Wire) either generally or on a
specific post. There is also an internal points system where you are
compensated by interactions with your content. If you have enough points, they
have a real monetary value.

Also, as an added bonus, the website and apps are open source, and actually
function quite well. It overall has a Facebook sort of feel in terms of
feature set; but with a model that seems less exploitative and more
collaborative.

[https://minds.com/](https://minds.com/)

~~~
aaron-lebo
That homepage looks like someone made a wordpress site for a megachurch. Gaudy
as fuck. When service doesn't get design this early and instead just crams
everything they can into a page, it's good sign they're lacking taste, and
that's something that can't really be overcome. It's like they're so unsure
about their own service that they feel they need to overcompensate by talking
about all the features it has instead of just naturally showing them.

And points for hourly check ins? Modals reminding me to install apps when
reading posts (got one when trying to read the terms of service, too)? In
fact, you apparently can't visit the groups link without getting the pop up. I
just want to try your damn site. Ugh. 18 MBs of content on load? Don't do that
to the web.

Despite it's own limitations, Yours is lot, lot cleaner.

Compare: [http://www.scientology.org/](http://www.scientology.org/) (is that
the same font in the header?)

After some more searching around, it's like the same audience repeated across
all of these sites ("alt right" and cryptocurrency obsessed). Stefan Molyneux
one of the main users of minds and also one of the first users of Yours? You
guys are setting yourselves up for failure if you don't diversify your
audience quick.

[https://steemit.com/@stefan.molyneux](https://steemit.com/@stefan.molyneux)

[https://www.minds.com/StefanMolyneux](https://www.minds.com/StefanMolyneux)

[https://www.yours.org/profile/b32fd24245734d632b5f3ee35a2b85...](https://www.yours.org/profile/b32fd24245734d632b5f3ee35a2b85d622b7b1f84a46dbb360a4979996484413)

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stefan_Molyneux#Cult_accusatio...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stefan_Molyneux#Cult_accusations)

Here's the third most followed user, "truth":

[https://www.minds.com/truth](https://www.minds.com/truth)

Complete with

"Antifa victim, Kiara Robles, speaks out about political violence in
Berkeley."

"Hillary Clinton blames everyone from James Comey to Bernie Sanders for her
blistering defeat to Donald Trump"

"Why Did World Trade Center Building 7 Fall? New Study Claims Gov’t Story Is
False"

I hear r/conspiracy is nice this time of year, but there's not Bitcoin to be
made if that gets big, yeah?

~~~
yafujifide
We suspect that is not the real Stefan Molyneux. We will have flagging and
moderation to deal with this soon. Also we will allow more auth options so
people can prove who they are (twitter auth, e.g.)

------
heroprotagonist
I was intrigued, until I read that the payment system is in bitcoin cash. I've
really lost interest in cryptocurrency over the past couple of years. I don't
want to jump through the requisite hoops to manage another digital wallet just
for the sake of engaging on an obscure platform that launched its beta 3 weeks
ago.

I have nothing against the site, it's an interesting concept. But having to
read about whatever recent bitcoin drama is going on to understand its hard
forks and implications (BCC is a hard fork, right?), setup and manage a new
wallet, take appropriate security precautions, etc, just to manage my site
balance is a lot more burdensome than asking for ten cents to comment.

~~~
mrb
Easiest solution: send BTC to [https://shapeshift.io](https://shapeshift.io)
which they will convert to BCC and deposit it directly to whatever address
needs to receive BCC. Shapeshift's main feature is to convert between cryptos
with the minimum amount of hassle.

Edit: nevermind, I didn't know yours.org had shapeshift integrated.

~~~
sl4i6j3o4i98g
Of course, Ryan wouldn't want to miss out on Eric's affiliate fees from SS.

------
tpeo
Having some limit to posts is an interesting idea. But I don't see much of a
return on investment for the users in this approach. Why should I pay to have
people see my post? Shouldn't I have to pay people to see their posts instead?

Anyway, all of luck to them. I'd like to know what might develop from this.

Though they really should have asked for two cents instead of ten. I mean,
come on: how could you miss this?

~~~
savanaly
>Why should I pay to have people see my post? Shouldn't I have to pay people
to see their posts instead?

I think people like to write things that others will read. How else to explain
why people post so much on e.g. Facebook that is not informational or helpful
to others but merely something they want others to read? Introspectively, I
recognize that I enjoy commenting on Hacker News and am not exactly doing it
wholly out of the goodness of my heart for the benefit of all of you.

~~~
tpeo
From observing the behavior of some people online, I think that there are
people out there who just like to write stuff, regardless of whether anyone
might read or care. This can be good or bad. I've read good posts from clearly
forgotten blogs. I've also read in certain communities posts so inane and out
of context that it's hard to even understand why they were written in the
first place.

"Shitposting" in it's strictest sense is very much an example of the latter,
because it's a repeated pattern of stupid behavior which doesn't even qualify
as joking, and which is repeated regardless of whether people pay attention to
it or not. It's like drawing swastikas on bathroom stalls.

------
jpindar
>People love to pay money to vote on things. Who would have thought?

Anyone who's active in virtual worlds knows people love to buy content and tip
creators and performers.

>Why didn’t micropayments ever take off? No one ever tried.

Except virtual worlds, which have whole economies based on micropayments.

~~~
olegkikin
My mind was recently blown by how much people tip on gamer streams. I was
watching Shroud play PUBG, he suddenly gets tipped $550, doesn't even
acknowledge it.

Apparently $10-20K tips happen quite often:

[https://www.reddit.com/r/GlobalOffensive/comments/231p6e/sum...](https://www.reddit.com/r/GlobalOffensive/comments/231p6e/summit_the_highest_paid_cs_player/)

So yeah, if you're entertaining enough, people will throw money at you.

~~~
camus2
> So yeah, if you're entertaining enough, people will throw money at you.

Which was a well known fact since the beginning of strip clubs... Twitch and
co are no different from sexcams.

~~~
tyrust
>Twitch and co are no different from sexcams

Once you get past the fact that they are both livestreams the similarity ends.
Twitch explicitly forbids sexual content [0]. There are some streamers that
dress suggestively, but they're in the minority.

Your statement is not much different from calling YouTube no different from
PornHub.

[0] - [https://www.twitch.tv/p/legal/community-
guidelines/](https://www.twitch.tv/p/legal/community-guidelines/)

------
aaron-lebo
_We started charging 10¢ to post content on our social network. Our users
didn’t leave. In fact, they are posting more than ever, and the quality of
content has improved. Our experiment seems to be working. People are willing
to pay to post content._

Neat concept (and good domain), but your top post has $2.28. The entire site
has 20 new posts ($2?) over the last 24 hours. You don't gotta exaggerate to
sell, it just makes me less inclined to trust you and your service.

Seems to be competing roughly with Steem. These services have a problem where
the initial adopters are Bitcoin users or fanatical unpopular views (voat),
which biases and ruins the community early. Interested to see if this avoids
it.

Also, does anyone know what kind of regulatory upkeep a project like this
requires? If a site like this operates with multiple currencies, it's
essentially an exchange and probably has to register as such (they've
outsourced this). However, if it just keeps user balances (not really a bank,
but similar), does it have to register with any particular authorities?

edit: your site allows a blank password, the title is "Yours | undefined" on
profile pages and the menu controls to the left of the message input are very
unintuitive. How do they work? Also, the profile ids are from hell:

/90b5a6c4bfb6530398c8c5aa27e2b60e3a4611ddb2184c366b7d3ad41f0e9f16/

Don't men to be too picky, it's just very rough around the edges.

~~~
yafujifide
Thanks for your great comments. We launched the beta only three weeks ago so
it is definitely rough around the edges :) Fixing issues as fast as we can.

> Also, does anyone know what kind of regulatory upkeep a project like this
> requires? If a site like this operates with multiple currencies, it's
> essentially an exchange and probably has to register as such (they've
> outsourced this). However, if it just keeps user balances (not really a
> bank, but similar), does it have to register with any particular
> authorities?

We have discussed with lawyers and are sure to stay inside the law. Because
all payments are p2p and we are not a custodian, the regulatory burden for us
is a lot lower than many other similar projects.

> edit: your site allows a blank password, the title is "Yours | undefined" on
> profile pages and the menu controls to the left of the message input are
> very unintuitive. How do they work? Also, the profile ids are from hell:

Will fix soon. These things are already on our issues list :)

~~~
njarboe
So if every payment is p2p does that mean every transaction in yours is a
bitcoin cash transaction? Are those cheap enough? I don't know much about
bitcoin cash.

------
castratikron
People interested in this idea might also be interested in Hashcash. Someone
who wants to send and email to someone else also has to provide a "proof of
work" with their message, essentially the same thing as Bitcoin mining. The
point of it is to reduce email spam by attaching a small cost to each email,
since, today, there is no cost difference between sending 1 email and 1
million, which enables spammers to send out so many.

The main benefit is that no real currency is ever involved, which reduces a
lot of administrative overhead.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hashcash](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hashcash)

~~~
sl4i6j3o4i98g
So Hashcash was proposed by Adam Back, who is now the CTO of blockstream, a
major bitcoin development firm. His vision, and the vision you describe is
actually bitcoin.

A 2017 Hashcash was actually implemented recently and published at
[http://hashcash.com/](http://hashcash.com/) Bad news is that it requires
something to store the value, so this requires bitcoin as the token
transferred via hashcash.

What you have described in your post doesn't actually work that way in the
real world -- You cant set a global proof of work value (bitcoin difficulty
adjustment) or able to build a proof of work that would allow a phone or
desktop to hash -- it will be eaten alive by spam farms with ASICs (bitcoin
mining asic farms).

------
yafujifide
Hey everyone, Ryan X. Charles here, Cofounder & CEO of Yours. Happy to answer
any questions.

~~~
ballenf
> Our users also spend money to upvote content. Each vote costs 10¢ and the
> payment is distributed amongst earlier voters. This is our most popular
> activity. People love to pay money to vote on things. Who would have
> thought?

That quote caught my attention. Is this kind of gambling or being a day
trader? I like the mechanic that unearthing good content gets rewarded -- was
that the goal? Have you found this system subject to gaming or collusion (a
few people posting and upvoting content to increase the odds of getting a
payout)? Do you see less clickbait getting upvoted than, say, on fb? What's
the incentive for later readers to upvote an already popular title?

Pretty cool that you taken such a different approach. Wish you the best! I'm
pretty much burned out on all social media, but will check it out regardless.

edit: Big question what's your vig or house cut on all the money changing
hands?

2nd edit: I see the answer to my last question: you keep $0.10 from from each
post and credit yourself as the "first voter on every post". So you get the
largest cut of the cost of the upvotes on each post?

~~~
yafujifide
> That quote caught my attention. Is this kind of gambling or being a day
> trader? I like the mechanic that unearthing good content gets rewarded --
> was that the goal? Have you found this system subject to gaming or collusion
> (a few people posting and upvoting content to increase the odds of getting a
> payout)? Do you see less clickbait getting upvoted than, say, on fb? What's
> the incentive for later readers to upvote an already popular title?

The vote model encourages hotness. If you want to earn money, you are
encouraged to vote quickly. We will have alternate models to encourage
different things soon. The next step in rating content will be something we
call reviews. After purchasing content, you will be asked: "was this content
worth paying for? yes/no". We believe the information we get from that will be
a very good measure of quality.

> Pretty cool that you taken such a different approach. Wish you the best! I'm
> pretty much burned out on all social media, but will check it out
> regardless.

Thank you very much!

> edit: Big question what's your vig or house cut on all the money changing
> hands?

Currently our revenue comes from two places: The 10¢ it costs to post content
and getting the first vote on all pieces of content.

> 2nd edit: I see the answer to my last question: you keep $0.10 from from
> each post and credit yourself as the "first voter on every post". So you get
> the largest cut of the cost of the upvotes on each post?

Yes. This is something we will change soon, probably by either giving the
creator the first vote and then charging 20% of all votes or by giving the
creator the second vote. It's important that Yours Inc. gets some of the money
to prevent infinite self-upvotes. We had that problem originally.

------
rcarrigan87
Interesting concept. There is definitely an opportunity out there for some
kind of Patreon meets reddit model but the execution on these types of
businesses is particularly hard to pull off.

~~~
yafujifide
Thank you. Hopefully we can pull it off. We have a great asset - very low fees
while not being a custodian of user funds. Allows rapid iteration of the
product with fewer regulatory concerns.

------
sleepychu
The authors claim that their users post high quality content but a brief
browse found _subjectively_ awful content. I didn't see a single interesting
article.

------
softbuilder
>Micropayments have been talked about since the 1990s.

A little longer than that, perhaps.
[http://transcopyright.org/hcoinRemarks-D28.html](http://transcopyright.org/hcoinRemarks-D28.html)

~~~
yafujifide
Awesome article. Thanks for sharing.

------
ramzyo
"Our users also spend money to upvote content. Each vote costs 10¢ and the
payment is distributed amongst earlier voters. This is our most popular
activity. People love to pay money to vote on things. Who would have thought?"

Is the payout to early voters greater than 10 cents? And do voters know when
they're an early voter? If so, maybe this is why it's such a popular activity!

~~~
alexbeloi
Every post is a miniature pyramid scheme. Like those chain letters that say
'send a dollar to everyone on this list, then add your name to the list and
pass it along to everyone you know'.

~~~
novalis78
Indeed. That's why it might work :-) gamification of content generation.. now
if they can only keep the content quality high.. how about allowing people to
downvote and punish low quality content? I tried something like that on
booklove.rs

------
627467
Yesterday I found and posted about leeroy.io
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15247336](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15247336)

It's a Twitter clone that stores usernames, follows and posts in EthereumVM.
Transactions are optimised for costs, right now it's around 0.01USD to
follow/post

------
coldtea
> _Most people told us it would never work, but we did it anyway: We started
> charging 10¢ to post content on our social network. Our users didn’t leave.
> In fact, they are posting more than ever, and the quality of content has
> improved. Our experiment seems to be working. People are willing to pay to
> post content. That is not the only thing we’ve done differently. Our users
> can submit content with a pay wall, at a location and price of their
> choosing, and charge to access the full version of their content. Most users
> charge 10¢. Quality content sells. Sometimes for $1.00 or more. Many people
> told us this would never work, but it seems they were wrong. Our users are
> willing to pay for good content._

I think those users meant "it will never work at scale".

Seeing that yours is a totally obscure social network -- it might be OK for a
small niche.

Heck, The Well charges for belonging to a discussion group.

~~~
wpietri
That was definitely my reaction. "People said it would never work! But it's
worked for three whole weeks among cryptocurrency users, a group already
selected for a) early adopter status, b) credulity, and c) a currency-focused
worldview!"

I look forward to seeing how it goes, and I'm always glad that people are
getting out and doing the experiments that they find compelling.

But it's very dangerous to confuse novelty with utility. As examples, consider
the 90s wave of VR. Or the many waves of 3D photos/movies/TV. Early try-it-out
interest among technophiles is proof of novelty, not long-term utility. And
especially these days, social networks are, like the human relationships they
channel, long-term propositions.

------
sonink
Very interesting. I immediately liked the product when I read this, but giving
it a few minutes of thought and it doesnt seem too exciting anymore.

The fundamental problem I see is that it kind-of 'corrupts' gratification.
When I make a post, or do a vote, or write a comment, I dont want to think
about the monetary value of it. There is 'value' inherent in creating/sharing
interesting content and thats all I want to think about.

Adding money to the mix makes it a distraction from a 'pure' experience and
takes away value than adding it. Ads do something similar - but imo ads are
less distracting than putting a monetary value on an upvote.

Still this is very interesting experiment. Would love to follow updates on hn.

~~~
tomw1808
The purist.

I am just adding high quality content because I think I'm better off directly
charging for my content rather than going the ads-route. I hate ads. I (and
probably everybody else on this platform) sees as the greates-valued addon in
his browser the ad-blocker.

I will run a few tests, see if people are willing to pay for high quality
content.

I don't see this as my facebook-replacement. Facebook is fun, to watch cute
little videos while enjoying my "extra privacy" during the day. Facebook isn't
for high quality content. Facebook isn't good anymore for staying in touch
with friends (for me) - Facebook messenger yes, but the Facebook wall - no.

I also don't think that "yours" will be the next Facebook. I see it as direct
payments channel for independent high-quality content creators. Something like
steem, just more straight forward for me. I like the concept and I'll see if
it works for me.

------
aussieguy123
10c is more expensive than local phone calls are in alot of countries. Not a
bad idea though, could make alot of spamming unviable even with a small amount
like 1c. What about if you "like" something, a portion of the fee goes to the
original poster?

~~~
jasonkostempski
"What about if you "like" something, a portion of the fee goes to the original
poster?"

Maybe if the likes only got you store credit up to what you've put in but
never for profit? If profit from likes was possible, we'd end up with tons of
posts karma whores go for.

~~~
yafujifide
We will have multiple mechanisms for votes, likes, favorites, etc. May the
best mechanism win :)

------
Fjolsvith
I read FAQ for Yours.org. The voting looks like a pyramid scheme:

>You can earn money by voting on good content. Each vote costs 10¢ and the
payment is distributed evenly between all earlier voters. Yours Inc. always
makes the first vote. You can vote on something as many times as you'd like.
You will earn money if you vote on something popular early, because you will
get money from all votes after you.[1]

1\. [https://www.yours.org/about/](https://www.yours.org/about/)

------
folksinger
I've been telling anyone who will listen that we need a public social media
platform funded by just such a mechanism, akin to similar institutions like
copyright registration and the postal service.

Innovation could occur on top of what is a very simple data model and doesn't
need the free market to stay relevant.

Our public institutions are what we make of them. If we despise and distrust
them they will wither and die. If we encourage and support them they will
flourish and we will all prosper together.

No man is an island!

------
jff
I'm curious, what are the tax implications of this? You're spending money,
you're receiving money--does it tell you at the end of the year how much
you've taken in vs how much you spent, so you can report it as taxable income?
I acknowledge that the average person would probably end up with a negative
balance at year-end, but someone who wrote popular posts could end up making
hundreds of dollars due to upvotes and comments, right?

------
codecamper
Make sure your site allows fivefilters to send your blog posts to my kindle.
Otherwise, they will not be read. I publish to kindle everything to read &
then go for a walk reading along the way. The Lidl checkout line makes for
very good reading time.

------
shadowmore
How does this compare to steemit.com?

~~~
sayurichick
simple. I give a shit about yours.org BECAUSE they didn't create their own
token to build a service.

Using bitcoin cash is another positive in my books, since it costs < $0.01 per
transaction, versus $7~ per transaction on Bitcoin legacy.

~~~
omarchowdhury
In a post above they admit they will issue a token.

------
abpavel
If you click "New" at the parent site, you'll see that essentially it' micro-
Patreon/Kickstarter full of beggars and spam that baits you to click "read
more" to earn that 10c.

------
lolsal
I worry about not being able to get refunds for poor content. I clicked around
a bit on the domain and there were a couple articles that had click-baity
titles - an interesting premise, but I was turned off from the nature of the
presentation:

\- How Bitcoin will see massive adoption – it might surprise you.

\- Still Don't Get Bitcoin? Here's an Explanation Even a Five-Year-Old Will
Understand

I know reading would only cost $0.10 (or even less) which is not a life
affecting amount, but I don't like the idea of that 'test' being seen as some
sort of endorsement that I can't revoke.

------
ddmma
So this might be a feature that facebook will be happy to integrate, social
media got their dinosaurs and whales on place, moving on ello

------
kalmakazi
Reminds me of [https://www.feespeech.com](https://www.feespeech.com), but with
more competition for eyes

------
quickthrower2
Looks like the tips are in Bitcoin cash? Of course people are happy to spend
the 10c they got for free when it forked.

~~~
Taek
10c is 10c. As much as I think using bitcoin cash was a big mistake, I
wouldn't say that the activity doesn't resemble real activity.

~~~
quickthrower2
I think psychologically it is different, and people are more likely to splash
their lottery win money around especially if it's just 10c at a time rather
than their hard earned money.

------
stcredzero
I think this is awesome, but I'd like a way to just subscribe and not worry
about the money.

------
novalis78
We should all move over and comment on yours.org :-) - did you guys plan on
nested comments?

------
aethertron
ctrl f 'ted nelson' 'xanadu'

no results.

I guess they independently came up with similar notions. Good luck with their
initiative. Because I really hope there can be viable alternatives to
advertising revenue for online content.

------
PaulHoule
That price is too low.

~~~
crude_euler
Maybe for posting, but 10c to consume or upvote content might be too high.
Think about how many pieces of content you consume on a Facebook feed or on
your reddit homepage. And 1k upvotes would translate to $100...sounds rich to
me. Wonder how they intend on preventing spamming posts / content farming /
gaming the system in that kind of environment.

~~~
fish_fan
It might stop eg "share to pray" posts and viral fake news.

~~~
qbrass
"Reply with your prayers to help little Billy afford chemo"

------
Radle
This is where I will start writing my novels.

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twobyfour
So magnifying the voices of those who have cash to spare, and diminishing the
voices of those who are not so fortunate?

------
iaabtpbtpnn
Might be interesting if 9 of the cents go to charity, otherwise no thanks.

------
TazeTSchnitzel
oh i love SomethingAwful

------
sl4i6j3o4i98g
Bitcoin cash! Ewwwwwwwww, i wont touch that with a 10 foot poll. As a holder
of bitcoin, I will never spend the UTXO's on this chain, thus denying this
false bitcoin of spendable outputs.

Wouldn't something like lightning network microtx's be better than Bcash?

~~~
omarchowdhury
You do know that Bitcoin cash is more like the original Bitcoin than the
"Bitcoin" of today?

~~~
sl4i6j3o4i98g
Yeah, we must run MS-DOS forever. All software upgrades and protocol changes
are wrong. We don't want no GUI or protected mode runtime, we will hatefork
MS-DOS and run it forever. /s

