At the peak it was a neat site, and some folks made a bit of money. If I recall correctly, there as a bit of a problem where NSFW posts were more profitable than most other kinds of posts. For some reason, the creator was unable to keep it running and didn't want to hand it off, so it was shut down.
It worked by depositing Bitcoins which got converted into "Witcoins", an off-chain micro-transaction credit system. You could convert back into Bitcoins at any time.
I suspect the micro-transaction aspect of it was not as harmful as one would expect. The model seemed to work at the modest scale it grew to.
I wrote something similar as a service for DogeCoin with an API that can be integrated in any kind of site. I.e. you could let people upvote anything on your site by utilizing the API.
If anybody is interested in using this on his/her site, feel free to contact me.
I wonder if it would be an effective gaming strategy to build momentum for my posts by upvoting them myself, and hope to reap a profit when other people add their votes
It would be great if one could somehow ensure that the original content creators would receive the money (similar to http://flattr.com), not the people who submit links. That would require some moderation though. I think it's fine to receive only internet points for submitting a link instead of materialistic value. If the author of a submission does not accept payment the donations could be used to break even with server maintenance and moderation costs.
Anything to fight the "don't read the comments" attitude people have adopted when using the internet. By requiring a tangible investment in your comment, it helps ensure people will make more succinct threads and spend less time trolling.
Trolls may well be willing to pay to play, and corporations definitely will, but it seems to me that it might accidentally dampen attempts at casual or in-depth conversation. The fewer people who participate in a community, or become invested in it through interacting with other users, the quicker it'll die.
Seems like an interesting idea, but I think you would have been far better off supporting doge out of the box. The dogecoin community loves tipping. It's pretty much the only thing doge is used for. I suspect they'd be far more eager early adopters than bitcoin users.
Updn is effectively what valME.io [1] does (although valME has many more bells and whistles, doesn't require someone technical to install and run it, uses bitcoin and PayPal, etc.).
It is especially encouraging to see this open sourced. One of the goals of valME is to find ways where content consumers can bypass the behemoth publishing and media industries and financially support our favorite content providers directly. Could micropayments to bloggers, authors, writers, musicians, et al. not only add-up to an important stream of income but also provided significant competition to the publishing oligopolies?
I'd like to see the concept taken even further. For example, search engines: could upvotes/downvotes be used for search algorithm rankings, upending the SEO industry? How about books? What if authors published their books on open platforms where readers could upvote and/or tip the author as they read (e.g., "I really enjoyed that chapter, so I'm going to upvote it and give the author a few cents/bitcoins")? How about applied to the king of question/answer sites - StackOverflow? I know there are plenty of SO coders who deserve more than our non-tangible upvotes for the time and effort they saved us. Music? Upvote the song and give revenues directly to the band, bypassing the big media houses.
Advertising is currently the primary source of revenue for most websites and content providers. Micropayments based on voting and tipping could change this revenue model. What would happen if it did? Would content quality increase? Would it become easier for unknown content providers to gain visibility? Would search results become more useful? Would companies like Facebook and Google be forced to change their business models? Would copyright legislation become less relevant?
Technologies like Updn and valME are about upending the entire revenue model for news, social media, blogs, forums, and search engines - advertising. They could give unknown, quality content providers a real, viable alternative to working for the mainstream media or writing blog posts that aren't even getting a few pennies from Google AdSense. They could take power away from the entertainment lobbying companies. They could even help encourage teens to write and create outside of 140 characters, a snap of a camera, or a silly Facebook post.
But, philosophically, they can also help encourage a few thoughts that apply outside of what we do online. There is too often a belief that someone should get something for nothing; get something without effort; get something without paying for it; get something without trading for it. People forget that there is always a price for value. They forget that someone, eventually, has to pay. The Internet is a hotbed for reinforcing the idea of something for nothing.
We need to reduce the power of advertising dollars on the Web. We need to give content creators a different viable distribution channel to make money in order to reduce the power of copyright lobbying efforts. Directionally, Updn is a great way to do that and, as a competitor, I hope it is successful and we see more like it.
You make sweeping claims like
> Technologies like Updn and valME are about upending the entire revenue model for news, social media, blogs, forums, and search engines
Yet this site looks only marginally more alive than, say Digg. You've provided a content /aggregation/ site that you now have to pay for in order to actually contribute or effect in any way. It isn't really about the amount or the method in which you pay, it's the fact that you HAVE TO. Reddit is constantly mocking itself and the karma system because people are scamming other to get worthless internet points. Now you want to try and tie a dollar value to that and think that you're innovating?
Granted I think some of your ideas are actually interesting. Creating a micropayment system for content creators (Note: not content gatherer) to allow more independents to thrive is a wonderful goal. You however seem to be creating exactly the opposite, where money can be quite literally thrown at a post in order to force it into visibility. More so Updn (not sure about valME) has a cost associated with down-voting. Enter Company A which drops, say, 20$ to put in hundreds or thousands of upvotes for a press-release. Users would effectively have to pay to get an advertisement off their front page in order to find anything worth a damn.
My final point will relate to your philosophy and as such is totally subjective. I honestly don't understand where your remarks about "something for nothing" actually relate in this post, but I find them borderline absurd. You brush aside those who create for the sake of creation, like I would imagine the tens of thousands of coders and designers who frequent this site do on a daily basis.
You seem to strive to bring together as many soundbyte worthy ideas as possible to entice people into using a product that, it appears, no one wants to. The the space of a few paragraphs you mention: overthrowing advertising, supporting independents, copyright legislation, encouraging youth, Ann Rand-esque philosophy, distribution of wealth away from corporate entities, and copyright lobbying. All in all this sums up to something slightly less than a bad joke.
valME is young, granted. That doesn't discount the idea.
Yes, any content provider can throw money (via fake accounts, advertising, etc.) at their own content to increase visibility. That's why advertising works. On sites like reddit and FB, it costs the content providers effectively nothing to manipulate votes. On sites like valME and Updn, there will be a (minimal) cost. It's a small barrier for manipulation, but a barrier nonetheless. That, alone, should reduce vote manipulation significantly.
valME also has a cost for downvoting. When you downvote on valME, it costs you 2 karma (and your downvote removes 1 karma from the content provider). This should significantly reduce downvote brigades as there's now a barrier to downvote.
Because moderators (and everyone else) can now see who is voting and in what direction they are voting, users who manipulate voting will be more obvious to everyone. Mods can then change permissions (both for domains and users) or use the modqueue to remove posts. (If mods remove posts and comments, like Upde, there's a public trail and a reason required. Additionally, the posts are taken out of the community's queue but still are accessible in the "graveyard" to prevent censorship.)
You're correct - many coders and designers do create for the sake of creation. More power to them. But you can't live off that. There is great content out there on various blogs and, if they don't have a donation button, the most I can do to really reward them when I like something is clicking on some random ad so they get the credit. Technologies like this, with the cost of a penny or two, don't put up a large barrier for content creators, and it gives them an alternative to advertising. It also gives them the potential for a huge upside when people really value their content.
The market here isn't for content providers of memes or 140-character comments. It's for higher quality content providers. I'm not sure why you're scared of the idea to find alternatives for rewarding people who give us value.
> On sites like reddit and FB, it costs the content providers effectively nothing to manipulate votes.
But that's offset by the sheer volume of people who can freely vote. If you have a system where a vote is a payment, you'll likely have a >95% reduction of legitimate voters, and likely a much higher amount of "gamed" voters as a result. Remember, corporations and governments have more money to spend than the average person. I.e. All governments/corporations can afford to spend money + some individuals can spend money. Compare that with: All governments/corporations can freely upvote + all individuals can freely upvote. Requiring money actually skews voting in the wrong direction.
That's why I think Reddit made a smart decision when they implemented Reddit guilding for top-level comments. They did it in such a way that guilding doesn't affect voting, and guilded comments can't even be seen from the homepage--otherwise it would skew the results.
I do totally agree about other ways to support creators, though. I think it's crucial for sites like StackOverflow to implement direct tipping for users' efforts.
You might be right - that, ultimately, we find that the system can be gamed more. That's not our hunch, and it's way too early to tell at this point, but we won't ignore the results if that's how it turns out.
StackOverflow really needs to implement this functionality, though. The hours upon hours we've saved by some of the answers there really deserved a real reward.
As if a hivemind site like reddit (that's already littered with blatant advertisement posts) wasn't enough, this one proclaims, "Let's just skip the bullshit...you can buy all the top posts!" Seriously people, what actual beneficence will this bring to the table?
Having readers tipping histories encoded in a blockchain could make it easier to filter out spam via network analysis algos. Large chunks of money coming from brand new addresses wouldn't carry as much weight as old wallets with similar patterns as your own.
One can put in all the safeguards they want, but you really underestimate how far private entities with seemingly-bottomless coffers will go to get a message across, especially if its traffic is lush with its target demographic. I'm not trying to be pessimistic; this shit happens everyday on reddit, and a variant of this scenario that went too far sent Digg to the grave.
I haven't given it much thought, but that seems like a reason to support a blockchain based voting system. If votes are transparently logged then end users can rely on their own readers/clients to find relevant content. As you upvote and downvote you can train the client to learn which wallets/tips are credible/relevant and which aren't.
edit: I'm basically describing pandora for content based on blockchain data -- where anyone is free to modify the learning algos. Can someone please make that happen? Thanks.
I think you're raising great points, and I think this is a really valid concern.
However, I'd counter it thus: I think the shilling that happens on reddit is primarily acheived through the use of sock puppetry. I think casting upvotes with Bitcoin is a decent way to try and counter this effect.
When upvotes cost money it ends up costing a lot more to get a post to the top. On reddit you can can create accounts and upvote all you want for free.
When you upvote yourself (via a sockpuppet account), you're paying yourself, and therefore it's basically a free upvote. So yes, upvotes are free unless you're upvoting somebody else.
https://www.google.com/search?q=witcoin
At the peak it was a neat site, and some folks made a bit of money. If I recall correctly, there as a bit of a problem where NSFW posts were more profitable than most other kinds of posts. For some reason, the creator was unable to keep it running and didn't want to hand it off, so it was shut down.
It worked by depositing Bitcoins which got converted into "Witcoins", an off-chain micro-transaction credit system. You could convert back into Bitcoins at any time.
I suspect the micro-transaction aspect of it was not as harmful as one would expect. The model seemed to work at the modest scale it grew to.