A social platform where you get paid for being helpful | Hacker News Reader

A social platform where you get paid for being helpful

theniceplace.net

40 pointscw1257450 comments

Two 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...

I 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.

Can I lurk for free? I would like to see how the community looks like before paying to participate.

I understand paying to comment (or vote) but not to read.

Does 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?

And 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.

"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.

This 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

The subscription fee is $5/month. The payments _you receive_ back are via a formula. So the maximum you will spend is $5/month.

I 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.

> Anyway 5$ for not knowing to what I'm joining is a bit strange.

Agreed.

Even 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.

I 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?

Doesn'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.

I 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.

Hate 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

Not 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

Sorry 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!

> 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 asks you to not use HN exclusively for promoting your products.

I'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.

Yeah, 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.

> 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.

when you hear the word democracy do you think "give undesirables a say in our government"?

Yep, 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.

Democracy doesn't work when the citizens are manipulated due to their lack of intellect.

So your idea of democracy is "only these people should rule you, whether you vote or not."?

It'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.

> 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.

Democracy is doing just fine. Anyone can vote, fool or laureate. That's democracy, and nothing more.

How 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)

I think the USA's current opponent are lobbying corporations, not terrorists or domestic insurgence.

True, you are correct, democracy specifies no specific outcome.

However, my comment should have read "bad for the outcomes of a democracy."

Yeah 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"

So 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.

I like the idea. How do you finance yourself? Could not see a business model in the FAQs.

It 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..."

That was my impression. Which makes me doubt the concept again. Operating social platforms costs money.

"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?

The 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.

>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?

> 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.

>I'm not convinced this is the case.

What, really? The majority wants blasphemers stoned now, today, in some countries. Why would you think it was better then?

How is one supposed to semi-reliably distinguish between a tiny vocal minority “cancel mob” and an “actual majority” when the end result is the same: $thing is cancelled. I suspect the only discernible difference between the two for most people is one of opinion - whether they agree or disagree with $thing being cancelled. If they agree, they’re in the majority and if they disagree it’s obviously that pesky vocal minority.

" 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!

The fabric of society has been torn and a website would be the least of our concern.

So this is free speech that you have to pay for?

In contrast, the media is free speech that advertisers/oligarchs pay for.

sounds like something that could potentially be built on top of Ethereum smart contracts (not sure if it should though ...)

What is your plan for transaction costs?

Why 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.

It's basically the difference between a democracy and an oligarchy.

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