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Comment by bobiny | Hacker News Reader

I hope ads will die some day. To me they are just annoying and very rarely informative.

Where's the funding come from, then? That was not a cheap purchase.

I wasn't talking about Twitter specifically. Ads are a dominating revenue model: Youtube, Instagram, Facebook etc. I had an idea of people using crypto payments instead of likes. A platform would take a cut.

I'd expect like counts to fall precipitously if you had to pay for every single one.

OTOH a like would mean a lot more because it would mean someone literally put their money where their mouth is.

Yes. I feel that "liking" is a consumerist approach to conversation. Buy/no buy, swipe left/right. It's more nuanced in real world. We don't always agree or disagree with people, sometimes we just listen and exchange words. So yeah, there would be less "likes", but they would be more substantial.

Or maybe they wouldn't because it's just twitter and why would anyone pay to "like" something? seems more like the crypto fantasy for a world where everything is a financial transaction. I don't think its a realistic assessment of how people actually value money and speech.

sure

you can see with youtube premium that the value of individual ad views is basically nothing, and getting users to pay a reasonable monthly fee ends up being much more profitable. nobody will do the 'pay per video' thing because its not as profitable as just getting a monthly sub.

I wouldn't pay for each video I watch now, but I could probably watch less. It's like eating junk food now: you can eat nonstop but it doesn't nourish.

So PBS?

Or government funded/controlled socials.

Maybe something funded by public, yes.

I think there is a need for smaller existing community-based social networks. They can be paid for by certain people or crowdfunded once in a while like Wikipedia.

In unrelated news:

https://twitter.com/ProfessorShaw/status/1586064942972575746

Also, I assume the point is a presidential run within the next cycle or three.

The tweet has been deleted - do you have the content?

Deleted tweet.

Elon Musk is not eligible to be President.

Which is probably why they deleted the tweet. They were probably getting ratio'ed to hell. So they decided to delete their shame rather than take their lumps.

What does "getting ratio'ed to hell" mean?

Replies >>> likes + retweets

Implying that people are dunking on you for being wrong instead of amplifying what you said.

That tweet doesn't seem to exist when I click the link. Unless I'm missing some context if you're saying Elon will run for president I don't think that can happen because he was born in South Africa.

Most people have concluded that the "natural born" clause doesn't mean "born in," otherwise Ted Cruz would never have bothered to run. Of course, it hasn't been tested by the Supreme Court yet.

His issue is that he wasn't born a US citizen, not that he was born in South Africa.

How about charging anyone with more than X followers? Or pay to be verified? or pay for support? Supported bot accounts or corporate accounts? There are many options they could pursue. Twitter was not helped having Jack as a part-time CEO for all of those years.

> How about charging anyone with more than X followers?

Excellent idea, let's deplatform people by creating lots of bot accounts to follow them so that they have to pay for it!

Verified accounts means it’s somebody well known outside of Twitter. So it’s beneficial to Twitter to have them.

I see today’s Twitter as a chat app where popular people promote their content to less popular. Maybe it would make sense to help populars sell stuff directly and get a cut.

Clearly they generate revenue, though.

What's your proposal for how Twitter makes money? Just double-down on the harvesting of personal information instead?

Personal info harvesting is at the core of most ad based businesses. Like Google of FB. I’d help people sell things. Like be a platform to sell books, nudes, news etc.

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