A Vision for a Value-Enabled Web

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It's hard to guard your time and attention when it is used as a defacto currency online. Using attention as a surrogate currency has led to all kinds of problems. The root problem lies in the nature of coin, credit, circulation, and information. 🧵👇

Platforms harvest eyeballs and brain cycles to sell them to the highest bidder. The core of the advertisement model is combining addiction with surveillance, which destroys nuance and privacy alike. The incentives are broken. #Bitcoin fixes this.

The internet had to use attention as a surrogate currency because conventional currency doesn't work well online. You have to use IOUs when using conventional currency, which implies credit and counterparty risk, and thus KYC. #Bitcoin fixes this.

Cash is king for a reason. "The whole point of cash is to NOT know your customer," to paraphrase an Italian comedian. Enough with credits and IOUs. Let's use cash money again: #Bitcoin on #Lightning⚡ fixes this.

Pseudonymity and anonymity make the internet great. But there's a problem: using conventional credit rails without identity is impossible. This is terrible for journalists, dissidents, political activists, and the underbanked. #Bitcoin fixes this.

Yes, anonymous "troll-demons" can be a problem. Moderation is important, depending on context. If account creation & verification is free, bots and trolls take over. We have to make it costly, but IOUs do not allow for anonymous security deposits. #Bitcoin fixes this.

Using attention as a proxy for value produces a short head: the loudest, most primitive, and most clickbaity content wins. The head can be monetized. The long tail of niche and nuance loses. #Bitcoin and #value4value fixes this.

The model of platforms and advertisements leads to self-censorship, audience capture, and "brand safety." If you aren't being deplatformed or demonetized outright, your bank account might be frozen, or your payment platform removes funds from your account. #Bitcoin fixes this.

Paywalls don't fix this; they break the internet. Information wants to be free, and for good reason. Trying to make files uncopyable is like trying to make water not wet. We have to disconnect price from value, and we have to re-think both. #Bitcoin and #value4value fixes this.

I tried my best to expand on the above in "A Vision for a Value-Enabled Web" — it's far from perfect, but I believe #Bitcoin and #Lightning⚡ allow us to envision a web that could be better. dergigi.com/2022/12/18/a-vision-for-a-value-enabled-web/

I wrote this, at least in part, as a response to @jordanbpeterson's comments on the problems of "anonymous troll-demons" and his suggestion to fix this issue with KYC and True Names. I believe this is terribly naive and misguided (should be obvious if you know authoritarianism).

I wrote this *before* @jack stumbled upon nostr and @elonmusk decided to run a guerilla ad campaign for it. Nostr has a chance of fixing a lot of things too, because it is an open protocol, not a platform.

Let me know what you think of all this, what I missed, what I got wrong, and what you think could be better. I'm excited that many people are working on all of this. From @TBD54566975 to @Synonym_to to @keet_io to @PodcastindexOrg to @Breez_Tech to @fiatjaf, and many more.

I've said it before and I'll say it again: The future is bright, we just have a lot of building to do. #Bitcoin + #Lightning⚡ have a crucial role to play in all of it, and I couldn't be more excited. Onwards! 🚀

A Vision for a Value-Enabled Web

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