I was just perusing reddit and saw this post about tipping vs earning for quality content. Complete with some stats.
Interesting to see this being tried out. Definitely has implications for safe net economy and could help inform PtP debates whenever we want to get back to that lark.
I wonder if anyone else has seen any data on tipping vs rewarding for content creation?
I canāt suggest data but the idea of cryptocurrency micropayments, solving the question of how to resolve subscription based media, has been around for a long while.
With cryptocurrency having the fractional payments naturally anyway, there is good option for SAFE Browser to allow access to subscription based content that accepts a micropayments from an account either or both, for each read or potentially each user prompted occasion. The user could like content in a way that is tipping or could subscribe in a way that pays each page they read.
So, I could have a SAFE Browser element linking app that is topped up like an Oyster card, I travel to a site that requires payment - take traditional media as example, and I can see that content because micropayment is made. Then alternatively or as well, I could reward the page with a ālikeā, which is linked to a set amount or even with option to tip any amount.
Considering the way that traditional media has struggled to find a place in the new online world, thereās potential for this to be a huge feature supporting journalists and authors directly. Which trips me to thinking about book authorsā¦ you like this first chapter, pay for access to read the remainder.
would subscribe would have tipped the OP but I canāt just yet, so I wonāt! 
I have looked into this previously but is surprisingly not easy to come across. Perhaps when some sort of SAFE tipping / rewards is implemented it can be done in a way that deliberately addresses this gap, ie built in stats for publishing (and bragging).
The two I know best are flattr and patreon, also steem attempts this too. There are / was tipping bots on reddit and maybe voat does it too, Iām not sure.
But stats on any of this is hard to come by.
The read.cash concept is interesting because of the flow.
Most sites do a kind of track-your-activity then distribute-to-producers, mainly to reduce friction in the user experience.
read.cash seems to be switching this to track-your-activity then send-you-your-producer-payment-list which is cool because it keeps the power with the user but also puts more work on them, albeit minimal if that list interfaces straight into your wallet.
This āswitchingā concept will be everywhere on SAFE, eg search will be more like downloading a user filter, moderation will be like downloading a user filter, rather than giving your data to a central service which does the filtering for you and sends back the results. The read.cash microtipping system is like downloading a payment filter, which is a pretty neat switch I reckon.
But can we have a system where tipping is only ever after the fact and only exactly what the end user wants to tip and where the tip is just meant to keep future works coming and with a culture that completely rejects sponsorship?
I have interest in micro pay per bytes for media and something similar for a web blog say where the reader spends close to the average read time and you get paid as they work their way down the page, again micro payments.
Based off from a subscription model most likely so one is opting in to supporting what they consume whether they like, donāt, agree or disagree.
This would be less fraught with abuse than standard PtP Iām sure. I also think this should function at a deeper network level so it is for everyone.
As long as the subscription and therefore payment is tied to the data then I think it could provide the necessary incentive for content to spread more easily through a sharing economy.
I imagine this scenario.
I could see this creating a viral sharing economy full of human content curation (higher quality and more relatable content to consume).
I want unverified artists (anyone) on JAMS to be able to take advantage of this and for content curators to build a following curating the content. As people consume content through curators (or if directly subscribed to the artist) the artist gets paid, if they subscribe and consume future content through that same curator then the curator AND the artist both get paid. As this grows it means artists can get paid from all across the network without the direct need for a platform. This is real, high quality, digital distribution imo.
Iām not sure about anyone else but I always loved discovering a new band and being the first in my group of friends to share it with them. I think that is a pretty common occurrence with a common feeling. Now imagine that but getting a bit of money for it. 
Money is perverse; ratings perhaps a way to provide negative feedback and keep quality in check but I canāt see micropayments necessarily better than subscription for access. The benefit of a group of authors/journalists/artists banding together is some stability in income from subscriptions for access.
The problem with pay for inches is the poor quality clickbaiting waste my time and take my money, which only authors are motivated by. Just look at the stinking pile of Steemā¦ bunch of cowboyz behing that looking to grab a profitā¦ cheap and fake; and such poor quality feedback loop that it didnāt work well from the start.
There is a problem that users are lazy and expecting them to action a fair spend each occasion is not realistic. Most people want money to be irrelevant and in the background away from their real interestā¦ so, substantial subscription model kind of addresses thatā¦ a hole in my wallet that spends for browsing is less attractiveā¦ unless perhaps there is a browser that is made for certain content. So, you open your āmagazineā and the authors get paid by time or reading actions.
but then there is a question about the real value in content. C19 has challenged perhaps more rethink about what is essential than most other eventsā¦ and some whole industries add little value.
If the value is there, then people will be motivated to support it. So, expect that artists and investigative journalists who evidence with fact what they have about, those might be supportedā¦ the difficulty is the up front costs for production but perhaps that problem is an illusion - or better just the reality of working up your craftā¦ those developing their skills require hard graft and luck to break through. Those wanting a gravy train for hammering a keyboard - perhaps are no better than those of us here who post random nonsense while drinking their coffee in the morning.
You got this far, now pay up! ~Your money or your wife!
Totally agree. Tbh, more than half of anything I go to read, either is contrived fluff or shite click bait that I would never pay for. I also wouldnāt subscribe to it. Thatās why I say the model should be based off from subscribing to content or someone who curates content you already like, in order for them to get your micro payments from that point forth. So if youāre a passerby on SAFE and read a crap article, you didnāt pay for it, and they didnāt get your payment but if you like what is being produced, you subscribe, then next reading or listening, etc they get micro payments only for what you consume.
It would also be interesting toy integrate optional actions for users who want to support an artist (sponsor), or upvote/downvote a page (paid like/more costly dislike) etc.
Maybe trial different combinations of such mechanisms.
I agree that curation is something to explore. I flag up a danger here though if as with people with lots of followers on social media, that centralises power. So do we need to avoid curators becoming too powerful?
As well as that, curation by human is not scalable hence the rise of Feedly, Refind etc, but they only interrogate a limited range of sources.
Power does gravitateā¦ but there need to be options to resist.
I wonder the idea of guilds might workā¦ that artists and content providers band together and get paid directly without the entertainment industries pimping them.
The power must be with the user - whether creator or consumer.
The key is the tools to enable providers to be visible to those who want their product.
Whatever is done, it should be seamless and light weight. I generally find the subscription model to be cumbersome and archaic. Need to keep it simple and for now I think it should be integrated at the network or datatype level, although this too may be problematic. The only thing the user should really āsubscribeā to is the entire SAFE network itself. One account with many uses.
On passing thought was that loyalty tokens could be spawned - provide value and get reward, which is 0.01p value but allows service to acknowledge support allowing access.
Itās those who want too much reward; and those who want everything for free, that are the extreme which needs solution, the middle ground perhaps can be catered for in any number of ways.
Role on Star Trek economicsā¦
I would initially say no because you choose who you subscribe to, which is what people do and at least they are getting what they want, the creator and curator get paid, and we make it more lucrative to populate and spread content on SAFE. On the other hand, this is what google is good at and look at how disastrous that can be for confirmation bias regarding news and information. Good for finding exactly what you want but not always good for informing an opposing view. People should always be exposed to different opinions, genres, and so on otherwise we donāt discover or grow or tolerate different viewpoints etc. Not sure how we could fix that problem.
As far as them becoming powerful, I suppose I could see that curators would start getting sponsorships or become influencers because of a large following. I think most of this is unavoidable though and with what Iām describing above, the person who created content has a far more advantageous and fair shot at earning and reaching new audiences than in any current system. Iām thinking about starving artists here. or those kids starting a band out of their garage or studio apartment. There has been disruption after disruption that have helped small artists get started and noticed and I think this could be the next natural step.
Plus we need to have the incentives to get people off the existing internet and on to a completely different network that doesnāt want to inter-operate with the old internet.
This is mainly about how to help people but letās also not forget this is a competition whether we want to admit it or not.
Weāre here because we think SAFE can change the world for the better but we need to convince everyone through whatever means we can to choose SAFE and not make the mistake of some amalgamation of tech that doesnāt make the difference we believe SAFE can.
āYay we use storj instead of Dropbox and dtube instead of YouTube, and bitcoin instead of the dollarā. I physically shutter at that future because people act like those are solutions. Steps in the right direction surely but not what we deserve especially when we have this under our noses.
So just to reiterate. Iām not sure we can solve all the problems (but I am glad everyone is thinking like that!) and this could be a great shot at convincing the world to bring their digital lives and careers here.
I agree it should be lightweight and at the network level as well. Now as far as subscription I donāt believe itās archaic in the least as it has persevered into our current mental models. Subscription on SAFE is just clicking a button so itās definitely not cumbersome. Think of it this way.
Remembering these are micropayments
User doesnāt have a SAFE account and consumes content, no micro payments are paid to the content creator.
User wants to be able to mutate data so creates credentials for the SAFEnetwork
User is signed in to SAFE and wants to subscribe to a content creator to get notified of new content, they click subscribe (all done).
User consumes content of the creator he/she is subscribed to, the content creator gets paid.
User consumes content through a curator he/she is subscribed to, the curator and content creator both get paid.
The subscription model here is a low barrier but also helps prevent excess abuse while still encouraging uploads, curation, and data sharing. On top of that it can allow you to stay notified to new content.
When I think of abuse or how people will try to make earning easier, I can imagine some using algorithms to curate (and thatās fair because if itās quality then it wins but I think people are still better at curation right now) but it still is competitive and trying to serve people. As far as creating scripts to subscribe and consume media so they can earn more there is another side of the equation, farming. It seems unfair that someone could do this and there are some solutions with opportunistic caching that stop over earning I believe but consumption also drives the farming economy. So not all bad?
The only ugly question I have is are micropayments a set value or adjustable by the user and how does this present itself? It must be simple and I almost think itād be better if it was a set value. Fair and simple, not as easy to exploit in some way.
Would be nice to hear more in depth ideas others have on all of this.
Maybe weāre thinking about different subscriptions. Imo, thereās nothing worse than search for info online, finding it, then getting stopped by a paywall āsubscriptionā. Gets should be free.
Based on what you describe above, I think that using apps and app/dev/ptp rewards from the network is a better model that achieves your goal.
If you still want to directly charge the user, than they could be told up front that use of the app will cost them X safecoin per GET.
Yip we are. I almost had suggested the same but wasnāt sure what kind of subscription you were thinking 
The kind Iām speaking of is the more pervasive YouTube type of subscription. This kind of subscription is more like āfollowingā or signing up for notifications of future content, and in this case serving another purpose as a low barrier for a micropayment reward mechanism for uploading, curating, and sharing content.
I hate paywalls. What kind of business model is built around blue balling potential customers? If we have something beneficial in place at the network level then maybe we have a better chance of beating out this model. People will just get that much more irritated by paywalls when everyone else is operating in a more inviting way. Anything that exists on the current internet will try to find its place on the SAFE network. Best be prepared I reckon.
No that is precisely backwards it is a supply side privileged model where the risk is shifted onto the end user, citizen, consumer (criminally wrong right there) and it encourages bloat and time wasting and it tries to compensate useless middlemen that create enclosure and getting paid for worsening a digital divide. Would even encourage ads. Its so bad It would be better to just rip all content and make it by force of practicality into defacto freeware where consumption is free and private with no expectation of compensation with people trying to guess at the originator for donation of literal metal nickles by snail mail. Better just to declare all content forward and backward fair use.
Iād like to see an anonymous content model because if your stuff is worth it no one needs to know anything about your personality.
Ptp down to its name always seemed utterly backwards because the issue was never about paying developers or publisher even to bootstrap scaling of the network, if it was worth anything it was never going to be a developer jobs program or a BI for the developer community. We already pay ISPs for a network and that money goes to spam and propaganda and a fat life style for parasites like Ajit Pai.
Well I know how you feel about it @Warren, haha. Fair enough but could you go further into why you see it as so abhorrent?
What risk? The risk of someone opting to pay tiny fractions to support something that they are able to get for free regardless? This idea is more like opting into a micro tip for the bytes you consume and being able to keep notified. Not because you have to to access it but just because you support it and literally anyone can participate.
Iāve actually wondered if the same subscription/micropayment idea could apply but in the form of PtP instead of the subscriber paying the micro payment.
Iām not sure how people sharing content or curating content is useless. Human music curation is one of Apple Musicās big selling points. The subscription I speak of is not the service paywall type but just a way to incentivize people to upload, curate and share content. Iāve harped on it enough for now though. Happy to discuss more and this idea so far is just that, an idea.
@Nigel Ok because of scale and tiny costs that mitigate concerns.
How about this.
Anonymous content network. People post anonymous work that is time date stamped.
When they post the content becomes freeware.
Also, if they identify themselves, reference other works or plug or suggest a price or ask for a price the point of sale mechanism is closed to them on that account permanently. This is about getting at the raw value of works separate from personality- no selfies or hits. So its moderated but only along this line of inquiry.
Time date stamp protects and freeware status as condition of participation protects from subsequent copyright and of course violation of copyright would be turned over where a claim is made. And time date stamp is provided with every disclosure of content displayed as the point of posting to the system with easy search for duplication with system warning of a duplicate with prior date assigned to another account.
Same after the fact micro payment totally voluntary tipping system where its only to prime the pump for future works and only what the end user after full disclosure of content feels like tipping if at all.
This sounds like a cool app idea and experiment! But you do have to somewhat see some irony in the fact that people are being forced to remain anonymous on a decentralized network that promotes freedom. Still, this is a very neat idea but just like what Iām suggesting it should be opt in.
The only reason Iām arguing for this opt in subscription set up is so when you are researching or reading something you oppose that they donāt receive PtP just because you read it. You should have the freedom of choice to support something, not have supported it by consequence.
To have this anonymous content network to allow for an organic price discovery is very neat but should be opt in therefore maybe more relevant as an app.