Where does the content reward money come from?

Has pay-to-get been discussed? I also like the idea of relay nodes being paid a minuscule amount to forward packets - this would potentially make it profitable if you were able to for eg put a node through to the outside when Egypt was cut off from the rest of the world.

Huh? In case you haven’t noticed “fiat” derives from the Latin fiat (“let it be done”, “it shall be”) used in the sense of an order or decree. (Wikipedia)
You have to use it or else.

Tell me which unregulated crypto currency can be “a little” abused from the PoW, PoS or PoR perspective, and isn’t sliding toward zero.

If you are so confident, make me a bet. I’ll bet you $50 in BTC escrowed with a trusted 3rd party that if the reward loopholes aren’t closed higher end of this year the price of MAID or Safe won’t be higher.

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I recognize your concerns in regards to the morality of rewarding content, but the same type of abuses exist in the existing model. eBay is used to sell stolen goods, pirated music is sold on CD’s, etc. So this isn’t about the morality of the situation - which is a human problem, but rather the economics that will exist in the Network.

And to do that we need to look at the even bigger picture.


Continuing on, now that we’ve agreed that app devs can benefit from sharing their revenue with the content creators (however they choose to do so), let’s see what we have so far:

  • Network Pool ---(pays)---> App wallet App reward
  • App wallet ---(pays)---> content creator || app dev Content reward
  • Content creator || app dev ---(pays)---> Network Pool PUT data onto Network

What kind of geometric shape has three sides? Only my favorite kind - the triangle!

Now we’re still operating on the assumption that there is an equilibrium in this economy. Consider the directions of the arrows. There should be no reason they would go the other way. And here’s why.

The Network Pool would never pay the client directly. That would be a form of PtP where the network would be forced to base the payment on a measure of meaningfullness. The Network is content-agnostic, and therefore cannot value content above the other. There is no way for some equally valuable content (chunks) to be more equal than others.

The App would never pay the Network Pool. Sure, the devs may pay to PUT the latest revision of the software onto the Network, but at that point, they’d be functioning as clients. No, the App wallet itself would never make a payment directly to the Network.

Finally, and most controversially, I would argue that the client should never have to pay the App.

Think of that last point this way. There are many good technical and philosophical reasons why there are free GETs on the Network. Any paywall, or freemium model goes against not only the ideology, but the ecosystem of the Network. And as such will - like an infected ant - be carried away into obscurity.

This is because - in general - the access to data is meant to be free for everyone. But having the data without the ability to utilize that data is just as pointless as charging to access that data in the first place.

However, there must be a way for an App to be monetized. Otherwise, it can’t reward the content creators! Is in then the case that if it can’t utilize a “sale value” business model, then it must choose a “use value” business model?

4.2. Use Value and Sale Value

A software's use value is its economic value as a tool, a productivity multiplier.

A software's sale value is its value as a saleable commodity.

– Notes from ESR’s The Cathedral and the Bazaar - Shlomi Fish

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Then wouldn’t it follow to create some kind of system of response and recourse?

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Smacz I see your point, but how does one prevent the uploading of garbage (and I do mean garbage, as in random binary files) to the network for the purpose of creating bot-originated GET requests generated so that the “author” or app owner (whichever) makes undeserved revenue?

If that cannot be resolved, the nice sides of this approach will be buried in garbage. If I can rent a 10000-strong botnet for $100/day, I will likely earn 10-20% of all newly minted Safecoin. This isn’t sustainable and a way to eliminate abuse, while retaining the good sides of your proposal, should be found.

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Since we must rely on a “use-value” business model, let’s explore the alternatives that are out there that are based around this model. This is getting into the nitty-gritty of the App rewards system - but we must do so in order to determine where content reward money comes from.

First - and most heinous of all - is the advertisment/data collection model. The software is free (as in any use-value model) but the use that the software generates data that is sent to the application developers, used by them and/or sold to advertisement agencies. This way the software is free, but the use of that software creates revenue for the company. This is the “you are the product” business model and is to be avoided at all costs.

Next, as you described, there is the Pay Per GET model that is exclusive to the Network we’re creating here.

The application developer rewards are seen as a good start to pay creators of applications on the app popularity, measured via its use. This design incorrectly identifies the measure of use as the number of GET requests the app carries out.
RFC 0012

As you and many others have pointed out, although at face value measuring by GETs may appear to be straightforward and simple, it is subject to a number of attacks.

Among these attacks is the notorious Stuffing the GET Requests Attack (I think you called it the “Circlejerk Attack” - I still lmao when I see that). These attacks are invisible to the user - as there are no (monetary/visceral) repercussions to the user experience when these types of attacks are being launched. This type of attack has many variations, and can safely be described as a fundamental flaw in this type of system.

There is, however, a third option. I’ll let my colleagues explain the Pay Per PUT model:

So as you can see, not only is this sustainable, but it also effectively eliminates abuse by pricing the reward far below the cost of generating the reward.

However does this system manage to retain the “good sides” of the ecosystem that we have been outlining? Aspects such as retaining free GETs for both data and software, allowing Apps to generate revenue based on “use value”, and encouraging the flow of currency between the three entities - the Client, Network Pool, and App?

P.S. Refer to my older post for more links on the Pay Per PUT model.

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This just makes me think of something. The problem with this is that the business in question sells the data and decides whom to sell it to, not that the business in question gets a cut of said sales. Let’s say we have two groups: A group of people willing to buy information and a group of people willing to sell it. So let’s take a harmless piece of data like the colour of your socks. If a company asked you “What colour are your socks?” And was willing to pay you for your answer would you give them the correct data? Sure! And if the app that facilitated this wanted a cut of the profits again would this be reasonable? Sure! Because the APP/facilitator business isn’t selling your data, YOU ARE! What if they wanted to know what the colour of all your socks were? Sure again harmless data, you might up the price a few cents for the extra effort but that’s all. In fact they might even gamify this process. What if it was more valuable data like your marital/relationship status or political affiliation? Or maybe they want to buy some of their health information. Well then the price would go up significantly depending on how valuable that information is to you. For some who are really private it might be worth a million dollars. For some it might be worth $20 or less. So in essence you not only have anonymity but also you put a pay wall on your information. You could also flat out say not for sale.

However remember any information you want to sell needs to remain private to be of value.

But I digress you sell your information directly to people wanting to buy your information. But aside from the money, why? Well so that a list can be compiled on your desires. In truth perhaps selling directly to the app would be a more secure option. That way the app could maintain that list of your wants and needs without sellers being the wiser. Then the sellers go to the app and say “I’ve got stuff here to sell! How can you help.” The app takes he product, compares it to it’s list of people that want such a product and sends it directly to ONLY those people who are looking for it. Direct, targeted, consentual advertising. The problem with ads is not that people are trying to sell you stuff. The problem with ads is that people are trying to sell you stuff YOU DON’T WANT and when you aren’t interested in buying anything. But what’s also annoying is when you’re actively looking for a product and can’t find it. So instead of marketing to people who aren’t in the mood shop send it to those who are actively shopping and looking for the product at hand.

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The idea was mentioned before in another topic which I cannot find now, but I do remember they mentioned some startups that provide such service (of selling your data to advertisers for a fee and (mostly) cutting out the middlemen).

I googled it and https://datacoup.com/docs#how-it-works is one such startup.

How do you connect anonymity with deanonymizing tech like that? I don’t think that would be easy. In any case that’s a whole new topic, IMO.

Well if the app is running it there’s no reason the seller needs to know who the data belongs to or even who their products are being advertised to. Conversely again if the machine is running it there’s no reason for the data sellers to know who is wanting to selling them products. As far as either party is concerned they’re both selling and buying with an algorithm. It would be similar to how the SAFE network crunches safecoin or your data. You farm safecoin and host shredded bits of information on your compuer. Technically those shredded bits might be child porn or terrist blueprins for a nuclear bomb but you don’t know that, it’s all just gobbledegook to you. The network handles all that and spits out safecoin. Only with the right ID can you get at YOUR data, and only YOUR data. The seller doesn’t actually need the customer’s data. They just need the PROFIT from the customer’s data. So what would the seller do with the customer data if they had it? They’d use it to develop analytics for marketing; so develop an app that handles the analytics and marketing in the first place, save the seller a bunch of money AND at the same time maintain the customer’s privacy AND allow the customer to make profit by SELLING their data to the app.

Say you sold your real name to the app. But the app never actually sells your name to any sellers. It just lists it in it’s database and charges sellers for the service of using that data. It’s like a guy saying “Hey I know stuff and I’m willing to help you but if you don’t pay me I walk. No I’m not going to tell you anything I know but for the right price I’ll do it for you.”

Fixed That For You.

First of all, the companies have no reason not to sell that information among themselves. Sure, their Terms & Conditions may say that they won’t do so explicitly, but damn are there some good lawyers out there who can write in a loophole for the right price. The fact of the matter is that once it’s out there, be ready for it to be spread.

This breaks one of the ultimate advantages of the Network - namely that your data is owned by no one other than yourself. Anything that you choose to make public or shared is not owned by you anymore. Anyone who has the keys can sell them at a higher price, there’s absolutely nothing technical preventing them from doing so.

Secondly, as far as purchasing only the data that individuals choose to sell, then you are apt to receive a biased sample group.

How many quality youtube comments and “social media shares” can one receive from purchasing views? “Why do all of my responses favor Walmart over Brand Name Store”?

Money skews reality, especially when it comes to statistics. This type of not-so-hidden-variable wreaks havoc with those who attempt to conduct an unbiased representative sample of the population.

Next, this doesn’t really address the point made about the advertising model.

The fact of the matter is that in order to transact with an App or company, you have to give them information. If you want anything sent to you IRL, then you must be prepared to give them a shipping address along with your name, and anything else that they need to provide you with that good.

That information is now known to them and - like I said earlier - can be sold at their whim.

Also, from a privacy standpoint, you are now allowing companies to aggregate that data with your existing public information. Data isn’t valuable without context. So the information that they’re seeking is not only the “color of your socks”, but rather your gender, age, marital status, and/or ethnicity (bought from other similar “data aggregator” companies) in order to piece together a view of their target audience. (the people who like blue socks I guess!)

Lastly, as exemplified above, you can’t put a list together of “what you want”, because you can’t want what you don’t know about!

Also, the effort required to maintain that list and keep it up to date (adding as well as subtracting from it) would be absurdly time consuming - and would lead (for those who can’t or won’t take the time to update it) to dated ads that advertise what you already acquired, or stale ads without a constant update of your every-changing needs.

There’s a saying in the NSA/tinfoil-hat community:

Data gets cold quick.

Luckily for me, the email address I had five years ago contains no relevant information to my life now. I could have moved, lost contact with the friends that I corresponded with, and broken/lost/used up everything that I bought from Amazon back then.

By collecting information constantly, businesses with ad/data collection-based business models stay up-to-data and keep the information that they have to sell fresh. And sell it they will.

P.S. And we’re talking about software engineers becoming data analysts? Yeah, right. This sounds more like a proposal of how to create a separate type of company that focuses on data collection that piggybacks onto an App:

…to that other company that the App facilitated the transaction with.

There are multiple challenges in this approach (such as the vendors’ inability to actually know if the info is (likely to be) true). In the link i posted above they actually ask you to provide your billing info so that they can send you money, which by extension means they know exactly who you are and probably can cross reference stuff you entered about yourself with existing info, just to see if you’re bullshitting them.

On SAFE network, they can’t have any idea if the visitor who supposed loves to use flavored condoms is human or not.
The network is designed for anonymity and it would be hard to bolt onto it something that works in the completely opposite direction. Sure you could build an app that would allow you to enter some app-specific password (and that password you’d obtain from the Internet Web site) and so indirectly some sort of voluntary identification would be possible, but I suspect it would be too much hassle for most people - it’d never take off.

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They can’t sell what they don’t have. Please scroll up and reread my post. The app has, or has access to, the data NOT the business/corporations/assorted product sellers that are buying data. All the product sellers get is USE of the app which has access to data. The app cannot be bribed because it has no ego to impress. It’s simple math. And even if the sellers forked the code they still wouldn’t have access to the data the original app had access to. Moreover if the seller forked the app the anyone going through the code would find out the changes made and sound the alarm as to the danger of using it OR in the case of it being closed source sound the alarm of using a closed source app in such a circumstance.

Again READ my post. The APP is granted access to your data NOT the seller. Moreover the app can be coded so that it ONLY has access when performing specific functions and calculations.

Tough. Welcome to the secure internet and voluntary interaction in commerce.

The point isn’t to determine an unbiased statistic of the population. The point is to match products with those that want to buy them as opposed with spamming people with ads. If you want to run statistics that’s a different program entirely.

Not if you use a drone or a P2P post type delivery service. The only user that needs to know your shipping address is in fact the last link in the relay or the drone. All anyone else needs to know is the right direction to go in to get there which can be sent to them by the network. Look at a shipping order sometime, there are plenty of stops on the way from point A o B.

Which can all be done via the app. Computers are very good at crunching numbers. Just like you can tell an excell sheet to generate a chart based on various numbers and forumula or ask google to search with various keywords you tell the app “Search gender + age + marital status + “sock colour” + socks” or something like that. Or maybe do it using pull down menus. Either or you put in the variables and the app spits out a readout but at no time does the seller get access to an individual’s specific private data. Just the aggregate market analysis. Again the seller could punch in “All socks bought by ages x - y” or something like that or however detailed they want to get. But AGAIN it wouldn’t give an individual’s specific data but it would tell them the details of a specific market sector.

So don’t create ads. Market to people that are searching for products in the first place. Automate sales and deals based on time and previous buyer interactions. Plug stock amounts into the app and set up a sale or discount for whenever you get too much of something. Again let the app handle it. All a “sale” or a “discount” is is a little sticker and a price change on products that user’s already want to buy. Also the app could employ users to make sale posters, signs and so forth for the app.

If a bsiness wants to sell a statistic designed specifically for hem which contains no personally idenfifying information then so be it. However as you pointed out the data is probably very skewed in the grand scheme of things and would only be releveant for selling products via the app.

Okay but then how could anyone keep from being deannomyzed just by running various apps or participating in various services? If you go onto steam they ask you your age before they allow you to view “mature” content. Most people on social media give at least their gender, if not their general location. And as you point out unless you’re taking extreme precautions if you want anything shipped you need to give an address. So data selling aside how is deanomyzation prevented if you can ID someone with just 3 bits of data?

You mean like a search engine for products? Amazon seems to have that just fine. And you’re telling me that with this system they won’t sell data that they’ve collected? Where’s your head, 1992?

Guess what, the “honor system” didn’t work out the first time around, it won’t the second. Greed my friend. Greed and corruption enter too easily into your equation.

You’re talking about having Apps that collect my (voluntarily shared or coerced) data, and you’re saying that they can access the data that I let them access, but they can’t share that data?

Seriously loving the utopian view here, but we’re back to the “Let me into the bar - I can prove my age, but you can’t know who I am” argument. (Show me ads with this thing that pertain to me - I want this thing or things like it that pertain to me, but you can’t know who I am) Either you have an entity with access to that data, or you’ve done what cryptography can’t. Zero Knowledge Proof doesn’t work like that.

Entities with access to the data can share that data. And they’re gunna make a pretty penny doing so (if I know entities). And they’re going to do all that they can to make sure that they have access to that data in the first place - stops on the way from point A to B be damned.

You propose turning Apps on the network into information gathering powerhouses. I thought they were just supposed to be apps.

Agencies like you describe thrive because they can build up a target demographic - not because you tell them what to show you. That’s not how this works.

Once they have the target demographic, it’s not hard to go from saying “I want blue socks as it pertains to me”, to getting advertisements for NIke shoes. And treadmills. Then FitBits.

Because, not only is the athletic sportswear and accessory company trying to sell socks, they’re trying to sell their items to middle-aged black females, and they include that in their request. You happen to fit the bill, and those are their recommendations given the information that they’ve gathered in their hunt for data.

I dare you - try going the opposite way: “I only want powder blue socks, size 9-12, crew cut, wool, odor resistant, cushioned sole, by Adidas, ribbed knit stretch top, 6-pack, new”. What variation of ads do you think you’d see? Wouldn’t you rather hop on Amazon really quick and get it over with?

Ads really want to show you things that you might want to buy that you don’t know about yet. To do so they have to extrapolate with the information they have.

  • The more information that they have, the more that they can make things appear relevant
  • The more things they can make appear relevant, the more face time they get with you.
  • The more face time they get with you, the more likely you are to purchase one of their things.

So in an information business model, information (data) - for them - translates directly into money. They will stop at nothing to get that information if it is out there.

The solution? Don’t put it out there.

Don’t give them an inch - they will take a mile.

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Point. So we don’t give them access to the data. We simply crunch the numbers and make marketing more efficient and user friendly for the end user. Sure it’s a massive version of amazon wih every store competing in one place. It’s the digital version of the world biggest supermall. You’re right any data they receive they will share even if it’s by using “print screen” and a rough file transfer. But now we’re back at square one. How to entice people to invest money.

As near as I can figure you can sell data, product or coins. If you sell data you get ads and compromise anonymity. If you sell product/service you need to have a product or service to sell. If you sell coins you need something of value to back those coins.

Okay here’s a crazy thought. Could one not back one’s personal data with coins forming a kind of personal networth? That is “How much is it worth it to advertise to me? How much is my personal information worth?” This way when you invariably gave out personal info you could sell it instead of giving it away for free. If data is as valuable a commodity as you describe then why the hell are we GIVING it away all the time? And when we do give that information to someone shouldn’t that signify the worth of that informational gift? I don’t know I’m sleepy right now. But thought I’d throw it out there.

Perhaps you missed my earlier comment in which I said the problem is there’s no (native) way on the SAFE Network for anyone to know if the data is true or even if there’s a human behind that SAFE account.

In the real world? Not much it turns out:

So is it possible for everyone to eschew the bundle and sell personal data as an individual? This allows companies to get far more accurate details, rather than merely ‘inferred’ information.

The average person’s data often retails for less than a dollar.

Here’s the thing, if you want ads, you want them to be relevant to you right now. Earlier I wrote a post where cooperation and competition among companies could go hand-in-hand:

(I recommend you read the OP for the full breakdown of my analysis)

The statelessness of the Network has been pushed hard by @dirvine, for various reasons. Think of this approach as a stateless ad-based model.

Only when you’re searching for a way to fill a need will you come across ways to fill that need. They may be complimentary, they may be competitive. Either way, you’re still being exposed to what you need without being profiled.

Is that to say that this isn’t going to be done anyways? Hell no. Public data is still public, and it can be aggregated and sold as a complete product. But now we’ve cut out the incentive for companies to gather and sell our private data by keeping total and lone ownership thereof.

We’re not storing our private data on their servers. Our private data is not accessible to them to begin with. All they have is what’s public, and in the public domain.

When you sell your private data, you’re not selling it to one company, you’re selling it into the public sphere and trust me, you’ve got enough out there to profile you to begin with.

So let the profilers profile - but you shouldn’t be incentivized to sell your own privacy. If you are, then you end up with less secure security, and less free freedom for everybody.

P.S. Also relevant (and a very good hour-long video) to the way that freedom and security in the clearnet have failed because of businesses’ corruption and greed:

https://forum.autonomi.community/t/how-do-you-expect-to-build-the-beauty-that-you-are-building-so-long-as-there-is-this-deep-corruption-in-our-democracies-around-the-world/6611?u=smacz

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So you posit that selling data is both not profitable on the network but also compromises security.