Letting Users Decide Who Gets Paid

In a world where people are starting to pay more and more money to content platforms, and those platforms share that money with creators it’s about time we gave users the ability to decide what kind of content they want to reward.

If people have other ways of making money, the existing systems that create an internet that is largely about creating dissatisfaction in people so that you can sell them beauty products and self-actualization courses loses relative power.

Right now, on TikTok, if you aren’t following someone, a little red + appears overlapping their icon. To follow them, you click that +, and when you do, it disappears. What if, instead, it were replaced by a TikTok Coin icon. Maybe every user gets 7 of these to doll out per week. And, of course, once you’ve used them all, it grays itself out, and, ... See more

That’s not how it works right now. Spotify pays per stream, whether you’re listening or not. YouTube Premium pays per minute of watch time whether you like it or not. TikTok’s creator fund is distributed based on “engagement” (whatever that is.) And all of this is fine. But why not set aside a portion of this money and give it to the audience for t... See more

The same could be done on YouTube and Spotify easily. A feature that makes intuitive sense and rewards not just the content that does the best job of sucking you in, but that you think deserves your support.

I have a guess that we will all admit that a good boat crash video might capture our attention…but we’re unlikely to think, “Geez, I liked that so much I will give it money.”

People working at these platforms are more and more conscious of the fact that they can have tremendous negative impacts on society, and so they need to design the way they recommend and reward content carefully, and I think it’s likely that giving over some of the power to do that to the users of the platform could have wide-ranging positive impac... See more