I think that kind of culture needs to change. The idea that a single picture is low effort or low quality is ridiculous.
Suppose you take one picture for a modelling shoot.. and it's the cover of a magazine. How much work goes into it that isn't accounted for face value?
The dieting, the training, the acquired knowledge of how to pose, not to mention the selection process from hundreds of similar images down to the singular, and then the post editing.
At the end of the day, its not really about any of that at all. Even if it is low effort, low quality, in my eyes, the value isn't in those measurements, the value is in the attention it brings, and the network effects it can stimulate.
Justin Bieber spend millions buying a BAYC.. Imagine the network effects of him posting that.. A lot of subsequent economic activity right?
I totally agree. Since the beginning of STEEM and me being in Decentralised platforms I have been trying to fight that battle. Not very successfully, clearly lol, but I totally agree. Because I know that is true. Because even if my images are not the best out there and sometimes might look simple, even these works have a lot of time and thought behind it. Not to count money lost. This one for example. I had to leave the house, get transports, stay outside walking on the cold for a couple of hours, grab some food while I was there. Come home, edit the image, write the post. And it looks so simple. But even if I get the usual votes I get in here I will still be losing money. Lolol just the underground ticket cost me £6 lol 😆
I think at the end of the day, there will always be limits to the amount that a community can reach consensus on for reward pool based allocation of rewards.
You don't feel like you're "paying" for a post, but you actually are.. it's new coin that is created everyday that is on the margin, an inflationary pressure on every stakeholder. Now, it could be argued that the right kind of inflation going to the right people makes inflation a non-issue, but the fact remains, that there needs to be consensus on that, and so it is difficult to capture maximum CONSUMER SURPLUS from potential customers as an individual, when most of that surplus is expected to go into propping up the price of HIVE, and bolstering the community reward pool.
The alternative - which is evidently quite successful in other areas of the internet as well as crypto space - is to tap into the willingness of consumers to outright pay for content they deem desirable (you know, the other kind of voting with your dollars). That is exactly how I think about things when I go about my business on other parts of the (not necessarily crypto) web.
"Would I pay for that"
"Is it worth it"
All questions that I make on an individual basis, and has a direct relationship to the person who is selling me the product / good / service.
At liketu, I believe the eventuality - should things eventually grow and reach escape velocity - is that people will be using liketu to gain attention through whatever means, whilst feeling comfort at the fact their accounts can never be tampered / censored. With this attention, the goal isn't to get the votes, but to upsell people to paying for content they would happily pay for.
Think about it, if you go around HIVE/Liketu and ask yourself the question, "Would I pay this much for that" - most of the time the answer is no. So then the question naturally gets passed onto the community, who are ultimately the purveyors and carriers of the responsibility of mal-attributed rewards, why then should we pay that much for a post?
There are literally tens of thousands if not hundreds of thousands of people who are posting on patreon, onlyfans, using Pay per view unlocks and charging upwards of 20+ dollars for a single picture and they are successful in convincing people to straight up pay
There is no reason therefore, that people cannot do the same here. Where yes, they use the reward pool to bolster engagement and build some community (with community funds!) but ultimately use their account as a funnel to selling content directly.
I would love to support people who actually do that.
I totally get what you mean. I think from my side it is a little bit difficult and also I think the kind of audience that decentralised platforms aims are not the same type of audiences you are talking about and that are whiling to pay for content. I think that is the biggest problem. For me personally I also know that I make the mistake on looking more from the artistic point of view and I often ignore the business side. I have to work on that when it comes to be an online content creator and in the way I work on putting my content out there. But I totally understand your point of view and agree with it.
Actually, decentralised platforms are perfectly aligned with creators traditionally viewed as demerit content creators. OF has had many problems both on their side and creator side dealing with banking, but also seizing people's accounts and withholding creator monies. Neither is a problem when business is conducted on HIVE.
But don't you feel that right now decentralised platforms are definitely 100% aiming to creators and people that want to generate money for what they already posting online, and doesn't attract an audience that comes to just appreciate the content?
The equation needs to be balanced, otherwise whatever you "earn" will be close to nothing, and trending towards zero.
There's nothing wrong with creators (or just regular people for that matter) posting what they already post online. That's one of the reasons why I don't really set any rules for what is posted on liketu. But I am also cognizant of the limits of the current system, and where I hope things can improve. In any healthy economy, there needs to be a healthy balance of supply and demand. Imagine a world where nobody ever bought anything, but only sold things?
So why does rewards people earn on Hive have any value? Well it's because people purchasing Hive are contributing towards the demand side and thus keeping the value of the rewards people earn greater than zero.
I might be amongst a smaller demographic of people here (on Hive) who are willing to pay directly for content, but I am not among the minority when compared to the rest of the internet who are quite happy to pay for content from creators they like. And it's not even just Patreon or Onlyfans, it's Twitch, youtube, and now instagram too.
We can continue to socialise the entire rewarding mechanism and do nothing else - or we can at the same time offer people self sovereign accounts and tap into the regular exchange economy. I believe all it takes is a gradual culture shift of not just seeing the reward pool as the only means of monetization and for bridges to be made for people who are not native Hive users to easily participate using HIVE.
The reward pool is a powerful incentive mechanism to invest into the network effects, but it's existence actually deters people from spending directly on the creators, who if successful, could actually eclipse the reward pool in terms of amount they earn per day. Successful creators could then use their Hive earnings (from people who pay them directly) to reward people who subscribe to them with their powered up influence, and engage with them, possibly retain many more recurring subscribers.
And that is a great way to see it. I just wish more people had your point of view :D