Decentralized payment culture

Marketing
42

I don’t mean that advertising is inherently evil - me telling you about something I think is cool could be seen as unpaid advertising, and not evil if I’m telling you without an alterior motive.

When money is the amplifier of anything that makes more money, it becomes part of an unhealthy feedback loop, and advertising is a particularly unhealthy method of doing this.

Did anyone here watch the epidode of Black Mirror where people lived in rooms where they were coerced to watch the ads? This is where we are headed, only without realising it. To be honest we are so blaze about it, so used to advertising and sponsorship everywhere we look, it is very hard for anyone to have an objective understanding of the effects it has. The process and techniques used in advertising are hidden from us, carefully designed and tuned for effect, even before we get into the personal targetting using surveillance, or the ability to ambush us at crucial moments.

Think of the guy who sells roses to couples in restaurants, only plugged into a massive database that knows about you, your likes, your susceptabilities, what’s going on in your life, what just happened to your friend etc etc. Imagine the NSA is a business using its data to make money by manipulating you into buying US products… oh wait!

Corporations are increasingly focussed on profit and decreasingly accountable to anyone but their shareholders, and they will continue to take these measures further and further unless something stops them.

I’m not trying to draw a line, ban adverts, or say all advertising is evil. I’m trying to draw attention to something - one of many things - that most people accept without thinking about it, and which frankly, is getting increasingly good at preventing us from thinking about anything. IMO this is dangerous for eveyone.

43

I couldnt agree more. We need end user bottom up media platforms and speech systems that empower us rather than exploit us by using our money, time and attention against us. We need systems that are free of conflict of interest. But these arent compromise systems these are likely totally owned and controlled by end users.

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44

If someone tries to sell me something on the phone, I hang up. If someone tries to sell me something I don’t want on telly, I turn over. If someone doorsteps me, I just thank them and close the door.

We are far, far away from the coerced watching of adverts.

45

You may be, but your sample size is insignificant.

46

Yeah, but the ones that aren’t turning off, shutting the door or hanging up are still making choices. They’re only a little bit victims, and really mostly of their own decisions, at that. So we’ll make better options and see who chooses what as time goes on.

What I like about what we’re engaged upon here is that it is fundamentally subversive to all the things which people who wish to be responsible and free distain.

47

Sure, one of my favorite shows of all time, and my favorite episode. But I think we can create a dystopia for anything. I could easily imagine a world where direct democracy voting is made real by the internet, creating a Reddit-style virtual government and a voting system that leads to rampant mob mentalities, classism, and segregation/racism. One where the majority is the ruling class suppressing minority groups. Voting on innocent vs. guilty crimes and crowdsourced sentencing over decentralized autonomous systems. That’d be a nightmare.

There’s no magic bullet, and I think the goal for people is to educate themselves and always exist in a gray area where you take things with a grain of salt.

EDIT: I believe everyone is intelligent and curious, craving knowledge. I believe that all people are excited to learn and research when given the opportunity. So I choose to believe that people use services available to research a book, movie, restaurant, toilet, vacuum cleaner, TV, etc. I do not believe I am smarter than other people. So I do not believe that advertising does nearly as much harm as you say it does, but money and wealth does.

48

On a basic level, there are only a handful of ways to monetize on media or getting capital for the creation of it. Maybe we list them out?

Pre-Product (Before Creation)

  • Crowdfunding (reward systems or stake systems),
  • Sponsorship

Product (During Consumption)

  • Pay-per-view, pay as whole
  • Pay-While-View through micro-transactions
  • On-Screen advertising
  • Commercial break advertising

Post-Product (After Consumption)

  • Donations
  • Library sales (Netflix, Hulu, Spotify, iTunes, Amazon)
  • Merchandising (T-Shirts, toys, etc.)

We could break this down further. Although I have a feeling there’s a pile of information out there on this subject.

50

@russell Nice list. So “post-product,” give a crypto micro payment on the basis of a current product sample to encourage future works. That has an"only enough to prime the pump" flavor, that in a way aims at the same virtue the early patent system did and its probably appropriate for virtual works where the marginal cost of an extra unit is close to zero. And its still probably a lot more than where we had the conflict of interest of agency and sponsorship and restrictive mediums like cassette or CD.

Funny the way language works. Sometimes it almost seems as if the ‘rights holder’ thinks they have rights and in the general sense that the rest of us don’t have. Further, that the value of these ‘rights,’ is in being able to use them against other people who don’t have them. A special class of entitled people has been created. We don’t need media based on rent seeking or censorship. Accountable media is media where we are the only customer. We should never be in competition with sponsors, or shareholders or governments.

Remember how silly this stuff got with DAT. Industry acts like it owns markets. We couldn’t have a clean reproduction medium because that might dissuade sales. Or we were only supposed to be able to make so many copies of our wedding videos. Or it was supposed to be a crime to fast forward past ads on a BD. These things were tried. The industry fought PC with HDTV tuner cards, it wanted a broad cast flag. The industry incredibly wrongfully things it owns markets. Government tries to say we can’t have P2P because it can’t spy on us, and industry will say we can’t have it because it can’t enclose us or create monopoly.

If left to its own devices industry will interrupt phone calls with modal ads- “a word from our sponsors etc.” The idea of ads on phones is just seems wrong. When we are talking about nuisance, if the public doesn’t want it, it should be gone. Nuisance is a ratchet up situation in the US. You tube soon will have multiple ads per video as the scam cash-in mentality sets in.

In US business culture in particular there is this righteous sense that the purpose of business is profit, especially in the all-the-market-will-bear sense. It leads to aggressive rent seeking. If we try to stop business from engaging in price fixing they will say its price control (rent control) and we can’t stop them passing on costs to the customer. But we can, it worked in the CA auto insurance market. We need technology and culture that cuts all this out.

Think of the rich panhandler. A panhandler is fine at the store. I’ll give them money even if its to buy booze. But we have rich panhandlers in our homes and in our living rooms. But they aren’t just content to be parasitic, they push it beyond that, they kill the host.

51

That seems close to what I meant about donation economy. If I’m understanding you correctly.

52

You cannot mute covert advertisements, subliminal marketing, undercover marketing.

53

They are not coercive though, as in the black mirror example.

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If it’s covert, subliminal, undercover, then how would you know whether or not it’s coercive?

For example you could create advertisements which have threatening subliminal messages within them or which try to provoke people to riot. You would say this is not coercive because people can choose not to read but you can’t.

If you look at my text your brain automatically reads the text if you know english. When everyone can see it the same way then it’s not subliminal and we can debate whether it is coercive. When it’s only seen by a small group of people who are very sensitive to a certain kind of content or triggers that is when it’s potentially coercive.

So I can agree that we should try to avoid advertisements as a form of monetization when we can use micropayments. Micropayments don’t affect people’s thinking consciously or subconsciously because you wouldn’t even have to know it goes on. Micropayments can happen completely in the background.

55

The only way I see advertising work is if it’s both opt in and if the people being served the ads also own shares in the ads.

So if you’re going to be tracked and fed ads while you use MaidSafe you should get paid.

56

If you don’t know it is even happening, how can you claim you are being coerced?

58

I’ll often work for large national and international advertising agencies, at least for television and print. They’re not as nefarious as you think. Almost every time, the creatives conceptualizing the campaigns are concerned with how “cool” something is and if the narrative of the spot is translating. Then there is an entire legal department up everyone’s ass making sure nothing is a lie. They’re terrified of getting in trouble. Trust me, they’re not evil geniuses.

I can’t speak for web marketing. Those folks tend to be a different breed. Usually boutique digital agencies.

59

You’ve got an economic interest to defend your employer so how can we take what you have to say seriously?

Even if it’s not nefarious I never used the word nefarious. I made the statement that you cannot block certain kinds of ads from reaching your subconscious. These ads are everywhere if you study your environment but if you’re being paid to help with these ads then perhaps you’re not the best person for this conversation.

The tabacco company said cigarettes are not addictive. I’m sure if I asked a big tabacco guy about the product he would tell me it’s not addictive. But the tabacco guy is the last person I would ask.

60

Because I’m generally pretty apathetic. But sure, take what I say with a grain of salt. But I think it’d be kind of funny to take someone too seriously who has no understanding of a system at all outside of reading about it on InfoWars. That’d be embarrassing!

Kinda of applies to everything though, don’t you think? Living in an all white neighborhood will create a subconscious racism against other groups. Or living in a highly religious community will create subconscious disgust with other gender choices. We use our CONSCIOUS mind to transcend our SUBCONSCIOUS mind. Everyone does it. No one here is special.

Sure, and they built the wedding ring industry. And a bunch of other absurdly famous stories that everyone knows. We love talking about this. These types of stories are on the cover of Cosmo magazine for gods’ sake! Everyone’s aware of this stuff. Give people more credit.

EDIT: Also, the tobacco companies hid results and lied. That was the company, not the advertising firm (which I cannot confirm or deny knew anything about it, as I don’t know the whole story).

And honestly, I’d trust people involved in a thing more than the people who aren’t. Especially when they’re forthright. There’s always more to glean. You just have to interpret what they say differently.

And pertaining to advertising and the subconscious, conversations like “adding more green color to the bottle will make people respond better” do come up in the ad world, but its all shit the public is aware. There are NYT Bestsellers that outline this stuff. It’s suuuuper in the public consciousness. But fortunately, there’s no big evil mustache guy planning how to control the minds of the plebes. Just some goofball that wanted to be a screenwriter but ended up lead copywriter to “practice his craft until he’s got time to write.” More often than not, it’s just a bunch of people who want to do cool stuff. They’re more concerned with the quality of work than anything else. What director or DP they can get, what athlete or actor will do a cameo. It’s less about making a concerted “mind control” effort and more about making something the creatives think is cool.

Or… maybe my profile image is a lie, and I’ve got the biggest handlebar mustache you’ve ever seen! Mwa-ha-ha!
Ties damsal to railroad tracks, explains master plan, and runs off.

EDIT: Yeesh, we diverge… such an easy argument to go off-topic onto. Are there any other monetization methods outside of the list I outlined above?

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61

Not trying to diverge here but would like to comment on some of the above that pertain to models.

In succession- the paid to watch ads model is still the replacement model I’d least prefer but my preference if there is going to be payment to watch an ad is that it not be an RIAA/artists style split, but rather all the money and power in the transaction go to the end user. If there were a payment to an outside entity for arranging the opt in only meeting, where there was of course an opt in to receive such requests (a double opt in,) my sense is the intermediary needs to get less than a tenth of a percent or some very marginal amount.

As for it not being coercive if we don’t know about it- that’s when it would be most coercive. Think of children watching those cartoons that brought on seizure. Its was non coercive right up until they were convulsing, but the stimulus was still building the response.

There are some pretty sinister efforts in advertising. I think what happened with Microsoft’s Xbox One was an example. Microsoft wanted to track people’s eyes to the ad for a more concrete connection and therefore higher revenues. People didn’t want to pay for a sponsor box any more than people want to pay Comcast to convert the internet to cable TV and pay more for the having it happen. They don’t want to pay for dis-empowerment. They fired the the Xbox Head over this and its tanked their product

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62

Yes there are some enhancements you didn’t list.

Products can be owned by the users themselves. People who use a product earlier and more frequently than everyone else should be rewarded with shares.

Users should be given shares in the movies, the music, the apps, the games, so that they are stakeholders of the success of these products just as an employee would be.

Also all of this thinking I’m seeing so far is nice to find ways to pay “Decentralized payment culture” but what about a Decentralized income culture? We need to find just as many ways for users to earn money if we expect payment. Payment comes from income opportunities and if we provide none then we will not have any marketcap.

Here is the Fairshares model for you and others to analyze.
http://www.fairshares.coop/wiki/index.php?title=FairShares_Model

Some models

1) The users don’t initially pay a fee to use the app but get paid shares to test the app. After the app is tested then as new users come on board they are considered late so they don’t get as many shares in the app until eventually all the shares are distributed and a group of users own the app.

2) The investors, users, founders, and others all own a fixed percentage of the app as a certain amount of shares is pre-designated for these demographics. These are voting or non-voting shares but the goal is to make each demographic into a long term stake holder in the app. These percentages are fixed so whatever percentage each demographic receives initially is set in stone forever.

3) The investors, users, founders, and others are given dynamically generated portions of the app depending on the needs of the app. So for example early on it could need a lot of investors and founders but then later on need users. Whichever demographic is the most important at the time would own the company.

Stakeholder demographics

SAFE Network itself has demographics. It has farmers, builders, and users. Each demographic is critical to the success of SAFE Network. We’ve found a way to attract in farmers by giving farmers a way to generate income from their computing resources so +1 to farmers. We’ve found a way to give incentive to builders by giving builders income in Safecoin for their apps so +1 to builders.

The way to make this a closed loop is to find ways for users to generate income from their activities as a user. If we find a niche for the user then the users will have enough income to pay for all these micro transactions, pay per view, or any of these payments that you expect from users.

I presented one idea which was to let users sell their attention. If you want to serve them ads you’re going to have to pay the user to watch the ads. If you want to communicate with the user you’re going to have to pay the user to communicate with them. Attention is going to be very scarce.

An example model is MyMindShare where attention becomes shares

https://mymindshare.com/

Mindshares allow the user to sell their attention. In order to send a message to a user on SAFE Network you’ll have to pay them. Now if you want someone’s attention you have to pay for it. Attention eventually has a price discovery where all messages have some shares/coin attached to it or few people will bother opening the message.

Depending on who you are, the message length, and what the message is about we could be talking about a few cent to a few bucks. It’s possible to charge per character as well (micropayments make it all possible).

Closing the loop

But that would be the start of building a closed loop. Other ways to do it would be to allow users to profit along with builders by rewarding the users who use the apps based on how early they discover and use the app.

Users as partners/stakeholders rather than mere consumers

Users who are early adopters and who use the app a lot should get the most shares. These shares could later on be used to pay the fees associated with using the app or sold/traded so that these users can now have the income necessary to watch Pay-per-view.

The other idea I had was paid tracking. There should be no ads possible unless the user Opts-In. There need not be any middle man. A decentralized cooperative could be formed by any app developer and users could earn shares by Opting-In. Then the users would be paid to surf SAFE Net while being tracked and fed ads.

Otherwise there should be no ads. So if you want ads you have to negotiate directly with the user owned cooperative or worse negotiate directly with the users themselves as they auction their attention to earn shares.

63

I don’t read infowars or support the views of associated with that site. Nice try.

You on the other hand do work in marketing and have said so. You also have ties to the recording industry.

I’m not judging you personally, or claiming that I know you well enough to know whether or not you have furtive intentions. It’s just a situation where if you’re coming from the broken system we are complaining about it’s going to be an uphill battle for you to convince the community that you’ve got the solutions.

That being said I still read your posts and consider what you have to say just as I hope you would read mine and consider what I have to say. I’m only pointing these perceptions out because if you come from the backgrounds that you say you do then you would know that big corporations attempt to control public opinion to protect their own profit models.

The RIAA for example killed Napster when they could have just bought the technology and profited from it’s growth. Now after a long marketing campaign by these industries the RIAA has pushed to morally educate youth into believing copyright infringement is equal to stealing.

Copyright infringement is against the law, but big business is pushing moral arguments. To me the moral arguments are a sort of marketing to adjust the behavioral trends to be more aligned with the business models of those big businesses.

These are just my opinions on these subjects. I don’t believe copyright infringement is stealing. We can debate whether or not it hurts artists and there is no debate to make with whether or not it’s legal.

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