If SAFE won't pay content makers, it shouldn't pay App makers

[smacz]

Very good analysis.

Now, given that farming rewards are a good incentive for making the network more secure, what do content creators and app makers (similar and/or different) contribute to the core network that they feel that they should be rewarded by the network itself for?

[Anders]

@smacz

Now, given that farming rewards are a good incentive for making the network more secure, what do content creators and app makers (similar and/or different) contribute to the core network that they feel that they should be rewarded by the network itself for?

Nothing. It sounds kind of harsh. But my idea is that content makers and app developers will, if they so choose, be able to earn income through donations and tips. Even payed subscriptions and things like that are possible. For example, today on the web some podcasters offer the first half of the show for free and make the second part of the podcast only available to paying subscribers.

The problem is that if the network would pay content makers and app developers, then that would be like a Soviet Union centrally planned economy with a one-size-supposed-to-fit-all reward model for a vast variety of content and apps. For farmers such simple payment model is suitable since it’s the same kind of service all farmers provide.

[smacz]

@Anders

if the network would pay content makers and app developers, then that would be like a Soviet Union centrally planned economy with a one-size-supposed-to-fit-all reward model for a vast variety of content and apps.

Very good logic. And I must begrudgingly agree. There are numerous APPs out there now, and some that have yet to be developed, that would not fit any of the proposed implementations for paying the APP makers.

However, while farmers offer a basic service to the network, APPs offer a similar (more complex) basic service to the network. Neither one can fulfil their purposes without the network - neither one has meaning if there is no SAFE Network.

Content is content and will be spread on SAFE, on the internet, in person, over the phone, over fax, any way that it can. Because it has value outside of the network. Vaults and APPs do not have this property.

APPs and the SAFE Network form a symbiant circle in that using APPs will most likely result in more payment to the network to publish content and therefore more rewards for farmers. The opposite is not true (putting more content onto the network does not lead to the creation or maintenance of APPs / putting more content onto the network does not necessarily lead to further content being put onto the network). EDIT: So APPs should indeed not be rewarded equally - they should only be rewarded as they benefit the network.

Therefore, while I can see your hesitation for supporting a one-size-supposed-to-fit-all reward model, I would argue that the implementation of this reward system is all that’s needed. But for APPs - it is, in fact, needed.

Disclaimer: I have proposed what I believe to be such a system here

[Blindsite2k]

@happybeing

It lead you to say you don’t think farmers need 90%, which makes no sense. Farmers will get what they need, regardless of what other rewards are allocated.

Maybe it’s clearer this way: farmers get X, where X is determined by an algorithm based on spare storage capacity. If devs get 10% of what farmers get, that means the network pays X to farmers and 1.1 X to devs.

Saying farmers should get less in a thread which is really about working out how much others should get is misleading - because it implies there is a fixed amount of rewards that are then divided up between the various participants. That is not the case.

Am I to understand that the 10% to devs and 90% to farmers split is merely an approximation for convencience sake in conversation and in actual fact the network treats devs and farmers as resources and affords them safecoin appropriately? So as we’ve previously discussed as there are more farmers on the network less safecoin will be awarded. And if there are less farmers on the network then more safecoin will be awarded to farmers. Likewise if there are only a few devs the network will allocate more safecoin and if there are less devs the network will allocate less safecoin? If this is so and I’m understanding you correctly then how is the ratio between devs and farmers determined and why couldn’t you just input a third group in there under similar rules? Does the network A.I. have a value weighting system or something that determines it needs a 9:1 of farmers to devs?

[joshuef]

Please leave all your communist russia nonsense at the door. That was not communism in any real sense. (Was the USSR Communist? – A Division by Zer0)

Let me say this: if we have the opportunity to reward quality content, why would we not take it?

PtP is that opportunity.

@Anders

And look at how money sucks as an incentive for creativity on the internet. Uploading copied YouTube videos and then putting ads on them is not exactly what I would call creative. Or people getting payed for posting on Facebook, following people on Twitter, clicking on ads or voting on reddit. That’s the kind of activities incentivized by money when it comes to end users. Creative work is actually discouraged by money and forced into a broad mainstream consumer category.

Right, right. Money corrupts. Yes. I can’t and won’t argue with mainstreamism. But that’s based in a world of centralisations. Of control. Spotify skewing things to deal with record companies who hold monopolies. With newspapers. With profit. As opposed to giving a fair share (based on your listens / money. instead they average it out so small artists get nothing). It happens. Lowest common denominator is a thing. On the internet and everywhere.

In that world. But SAFE is different.

Fact is PUT cost prevents real gaming as you pay much much more. So to do a bunch of GETS to get paid… you need a lot of unique content to prevent cache kicking in… so… like. ** a lot** of PUTS.

That’s the joy!

Super good stuff performs well and is rewarded as such. But equally a slow burner is going to be the real deal here. Enough for regular GETs but, not so much as that it’s ALWAYS cached. That’s going to make you money. And there’s no network interference here. No government or entity or bad communism analogy involved. Just a way of ensuring something popular for a day (with 10000000 GETs ) is rewarded well (maybe for 10000 GETs). But then something with 10 GETs in a day, but every day for a month… or a year… it’s also rewarded.

So quality content is rewarded. Without ads. Without any central authority. Without middlemen trying to sell you what is good. It…just…happens…

You don’t need to be in it for the money with SAFE. But maybe you’ll get some anyway.

That’s the potential SAFE network, right there, IMO.

[happybeing]

Farming rewards are calculated by the network to balance supply with demand.

Other kinds of reward have been discussed, and when quantifying them they have been related to farming rewards - this I imagine is because they need to vary in a sensible way rather than be fixed in Safecoin, because the value of Safecoin will no doubt fluctuate. So the obvious thing is to relate them to farming rewards.

So if X is the farming reward, what do we thing should go to App Devs, or content publishers, or any group we decide should be rewarded? Well, the sensible way is to apportion it relative the the farming reward: so 10% of the farming reward means “0.1 times X” etc.

I think that sums it up. It becomes confusing when people talk about percentages of the farming reward because firstly there’s a tendency to treat the farming reward as a fixed amount, which is now being split up amongst other parties - but it isn’t because the farming reward is determined independently according to supply and demand.

[Anders]

@joshuef

if we have the opportunity to reward quality content, why would we not take it?

If popularity is used as a measure of quality, then that may work, for a while, until the safecoin cap has been reached. After that the farmers, app developers and content makers will have to share only recycled safecoins. And since PUTs will be very cheap, the amount of profit will be very limited. And to increase the profit people need to add advertisement and things like that. So in business terms, the automatic app/content reward will be more like a toy gimmick than a serious income stream.

[justin]

If I was the maidsafe designer I would have the farmer rewarded 100% of safe gigabyte token and have an open market exchange and have the app dev’s and content dev’s have a equal share in safe coin like mobile credit or gas.
so small charges continue flow in and would have closed loop system.

[smacz]

@Anders, you are killing it today!

@Anders

If popularity is used as a measure of quality

Another reason is this: If ISIS puts out a beheading video and everyone views it (because: human curiosity) should ISIS be rewarded by the network? I think not. Many may choose to view content that they find disagreeable or are against, that does not mean that they wish the creators to be rewarded.

Accessing content doesn’t necessarily mean appreciating content.

@Anders

So in business terms, the automatic app/content reward will be more like a toy gimmick than a serious income stream.

True - it will mostly likely not equate to a serious income stream. However, it will ease the burden of the PUT fee on the content creator. (I don’t agree with this implementation, but enabling content creation is key to the network’s adoption)

[Anders]

@smacz

it will ease the burden of the PUT fee on the content creator

And also result in profit in some cases I assume. If the app/content reward is already a part of the core, then it’s best to keep it I guess. But if this is a feature that will move the launch date of the SAFE network into 2017 or later, then it’s doubtful if it’s a good enough feature.

[smacz]

@Anders

But if this is a feature that will move the launch date of the SAFE network into 2017 or later, then it’s doubtful if it’s a good enough feature.

Haha sorry, I have to disagree with you there. There’s a reason @dirvine doesn’t hold time in high regard. From my (late) father’s favorite band, Jars of Clay - Sunny Days:

If you don’t mind believing
That it changes everything,
Time will never matter

[neo]

@smacz

ISIS be rewarded by the network?

Knowing human nature these videos will be watched, but even more certain is that groups will do something about that. They will copy the content (slightly modded to prevent dedup) and people will learn that its better to watched the copied videos than to use the ISIS ones.

Basically the murderers will upload their crap and someone/many will copy it thus preventing the murderers from profiting from their uploads.

Basically this particular argument using terrorist uploads being supported will very quickly be null and void.

[neo]

@Anders

But if this is a feature that will move the launch date of the SAFE network into 2017

Also this argument has no merit. @dirvine has already indicated that the proposed (original) PtP only requires a few lines of code to turn it on.

[smacz]

@neo

They will copy the content (slightly modded to prevent dedup)

This seems to be an inherant problem to PtP. (with many different scenarios with different goals other than the one presented) Is the suggested correction to rely on end-users discrimination or to implement a solution in code?

[neo]

Well in the case of that sort of video I know from what happens now that people will do things to minimise the profits that go to those groups. Then its up to others to decide how bad the original uploaders are. Human nature at work and any system that utilises the network to reward people (or APP) will see this happen.

But good authors/artists will see loyal followings like we see every day in fan clubs and followers of such people.

Human nature is to try and deprive what they see as “evil” and reward those that they see as good/desirable. The advertising industry relies on this.

So any rewards for producers (Get or Put or whatever) will see bad actors copied a lot to reduce their income and good actors supported and yes copied to some extent. But as has been said before the good people need to upload the quality stuff, not what the current entertainment industry shoves onto the public.

[smacz]

@neo

But as has been said before the good people need to upload the quality stuff, not what the current entertainment industry shoves onto the public.

Amen to that. (Fxxxing 20 characters)

[MrAnderson]

I like to see I’m not the only one who is a little obsessed with making sure we don’t blunder the chance the SAFE network might afford us to have a positive impact on social wealth.

I have found myself thinking back to natural processes again. It seems we all generally agree on the terms farmers, network, SafeCoin recycling value through network reward for energy spent towards the network, exchange of reward for other items of value, and spent through recycling safecoin back into the network.

Is there a list of bio-equivalent terms with relation to SAFE terms?

The SAFE Biology (At least from a non-biologist)

SAFE network = air; connects all living organisms (survive 3 minutes without oxygen)
content = water (survive on 3 days without water)
Core dev = seeds (the place all new life starts)
APPS = Produce/plants (survive 3 weeks without food)
safecoin = energy (We don’t survive for a second without it)
-------------------------------------------Each of the above components are necessary for life (network) to excist. How does nature keep these in balance through fairly distributing energy to each component to ensure equilibrium/homeostasis?

farming = the human element combining dirt, water, seed and air to produce plants. The most unpredictable part of this cycle IMO and has the most potential for human manipulation.

We already have examples of what damage can be caused when the scale of life tips too far toward one component, like energy.

I am going beyond my scope of knowledge and I hope you geniuses can pick up what I’m putting down here. Or one of my favorite sayings: “Are you smelling what I’m stepping in here?”

I see similar processes in human physiology and the human body actually might be a better example for the SAFE network. Our bodies are definitely decentralized and autonomous, but require infinite scaled coordination of infinite processes to survive. Our DNA defines what our equilibrium/homeostasis should be and enforces those rules through control of energy. There are many beautiful negative feedback systems in our bodies that could be helpful in showing us how to distribute energy/safecoin and maintain homeostasis. This is a great example: [Hypothalamic–pituitary–thyroid axis][1]

We just need one or more of you math-genius-computer scientists to translate the human body’s negative feedback system to an algorithm for distribution of safecoin…simple enough We could call it CoinChi - the natural system of Safe Coin flow.

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/41/Thyrotropic_feedback_control.svg
[1]: Hypothalamic–pituitary–thyroid axis - Wikipedia

[smacz]

I would be very careful arbitrarily assigning roles in the system of nature to aspects fo the SAFE Network.

There definitely are many systems that achieve and maintain equilibrium in nature, and I’m sure that the SAFE Network needs to model one or more of these in order to function properly. Unfortunately, this is a very complex model we’re putting together, and it would be very wise of us to choose our metaphors carefully.

The ants analogy works well when it comes to vaults and their various roles that they have to play. However, it falls apart to an extent when one attempts to draw parellels between every aspect of the network and ant colonies. So while the ideology for vault personas may borrow from that particular method, it may not be complex enough to model the entire system.

That being said, nature is full of complex, interdependent systems. With a little time and effort, I have no doubt that we as a community can come up with reasonable examples to represent many aspects of what we’re building.

Is there one canonical example that the community here can point to and say “this is what we’re going to achieve!”. Maybe, maybe not. But I do believe in the wisdom of nature (my friends call me PaleoMan) and I do believe in equilibrium as an obtainable goal.

Thank you for the reminder of what we’re attempting to accomplish, and I for one would certainly enjoy exploring these different possibilities in depth sooner or later. (as it is in fact something that I myself have often wondered in moments inbetween this and that.)

[Artiscience]

As I have argued in many other threads before, I don´t think that it is a good idea to pay the uploader. People here refer to “Pay the Producer”, but that´s just false. The network will be agnostic with regard to the producer, it only knows uploders and the uploader isn´t necessarily the producer - it´s much more likely he*she is not.

Paying the uploader incents piracy and storing unnecessary stuff on the network to make some money. Paying the creator of apps is certainly different, however I wonder whether popular apps can be copied easily. In this case the consequences are quite the same.

Since the network is not competent to judge who is a legit producer I don´t think it should be able to automatically (whatever that means exactly) pay out rewards to app & file creators.

I don´t see what´s the problem with allowing app & file creators to request a payment publicly and users to reject it. Why should the developer who writes the algorithm distributing Safecoin be a better judge than the person who uses the app/file? Also I see dozens of ways to game the system and by doing so making money of honestly paid PUTs.

[justin]

I do agree with the heading that app makers should not get paid ether.
Anyone can make and kodi plugin and game the system, and the copy and paste your own version of popcorn time and point to the same files.
I could have multiple wallets with different video files, how would safe network know, one wallet is the app and the others are the content to be farmed.

If there are loop holes to jump through then people will find away to game the system.