by snthpy | 2026-02-20 09:00:12+00:00
Thanks. I always like putting my ideas out there as I often get feedback on points I hadn't considered.

On this leading to reporting being pushed more towards what people consider in the public interest, I would argue that's a good thing. It's also maybe not that different to the current status quo if you look at how different TV or news networks cater to one target market or another.

With regards to your second point, sounds like you're essentially describing a Sybil attack. I agree with you that that's a serious concern. I'm just going to think aloud here so not sure where I'll end on this but let's see:

1. Having to make a micropayment for each upvote will at least put some cost to the bad actors, cf spam email vs spam SMS. That still makes it more amenable to abuse by the rich but I guess in the end it would come down to the balance of economic power and interest/participation between the masses and the elites?

2. How does it compare to the current model? You pay for a monthly subscription which in this context is an undifferentiated portfolio bundle of the news stories of a particular month. I guess that does make the cost of a Sybil attack higher because you can't just spend on the particular other stories trending at the same time as the one that you are currently trying to bury. For the good actor consumer this means that they generally have to pay for/support a news organisation that is broadly aligned with their interests or ideology. It does create this cliff effect though in that if I don't think I'll read enough stories in a particular month to justify my subscription then I won't pay for it at all.

3. I guess this mirrors the kind of debate and thought that's been going on in decentralized blockchain and web3 circles over the past decade or more about how to structure incentives that create broad distributions of power without too much concentration. I'm not up to speed on that so would love it if someone more knowledgeable would weigh in.

4. I had a thought about tying subscriptions to real world identities of natural persons but I don't like that from a privacy and censorship perspective.

5. I was reminded of Quadratic Voting (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quadratic_voting) which I believe would work well if there is a limited set of participants but I think won't protect you from a Sybil attack when it is cheap to create identities.

6. Building on points 5 and 4, what about this? You need a decentralized digital identity in the form of a DID which would have to be signed by some trusted party, either a government or some other institution. This could still be anonymous or pseudononymous in that when you go to the authority to have it signed, the signing authority checks that you currently don't have another active identity or any previous ones have been revoked (potentially problematic as I'm guessing the authority would have to maintain a link and I don't know if that's possible in a zero knowledge way). Alternatively identities are unlimited but expensive to create, say something like $1000 a piece so that creating 1M fake ones at least costs you $1bn. It's yours for life though so you can amortize the cost over time. In order to not cut out people at the bottom of the income distribution, they can use the government signed one but they lose the benefit of anonimity.

7. Once you have something like 6 then maybe QV is a good mechanism for apportioning micropayments on stories in the public interest?

Anyway, would love to know what current SOTA on this is in web3 circles rather than my speculations over my morning coffee.