Legacy social media uses advertising to finance the design, implementation and maintenance costs of:

1. platform UX

2. content storage / archive

3. content delivery to end user

4. content curation algos

With nostr:

FOSS is handling (1).

Nostr uses relays for (2) and (3), although unclear how relay monetization will play out.

Also unclear how (4) will work with nostr. The ability to make lists is a start. But long run:

- Who designs the algos? Does someone need to be paid for this or can they be implemented at no cost via a combo of FOSS + user input that is provided for free (e.g. using lists)?

- Who implements / executes the curation algos, the computations & data processing? Will these costs be trivial compared to (2) and (3) or will these costs be significant?

My thoughts: once we get into web of trust, which will probably require high quality data + computationally expensive graph analysis, the costs associated with high-quality content curation will be nontrivial. In the long run users should have a mechanism to be compensated for their contributions to content curation. Legacy media expects users to provide things like ratings for free, but the legacy monetization model needs to die. Have mechanisms to pay your trusted users a few sats for their ratings, not just for their “content”. Let your WoT help you decide which users to pay for ratings in any given context. This is how we replace the legacy advertising-based monetization model.