What makes you think adding micro transactions (zaps) to social media will fix it?
Discussion
The problem is likely multifaceted but I’m intrigued with the observation that “likes” and comments are infinitely reproducible whereas zaps are inherently limited. An AI bot could leave 100 million unique likes and comments at zero cost yet couldn’t afford to give 100 million one-sat zaps
Likes are democratic whereas zaps a plutocratic. While a bot can like many posts, it can only give one like on a particular note. On the other hand I've seen just in my feed multiple people zap a single post the equivalent of 1 sat and another where 1 user zapped 50k sats ($14.01 USD at the time). This is a reversal of what we would have considered more successful previously with 3 likes to 1 becoming 3 sats to 50k.
It would be difficult to argue that bigger zappers aren't going to have an outsized impact on what others will post, particularly when all of this is publicly available and people can tune their posting to what is most likely to get them the biggest zaps. Perhaps this is the idea, but I'm sure you can imagine why people who want open, honest conversations would be concerned that this would affect the outcome of those conversations.
You bring up some interesting points. Sure one human can give one like but one person controlling 1,000 bots can give a 1,000 likes.
Zaps are not fake-able. If someone sends 50k sats then they are sending a clear signal that the content is really good because they cannot get their sats back.
I certainly don’t want to have it excluding genuine participation but I’m concerned about the effects of “cheap talk” especially given that the internet has everything asymptotically approaching infinite and instant
I would be interested in any non-monetary “proof of work” solutions that could maybe be more equitable but real costs seem inherent to proof of work
Zaps are not falsifiable but they are transferrable. So lets use your bot farm in this circumstance. You transfer 50k sats from bot a to bot b for "virtually no transaction fee" (obviously you will be burning some amount) and you can continue to farm this around, adding to it as need be to increase visibility and make an opinion seem high value.
This could be used politically showing opinions praising one political party and/ or demonising the other having big sats attached to them to implicitly suggest that if you too hold those opinions sats will be coming your way.
If you're worried about bot farms giving 1000's of likes I don't think this problem currently exists here. Some spam filtering has already been implemented on relays but removing likes isn't going to remove spam comments which are a much bigger issue. Focussing on curating your follows as well as individually blocking people you feel aren't adding to your conversations will always be the best way to remove cheap talk from your feed.
That’s a good point. I’ll have to think on it more I guess
The guy that makes Amethyst made a poll feature that lets you vote with zaps, which is a terrible idea.
But I mean, zaps are practically worthless so if some political group wants to push a certain post or narrative, it’ll cost them very little to do so anyway. Making “likes” cost a fraction of a cent isn’t going to change anything.
And I suppose it’s true that content will shift towards what is getting zapped. I would say this is also true for likes as people want the social validation but probably even stronger with zaps. But isn’t that what makes free markets work so well? People naturally respond to incentives. If someone values something enough to pay for it, then it is a good exchange between both parties.