Replying to Avatar Gigi

No prisons, no limits.

It doesn't make sense to put a jpg or a blog post behind a paywall. If it's good, it will be available for free in no time. Someone will right-click save the thing, or take a screenshot, and send it around or republish it. Trying to fight that is stupid. Putting chunks of data behind prisons is stupid.

All data can be reproduced at zero marginal cost, leading to infinite supply. That's why market prices are ridiculous for blog posts, and why it's equally ridiculous to try to sell a single blog post. What you CAN sell is access to an exclusive club or community, as well as access to the author. That's what all Twitch/YouTube/OnlyFans have figured out. But make no mistake: they're not selling JPGs. They might sell early-access (in the case of OnlyFans) which is fair, but it's not selling a JPG as you would sell an apple. Early access because if the stuff is any good, it will be available for free to anyone everywhere.

Here's the thing: people love to support other people, so let them. No limits. The success of Patreon and Substack does not come from paywalls, but from the inherent willingness of people to support others. Lean into that. Let people give without limits.

Social signaling is important. Community is incredibly important too. Do that right, and we can 100x the whole space just like a switch from $50 per game to free-to-play 100x'd the gaming industry, selling cosmetics and social status only.

Computers are copying machines. Information yearns to be free. People want to support the stuff they love, and they're willing to pay for it. Not all people, but ~4% of them. And that is enough.

Nobody will ever make enough money from voluntary donations to have a proper career except for a handful of popular creators. In the real world, whenever donations are mission critical they are accompanied by fundraising, which is time spent procuring donations. Content creators don't have the time or resources as individuals to do that kind of marketing. Fundraising is a lot of work.

Relying on donations is an abysmal prospect for anyone trying to make a career from creating content. Many, many talented people on established platforms outside of nostr aren't making enough money to have a proper career. Doing it on nostr right now is even more difficult.

I think going all in on V4V is naively optimistic. The reality is that content creators need an array of tools to monetize their content and being dogmatic about V4V is not productive. It's frankly discouraging to anyone who hopes to monetize their craft, because it's totally unrealistic. It's silly to talk about how the theoretical price of digital content is zero because people today still buy shows on digital platforms instead of pirating them. Maybe answer why people still do that and you'll start to see that there are other factors you aren't considering.

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V4V works at scale. It works with more value than a podcast or an image or blog.

It is a commerce feature, not a social feature.

Is that your theory or can you point me to an example where people are actually thriving from tips alone?