I'm not against zapvertising. It's specifically things like this.
That's gross. Every comment in a note becomes a billboard for companies. The way Amethyst does it is better. There is a drop-down you can 1 click to see the messages, but they remain hidden until you do. At least with the legacy Internet you can use an ad blocker. With this you'd have to outbid corporations on every comment made on a note you post. Yuck.
I see what you mean, totally agree that the UI is being gamed here
nostr:nprofile1qqs9xtvrphl7p8qnua0gk9zusft33lqjkqqr7cwkr6g8wusu0lle8jcpz4mhxue69uhk2er9dchxummnw3ezumrpdejqz9nhwden5te0wfjkccte9ehx7um5wghxyctwvs38vtz2 zaps are relatively easy to game
For example, I am now the top zap on Primal for the period because I zapped myself
I now dominate the entire top zaps
There’s nothing fundamentally wrong with having messages associated with zaps, nor having a leaderboard per se
But if people can game it, they will
It’s just a back and forth between developers and those abusing the interface
I'm ok with zapvertising when it's 1 to 1, ie I see zap messages sent directly to me in my zap notifications list. Having them behind a drop-down is fine too, hidden but easily available, so others can check the zaps to my note if they so wish.
Something like this is different though, it changes the meta. All of a sudden people's posts & the comments to them become advertising platforms, and they don't have a choice. Imagine if someone posted something critical of a company. They could avoid zapping the critical op, but feed their information into every comment. Oof.
I've been using the Internet since the 90s. Every site and platform I've ever used I watched get enshittified until it became unusable. It's a slow and insidious process. As Nostr gets more popular, and attracts more users, VC money, and big companies, the same thing will happen. I'd hate to see that, because the promise of Nostr is to escape that. I hope it can be avoided, but I'm afraid it will be the same story all over again.
An improvement nostr:npub12vkcxr0luzwp8e673v29eqjhrr7p9vqq8asav85swaepclllj09sylpugg can make if “zappertizing” starts to become a problem is to:
-only permit messages to be displayed if they are above a certain amount set by the user
-only display messages from those you follow (so trolls and bots can’t steal that space)
-or do a UI update like you’ve suggested that hides the messages behind another input (like a tap)
There’s plenty of unique ways to address it for sure
I think clients are going to constantly experiment and see what works, but I definitely see where you’re coming from 🤙
