thomas

Farcaster

When you’ve finally set up automated tipping in @noiceapp but haven’t adapted your liking and commenting habits

Here’s how I know the vibe is shifting.

I’ve been here 2.5 years, and in that time have made a ton of long-form posts on topics ranging from Ethereum to geopolitics to philosophy to science.

Yet, this one cast I made in passing earlier today received by far the most recasts, likes, and comments that I’ve ever experienced.

The only difference? It talks about money, and specifically, it shows evidence of my wallet tipping others a bit too liberally (I’ve since toned down the @noiceapp settings).

That alone has instantly attracted engagement from multiple users that I had never interacted with before. I have to wonder how much of that was genuine vs people fishing for tips.

I know most of crypto is just one brazen casino, but damn did this cast make it obvious to me today.

I have to process the impact instant tipping is having on social dynamics here. At least Tipping Tuesdays give us space to be deliberate about who to tip in aggregate. Auto-tipping OTOH might just turn out to be a net negative

Aviator, diver, Etherean, nexialist, PhD in aviation ∩ climate science | Host of /diving /ethfinance /eth-staker /geopolitics /science /singapore /thomas

Tipping culture is cancer and bringing it to social media is cancerer.

Seems hard to escape this.

I think the payment processing is not the hard part here. What you need is some way to accurately judge the benefit the user got for the content he liked. 

Spiritually, likes are not fungible... so tips cannot work in a fungible manner.

Maybe tips cannot work period, TBH. I'm struggling to build the steelman case for it.

It’s a tough question. First off, don’t take me wrong — I’m really impressed by what you guys have done with @noiceapp. It’s frictionless, easy to set the tipping allowances and authorize, and it just works great.

Yet I’m not sold on the growing monetization of every social interaction. I wouldn’t tip my buddies for having a fun or deep conversation with me over a beer.

I might want to tip creators of original content here to incentivize journalistic reporting, thoughtful essays, creative artwork, etc — just not every like or comment or recast, most of which are mundane.

Reddit has sidestepped this conundrum with karma — a social score that has no monetary value (secondary market of astroturfing accounts notwithstanding). It still incentivizes people to post engaging and quality content, but not be sycophantic the way USDC or equivalent does it.

Maybe the tipping is not the issue — maybe it’s the tipping token that needs to be soulbound to the FID/wallet and hold no monetary value

Ya, I agreed with your post reading it before my own.

I've always been a fan of microtransactions and the idea you would tip someone for their blog. The early idea of the Internet really. But, with web3 allowing so many money experiments, and web2 showing the corporate capture + race to lowest common denominator is inevitable, I'm more and more open to the idea any sort of generalized tipping is an idealist dream and cannot work in practice.

The better low hanging fruit might to smooth out existing working models (= manually subscribe to someone). i.e., if you could tip in a recurring manner someone you like for any amount you like, without a platform in between.

Even then, this is probably something that would get tangential use at best.

The core problem is that you want to reduce friction in microtransactions; but the very act of doing so opens the door to volume exploits.

Broadly agree

https://farcaster.xyz/aviationdoctor.eth/0x2e7877b1