Most social networks are built as single player games.

Sure we play along side of others, but mostly to compete for attention from the algorithm.

In this arrangement, the platforms retain all the power. We the creators and the audiences we attract are taken for granted as assets to be experimented with and manipulated for profit.

But it doesn’t have to be that way.

We do not need to accept this as the new normal forever.

What if we built a new system that allowed us to slowly take back control of our attention at scale as well as the earning potential of the internet?

A place where we could work together to filter the signal from the noise.

This type of behavior happens naturally in real world networks. People curate their surroundings and collaborate to build value as they interact with each other over time. This is how societies grow, companies form, and political movements drive change.

However our online networks invert this incentive structure and steal most of the network value for themselves.

This means that very few of us ever earn any value from the network itself. Even through we all interact with it daily. Instead we feed it with attention, with the sanity of our children and with the stability of our society. Meanwhile the rich get richer while the rest of us watch in wonder.

But we would never allow people in the real world to continually abuse us like this.

We would all immediately demand more from the system or we would revolt against it.

In fact, the last time humanity faced a crisis of this magnitude, it led to the American revolution.

A moment which reshaped history as a group of people decided to step away from oppressive regime in order to self organize and build their own systems of governance.

The internet has not yet seen this type of revolution.

But you can feel it brewing below the surface.

Bitcoin is living proof that people are looking for other financial models and there is no doubt that there is a growing thirst for something new.

We have recently seen small shifts where some of the major platforms are paying top creators for a portion of the attention they generate across a network, but even this is a small percentage of the total value earned and fully at the whim of the platform itself.

If the platform were to disappear, the creators would lose access to their audience. Which means this is simply a distraction to preserve the status quo and appease the mobs while continuing to capture all of the network value from our collective humanity.

Smart creators have started looking for ways to earn income outside of the platform itself by pushing their audience to action in other ways. Either through brand deals or product endorsements. Or maybe even by creating their own products.