Saving Journalism with Cryptocurrencies
Journalism is dying a slow death. The model of relying heavily on advertisements have made the media answerable to the highest bidder rather than the reader. It’s said, Journalism is one of the pillars of democracy. If journalism dies, I wonder how will democracy survive. I have had a few sleepless nights thinking about the state of our media. I am scared of the future where any truth can be manufactured.
I am happy to see that subscription based digital news is taking off. Hopefully, we will have many of them at scale to remove the noise currently be peddled by existing large media corporates. They are doing pioneering work and changing the habits of Indians who have seldom pay for services online. It is going to be a tough journey and I sincerely hope they succeed.
More ⚡️⚡️⚡️ to you!
Lately, I have been thinking about an alternative system powered by cryptocurrencies which I think can help create better content. The technical feasibility has existed for a while now but there is no “product” around it. I am going to first talk about the implementation and then argue why I think this is better than existing systems.
Cryptocurrencies are digital currencies which can be made by a computer by solving puzzles. There are several sources which explain Cryptocurrencies in details and I will not go into detail about it here. Cryptocurrencies can be converted into normal fiat currencies like Indian Rupees or USD. Lately, one can “mine” coins even in the browser. And, this is where it gets interesting.
What-if users can pay a news site via such coins? The longer they stay on the site (because of the great content) the more they pay. The coins are being mined in the browser while the user reads the post. No payment forms to fill, no subscriptions to keep track of and you pay for exactly what you read.
So why isn’t anyone doing it yet? Well, I don’t know. Building products is hard and getting the user experience around it is tough.
Few days back, there were multiple sites which were using browser based miners on their sites. Sites like thepiratebay and HBO Showtime are the ones that come to mind. They were however doing it without consent and that is a complete breach of trust imo. Mining is CPU/GPU intensive ie it requires more electricity, therefore draining out the batteries faster. Regardless, the user should be able to decide if he/she wants to allow their device to mine.
A good UX would be;
User lands on the site.
After page(+assets viz. images and videos) loads, a popup asks the user if they would like to see ads or pay via mining (maybe add a paid subcription button too ;). Or buy coins, something Brendan Eich is trying to do with the Brave browser and Attention Coin).
If user choose mining, it check if system is being powered by battery and confirm the action again with the user informing about the excessive battery drain. Or maybe, we auto-magically decide to mine with less intensity. (Products are hard)!
If user choose advertisements, do load of good old advertisement library to show ads (and let the user be in distraction hell).
Something like this?There is no tech. problem to be solved here but more of user behaviour and culture.
Why is this better?
This is better than ads because the user stays on your site. Unlike ads where the user is being nudged to leave your site to go visit the advertiser. It also incentivises the writer to create great content to make the user stay on the site. The sites could also sell the coins to advertisers making it the currency of the advertisements on the web. (Much Libertarianism, Such Wow! 🐶)
This is also trumps subscriptions; as you pay for what you read rather than pay for what publishers publish! It gives the control back to the consumer. (Moar!!! Much Libertarianism, Such Wow! 🐶)
While the future of cryptos is uncertain, I do see the potential in them. In my opinion, they separate the politics from economics and thats something really novel! And I hope we see solutions like this in the future.