The Twitterverse is up in arms at Elon Musk’s proposition to charge users a a monthly fee for verified accounts. But could this possibly be a step in the right direction for the platform?
Columbia Business School professor, Fintech guru, and crypto industry veteran Omid Malekan explains his take on the situation via a recent Twitter thread:
- Imposing a cost is an effective form of Sybil resistance. Crypto people should understand why. Our domain is all about preserving the integrity of permissionless systems by introducing a cost to doing the most important work. Thus PoW & PoS.
- This approach to security is arguably crypto’s most valuable contribution to humanity. Traditional systems fight bad behavior with gatekeepers running permissioned systems, but that inevitably leads to the gatekeepers themselves being the ultimate bad actors.
- Costs create integrity. Arguing that “charging just favors the rich” is short sighted. Would you make the same argument for PoW and PoS and just let anyone do transaction validation? That would be a disaster! (as Web2 social is becoming).
- Subscription revenues let the platform move away from ads. An over-reliance on advertising is the original sin of the internet. It leads to algos designed to maximize “engagement” and all the other horrible shit that’s happened on Twitter, Facebook, et al.
- Non-advertising based media tends to be higher quality. Think: HBO, Substack, paywalled journalism, etc. IF charging cuts down on bots & spam then there will be more utility for creators, making the $8/mo worth it.
- Charging makes it easier to pay content creators. Or rather, quality content creators as opposed to trolls and shillers. This too should resonate with crypto people. Miners/Stakers have a cost of entry, then get paid for doing good work, aligning incentives so users benefit