Bitcoin Forum

TL;DR - Bitcoin tips have been unable to overtake advertisements as the main source of revenue for content creators due to the fact that not many people are willing to make donations. This problem can be solved with unique schemes that give audiences incentives to tip content creators. One option involves having audience members vote on upcoming content with their bitcoins. This model can be applied to movies, music, books, news organizations, free software development, and much more. It would also solve the “problem” of Internet piracy. Content could be freely available everywhere after the creator’s initial donation goals are met. New videos, songs, albums, blog posts, and more could be posted by content creators directly to a Reddit-like platform. This would allow the best content to gain more exposure.

Sounds super cool but Reddit is centralized, how can it become a decentralized media platform? I think this project could fly, but it should be based on a decentralized platform (something like Maidsafe etc.).

Decentralizing the Servers and Administrators of BitMedia

As mentioned above, a problem could arise due to the centralized nature of Reddit’s servers and infrastructure. Because all of this content would be posted on Reddit, the owners of the servers and administrators of the site still need to be trusted not to censor any content. Although Reddit has always been one of the most adamant supporters of free speech in the past, we cannot predict the future. There’s also the possibility that they could be coerced into censoring certain content by a government. The good news is that there is also a solution for this problem.

Bitcloud is a project that aims to provide back-end data storage for websites and web applications in a decentralized manner. Think of it as Bittorrent for websites. The fact that so many different people are hosting the website makes it difficult to censor, much like pirated music, movies, and TV shows that are rather prevalent on Bittorrent right now. Another key difference with Bitcloud vs Bittorrent is that nodes are paid for hosting data. This means that the data will not only be hosted by people for altruistic reasons. When someone is being paid to host data, the uptime for that data tends to be much higher. With Bittorrent the most popular data is also the data with the most seeders. In the case of Bitcloud, all data can be seeded properly due to the fact that seeders are paid. Integration with Tor would also mean that no one even knows where the backend data for BitMedia is stored. One last point to mention here is that no altcoin is needed to create Bitcloud.

If BitMedia were hosted on Bitcloud, it would be truly censorship-resistant. You don’t need to worry about Reddit admins going rogue and censoring data. A government cannot subpoena a decentralized application, and you cannot seize the servers if you don’t know where they are located.

None of that requires Bitcoin. You could simply replace 'bitcoins' with 'money' in the quote above.

Why Traditional Payment Methods Don’t Work for BitMedia

We should also clear up why Bitcoin is required for BitMedia to work. There are three main reasons that something like PayPal would not work properly for this system of donations and tips:

Microtransactions - The base fee on a traditional payment system is usually around $0.30. The 3% discount rate is then charged on top of that flat amount. This means PayPal and debit cards are impractical for donations, tips, and votes under $1.

Chargebacks - Chargebacks would also be a huge issue in this system. We cannot have people reversing payments after they’ve made a donation. Posting original content is basically an irreversible transaction because it’s impossible to get something removed from the Internet after it is already out there. Since the content creator is posting a piece of work that cannot be taken back later, the same concept needs to be applied to the donations and tips. Otherwise, there could be a situation where donors/tippers/voters take back their money after the content has been posted. The content creator would be left with no payment for their work. This is especially troublesome in the Bitcoin vote monetization model because the voters who are able to make chargebacks could impact the results of the poll without having any intention of making a donation.

Censorship - Bitcoin is censorship-resistant money. There would undoubtedly be unpopular content posted on BitMedia. People still need to be able to make their donations when this problem occurs. PayPal, Visa, Mastercard, and other payment companies cannot be trusted to always be fair when it comes to who can receive donations. When these companies blocked Wikileaks from receiving donations in 2011, supporters of the document-leaking organization were able to make donations with Bitcoin.

advertisements need to have a lot of viewer in order to be potentially profitable for the content creators. The max revenue of an ad would be a few dollars per thousand views, however these rates are generally for video type ads that would be unlikely to be seen on a reddit thread.

Also people do not solely view a reddit thread because of the original content, they also view a thread because of the conversation occurring in the thread, and this is really not the content creator but the community as a whole.

i love reddit but not sure this makes it decentralised

Reddit is open source - if you have an idea, just fork it and implement it.

Reddit is open source - if you have an idea, just fork it and implement it.

I've always thought an auction type business model would work for online media. A content creator puts his work up for sale at a certain price to one or many people willing to buy it. Once those individuals purchase it at that price they turn around and resell it at a lower price to more people. As the reselling continues the price drops very quickly, and everyone up the chain buying/reselling makes a small profit. The last people to buy the video would end up paying a very low price. You might also have to implement some kind of proof-of-bandwidth protocol since some people might be willing to pay for a faster download.

This is pretty interesting method. The problem is someone would post it online for free or with advertisements at some point.

I've always thought an auction type business model would work for online media. A content creator puts his work up for sale at a certain price to one or many people willing to buy it. Once those individuals purchase it at that price they turn around and resell it at a lower price to more people. As the reselling continues the price drops very quickly, and everyone up the chain buying/reselling makes a small profit. The last people to buy the video would end up paying a very low price. You might also have to implement some kind of proof-of-bandwidth protocol since some people might be willing to pay for a faster download.

Yes but I think those people would typically be at the bottom of the chain, so ultimately it might be served up for free, but everyone has already made their money at that point. Some people might try to wait until it's free, whereas some people would probably be willing to pay a little to get a faster and more immediate download.

Yes but I think those people would typically be at the bottom of the chain, so ultimately it might be served up for free, but everyone has already made their money at that point. Some people might try to wait until it's free, whereas some people would probably be willing to pay a little to get a faster and more immediate download.