Thread by @art_pleb

1/ GM FRENS

Art deserves to be free

Artists deserve to be paid

A thread on tech, media, and the future of content 🧵

2/ How I think about the dynamics of tech / media industry over the past few decades:

Information is free to create, copy, and distribute



Therefore

content is basically infinite

Therefore

our brains are quickly overloaded

3/ This leads to a few outcomes

The good - democratized information

The bad - creators don’t get paid

The ugly - monopoly and centralization

4/ In the legacy world, content of all forms was curated by professional gatekeepers at major networks, newspapers, studios, labels, magazines, etc

There are economic reasons for this, if you’re interested check out @stratechery stratechery.com/2014/fivethirt…

5/ Often that power was used for good, but it was also abused to protect the powerful, including police, politicians, and scumbags like Weinstein and Epstein

6/ THE GOOD

The internet bypassed the gatekeepers and their ability to hide scandals like #metoo #blacklivesmatter and countless others

Twitter's role as a public square is especially important

7/ THE BAD

But there’s a huge downside
- too much content.

The technical / economic term is “glut”, where too much stuff means price goes to zero

Creators can't get paid

8/ “But AP, art / photography / journalism / science isn’t a commodity!”


Of course they aren’t, but our brains are overloaded so we need a way to process it all

Enter the algorithm

9/ THE UGLY

Platforms like FB and Twitter got popular by curating infinite content w social algorithms based on likes, follows, upvotes, etc

Better curation ➡️ better experience
Better experience ➡️ more users
More users ➡️ better curation

🔄🔄🔄

That's a recipe for monopoly

10/ The dynamic has decimated entire industries, most notably journalism

While I don’t want the suits at Fox, Disney, and the New York Times to control everything I consume, trading them for Twitter and Facebook isn’t much of an improvement

11/ This played out over the last decade, with serious social costs

Today we are starting to see more decentralized models emerge on platforms like Substack, Twitter is building towards this future as well

Content is still free, creators are starting to get paid

12/ Substack is interesting, because it doesn't do a lot of native marketing for its creators

I found the people I follow there on Twitter and podcasts mostly, I go to substack to read their stuff, then I leave

13/ If you want a deep dive into this stuff here's the core concept, again from Stratechery

If this were a book it'd be better known than the Innovator's Dilemma, but the author @benthompson is smarter than that
stratechery.com/2015/aggregati…

14/ 1:1 NFTs on public blockchains can serve a similar function to podcasts and Twitter for artists

Depending on the creator it might be their primary source of revenue, or it might mostly be a marketing channel that drives users to other paid work

15/ The public-private dynamic here is interesting, which is where @CreativeCommons CC0 is important

I'll get into the history in another thread, but this little legal standards body is part of a powerful movement, and central to tech culture

IYKYK

16/ Creative Commons recognizes that information *will* be accessed, reproduced, and modified, legally or not, and attempts to offer legal structures that acknowledges this


A CC0 license means the creator is embracing the purest version, and setting the work free

17/ Why would someone do this? Because someone pays them to



That’s where a CC0-NFT comes in. The collector pays the artist to release the rights to everyone.

The artist gets paid
The public gets art

The collector gets clout

18/ It's almost always a bad idea to work for "exposure", you're selling yourself short and won't put out your best work for free

Fuck You Pay Me

But if someone pays a premium for your best work, which also gets it the best possible distribution, that might be different story

19/ Two analogous situations

Writer gets paid to go on a podcast

1. Audience gets the in-depth conversation and the best ideas free
2. Those that want to go deeper can subscribe on Substack or buy the book
3. Podcast host gets a great episode to reinforce the brand

20/ Michelangelo:

The Pope pays Michelangelo to paint the Sistine Chapel

1. Catholics get to experience the art
2. Wealthy patrons want to buy a work by the guy that did the Sistine Chapel
3. Pope reenforces the importance of the church for visiting missionaries

21/21 In both these the *best* work is public

But NFTs add something else - they make the value of the work public and verifiable

That's real signal 📡 in the noise of infinite content, and may be the beginning of the end of the social curation algos

Money talks //AP

PS - One last thing for the artists

I know I'm new here

I’m wading in with very little understanding of how your world works and the struggles you face



I believe CC0 NFTs can help with the problem in free to copy digital content in some cases, but I have a lot to learn