More companies, countries and capital firms are embracing bitcoin than ever before. Notably, Jack Dorsey recently announced that Twitter would allow for users to tip other content writers on Twitter using bitcoin. This is welcome news because it shows another use case for bitcoin as a currency and pushes the world closer to “hyperbitcoinization.” However, while it is nice that Twitter is facilitating bitcoin donations through their platform, this isn’t adequate. In keeping with the ethos of Bitcoin, Twitter and other social media platforms should embrace paying all of their users a bitcoin dividend for using the site.
Twitter created its tip jar as a way to pay its content creators. It does so by allowing fans to tip their favorite content creators. Twitter is, however, a multi-billion dollar company whose value directly comes from selling its users’ data to advertisers. While most of us are aware of how Twitter and other social media websites monetize, we rarely view ourselves as being the product that Twitter sells. We should also consider that social media companies are known for using predatory tactics to make their content more addictive and toxic, as evidenced by Instagram’s recently leaked report. As a result of this predatory environment designed to profit off of our usage, perhaps we should all — both influencers and regular users — demand to be paid for creating content. It is time they start paying users, no matter how small they are, for creating content. For upvotes, shares and retweets, users could get paid in bitcoin proportional to the engagement that their posts bring to the website. Users are the unpaid labor force of these social media companies.
Many social media founders, for example Jack Dorsey, claim to embrace bitcoin’s philosophy. Integral to that philosophy is the ethos of decentralization. This decentralization should be applied to monetization for users.
Platforms like YouTube, TikTok and Snapchat have dividend-like…
