The world has truly lost its mind. A new “decentralized” platform for influencers and writers that is backed by all the same folks that the rest of the web is owned by. Add to this the hair-brained scheme this is and you have a new depth of nonsense being plumbed by the crypto/blockchain/decentralized cult.
There are some rays of light out there calling out the problem of seeding the site with celebrity names as the initial accounts to be “traded” on without any of the celebrities’ permission. This is a wild gimmick to pull in lots of fools and hand more money to those who are already doing great. Not surprisingly, several have filed cease-and-desist orders.
The proposition of this massive gimmick is for the rest of us to write under our own names and try to get “likes” to up the value or allotment of BTCLT, the crypto behind the scheme. Of course, you will be competing with “only” the top 15,000 influencers from Twitter that are pre-loaded onto the platform. So, go ahead, rise about that crowd by publishing content and links to your content there.
If I were to guess, AndreessenHorowitz’s a16z (see principals of this fund here: https://medium.com/p/6940d0c03608) came up with the scheme of calling this an open platform for struggling influencers/writers to not appear as oligarchic as it is. This would presumably also create a sympathetic mission as a means of avoiding law-suits and bad press for taking those 15,000 top influencer names without any of their permissions whilenevertheless handing them most of the money.
Think about it: you go on there, put your content there and compete against the 15,000 top influencers in the world. Ok, that’s a good idea, right. But it still has not avoided a steadily boiling amount of trouble, thank heaven: https://amycastor.com/2021/03/28/bitclouts-social-media-experiment-is-one-bad-idea-on-top-of-another/comment-page-1/
But we know everyone can be bought or just ignored.
And the whole crypto/blockchain/decentralized cult sector is not even bothering with the usual credulous adherents. Just take this in:
1. The creator is anonymous, although reputed to be Nader Al-Naji.
2. The developers are anonymous.
3. But the investors/owners are very well-known:
AndreesenHorowitz - backer of all the other social networks.
4. The Winklevoss Twins – you know, those poor rich victims of middle-class Mark Zuckerberg
5. Sequoia Capital – Ditto Andreesen…
6. Coinbase – The more coins the merrier
Reddit co-founder – The nice guy that owns the sewer of all sorts of content
7. Chamath Palihapitiya – Ex-FaceBook guy and all-around money collector and a guy who plays all sides.
This is pretty much in the same category as DFinity, which is also largely funded by AndreessenHorowitz’s a16z. These are projects that profile themselves as being pre-eminently DECENTRALIZED, yet the developer talent and operation are bought and paid for by giant VCs This is way beyond the same claims that Bitcoin believers and many others make when they fail to point out the various ways in which this claim is patently nonsense:
https://jsadove.medium.com/the-problem-of-decentralization-where-will-it-lead-e9970993f11f
The other big investment in “Decentralization” by AndreesenHorowitz a16z is, as previously mentioned, is DFinity (https://jsadove.medium.com/dfinity-the-apotheosis-of-decentralization-is-here-59fc50a0ca7e). Among the reasons offered by the founder, Dominic Williams, is that it will provide a fix for his view that “… what happened to Parler is *outrageous* (and I’m not MAGA)”. In other words, the ability to freely spread hate and misinformation.
So now we have a platform which is designed to provide a space that is completely free for the publication of anything and everything hateful and misleading and the writers can actually EARN MONEY. Let’s hope we see Trump’s name rocket to the top of earners! Russian writers, polish that English here!
