The mindset that I keep on SN is that it is "pay to post/interact", and "pay to boost". I upzap what I think is quality content or what is of use to me, and I try to upzap more if there is more value. Downzap slop even though I probably don't have enough trust for that to mean something. Also, if I'm having a conversation with someone here - even if we're disagreeing - I will often zap the other side. Because conversation is important to me.
I'm not really bothered by anything getting upzaps from others; apparently someone found it important enough to part with their ultra-scarce sats. Although "bribery" as you put it in the not displayed footnote (can still see it through quote-reply) may make for some distortion, I feel that this is not something to dwell on. No system is perfect, the question is whether it's good enough and for me personally, SN is definitely good enough right now: we get to interact with awesome people here.
I think the question is: are you getting the meaningful interactions you're obviously looking for, and if not (do give it a little more than 2.5 weeks into territory existence), what are you going to do about it? Let us know if you need help, you're probably not alone in this quest.
despite the provocative title, i didnt mean it as a complaint, but a reflection on how even though what we have on sn is great, the rewards structure seems to promote conformist behaviour for zaps/comments. but, then again, it promotes zaps, which might be good enough.
bribery ... dwell on
this was tangential, not a major concern of mine.
are you getting the meaningful interactions you're obviously looking for, and if not (do give it a little more than 2.5 weeks into territory existence), what are you going to do about it?
yes, this is indeed the question. i'll admit i'm learning and i'm quite enjoying the process. good thing i enjoy a challenge!
I'm not sure about top-post zapping as a form of conformity. I tell myself that if I happen to get a front-page post, it gets zapped because people became aware, read and then appreciated my post. Yes, I guess that I'm that naive, haha.
Either way, in the spirit of being the delusion you want to have, I mostly zap non front-page posts: more in recent and what I get alerted about in notifications from stackers I subscribe to. And the majority is comments.
@DarthCoin is exactly correct on this point: the value of SN isn't that you earn but that you pay.
You pay to post. You pay to comment. You pay to like (zap). These are the most important parts of how SN works.
The rewards system is trickier and it may be the case that the cost to zap is not correct. Just like territory owners can select the cost to post in their territory, and setting it too low will encourage spam, perhaps providing too much in rewards is encouraging spammy zapping.
When you zap someone, there is a 30% sybil fee. This means if you zap a post 100 sats, the poster only gets 70 sats. The reason for the sybil fee is to make it costly to zap your own articles. If it wasn't costly, you could be both poster and zapper and endlessly zap yourself without any consequence -- ruining the signal provided by zaps.
If zappers are able to reliably make back their zaps (or even a profit), it stands to reason that this would also cloud (or potentially ruin) the signal provided by zaps.
So why bother with rewards at all? Well, my assumption is that people aren't used to paying money for things like "likes" or commenting and posting. Rewards are a way to soften the blow and encourage the behavior. But they are probably also a distortion.
One possible solution could be for SN to reduce the size of its donation to the daily rewards pool. (If my memory serves, it used to be 100k a good while ago and it seems to be about 50k now. Maybe it's time to drop it to 25k or something). Alternatively, the share of rewards that goes to top zappers could decrease while the share that goes to less active zappers increases (this might just increase the number of sock puppets on SN, though).
In general, I think financialization of our interactions online is actually pretty great. I believe that interactions in the digital space are such that they benefit from having a cost associated with them.
my problem is not with zaps per se but with the over-financialization of online culture in general.
My suspicion is that online culture is massively under-financialized. It's a product of our money (until bitcoin) not being natively digital. So lots of weird middlemen (ads, selling user data, tracking) have crept in to online interactions and this has made so many interactions gross and unpleasant. I'm hopeful that bringing money into play will solve or at least ameliorate many of the things we don't like about the internet.
the share of rewards that goes to top zappers could decrease while the share that goes to less active zappers increases
Two years ago, they did a bunch of experiments with different rewards parameters. I thought it was really fun and interesting. Certainly the site has changed a lot since then, so it might be time to do some further testing.
You've inspired me to write up some longer thoughts about how to address these issues. There's a principle of experimental economics called "saliency" that can help us out.
I agree with your sentiment. I also don't like to shove money into every corner of the internet, see #882169.
However, I like the alternatives to monetize content, rank content or fight spam less:
Content is mostly monetized via ads. Ads are privacy-invasive since they want to target specific groups, and they also decide who gets monetized and who doesn't.[1]
Content is ranked via engagement metrics like clicks, likes, comments, watch time etc. These metrics can also be privacy-invasive (tracking what users like across many dimensions), aren't even sybil-resistant and don't even necessarily produce content that we would consider good: clickbait, ragebait etc.
Spam is usually dealt with using subjective moderation, indistinguishable from censorship.
So, considering all trade-offs, I think using money is the most neutral form of curating online experiences.
We're probably still missing a lot of tweaks though, see #770966 for example.
Yes, I know, most user-generated content like replies don't need to earn money, but the content that generates most users usually does so. Most content users want to consume might be free to consume, but isn't free to produce. ↩
you've given the trade offs more thought than I have. thanks for laying them out clearly here.
id push back by saying that money doesnt "curate" but provides the incentives. not saying this to split hairs, but just because it is always the users that do the work curating. this seems important to say because zaps help to determine the kind of content users will share, but its the user's decision ultimately.
also, i find this interesting, "that the content that generates most users usually does [earn money]" which i think is the case because for platforms to compete online, attractive content should be rewarded, to create a flywheel effect for more users to join in. these are business decisions beyond my paygrade.
as i wrote to denlillaapan, my critique comes from a place of wanting to see less of the gambling on what we think will get the most attention, and more meaningful interaction. it seems the reward system promotes the former.
just an idea: maybe a "territory rewards" configuration where owners can reward top posters and commenters with a portion of the daily territory revenue
I assume your reply is related to this from me in #882169:
the few times I zap because someone was helpful, I feel like a more thoughtful reply about how they just changed my life would maybe have been better than a measly 21-100 sats zap.
Mhhh, maybe what I mentioned there wasn't a problem, but wishful thinking. I thought if I didn't have the option to zap, I would think "Oh, I can't zap, so now I need to reply with something so they know I appreciate them, because that's really important to me."
Now that I think about it again, I actually don't think that happens, lol. If I'd truly cared about them knowing that I appreciate them, I would zap and reply, no? One doesn't prevent the other in the cases it actually matters.
So even though what I wrote above sounded like I think zaps prevent engagement with content via thoughtful replies, I actually don't, or at least not anymore. It just allows us to show appreciation more granular?
But then again, one could argue that "more granular appreciation" also means that when you now not only have the choice between 0 (do nothing) and 100 appreciation (reply), but also everything in between, more 100's get turned into something less than 0's get turned into something more ... I don't know, thinking about this breaks my brain, I am no expert in human behavior or psychology, haha
So, considering all trade-offs, I think using money is the most neutral form of curating online experiences. this I agree with, ek. Don't have a good fix... perhaps it's just a hard problem, and SN stumbled onto the only (somewhat?) working alternative
I used to have a dilemma between 1)holding onto the world’s greatest money and 2)tapping it away frivolously with zaps. But here’s how I see it now. No one makes a sole vocation of this work, at least not that I know of. Some territories even operate at a loss. And for perspective it’s a such a small scale.
I estimate that over the past year, at the most, I’m plus or minus 5k sats across SN, nostr and zap stream. It’s just not that much. Why do I think that? Because I get wayy more value reading and learning. Zaps remind me that there’s an opportunity cost. I still choose to participate. And it incentives good content. I wonder if people would still post as much without it. In short Value>Cost
On the first point, I would say if bitcoin didn’t exist, and you were just trying to save fiat as part of financial planning, you would still spend money on fun, gifts, services (music subscription, newspapers, take your pick), tips, etc. with the goal of maximizing savings but spending along the way. It seems like when it comes to bitcoin, though, people have a much tougher time parting with it.
If bitcoin really is supposed to be a superior currency, if most of your assets are in bitcoin / you’re not really liquid in a fiat; you should be spending it.
Incredible! Yes, very well-formulated as to why zaps and comments feel so weird on SN.
my problem is not with zaps per se but with the over-financialization of online culture in general. What, in fact, do we have left of culture that has not been infiltrated by the monetization gods?
zap would be a higher-stakes action if it meant that I had to earn my bitocin back through more proof of work. But, as it were, on SN, the proof of work is, more often than not, more zapping.
Here, as somewhat opposed to Nostr, the zaps aren't genuine but self-interested since zappers know they get the funds back via rewards. What did SN do about it? remove the leaderboard, so we just can't tell in real time where we're at. Pretty ridiculous; treating symptom not cause etc.
zaps don't have to be genuine, that's what is so great about them. Genuine or not, a zap has a cost. So, any system built on the signal provided by zaps is more reliable than a system built on some far less costly signal (likes, views, even followers).
since zappers know they get the funds back via rewards.
This seems to be the more relevant question: is the way rewards are calibrated now breaking the important cost-elements of SN?
Not sure how you un-gamify what SN has become. It's a little chicken-and-egg, too, because it's greatest selling point as a product/platform is exactly that people zap like crazy...
I'm not coming at this as a critique of anything they're doing on SN, because to be competitive online these days, you have to hook users' engagement.
remove the leaderboard
i wasn't aware. but, yea, i'm not sure how I would have them approach this, and wanted to hazard away from prescribing anything out of my depths. maybe giving more weight to comments in the rewards system?
I zap on SN and nostr and from my own personal experience it seems to be more personal on this platform than on nostr.
Here in SN I zap for the hell if it on nostr I often the only one zapping a post and it feels like it’s going to the ether from someone I’m never going see or hear from again.
There's something missing in zap incentives that's upstream of all this, haven't quite put my finger on it yet though...
On Nostr, zap's can be faked, so there's really no signal in them with regards to social context
Here on SN they're notarized as a centralization trade-off, but still not useful for the zapper other than the loose hopes each engagement incentivizes better content/peers... but the niche and still shrinking scale shows that's not playing out
Free-Zapping ecosystems seem to have plateaued as a niche selection criteria, I distinguish this from micro-paywalls and payments. Entirely possible Lightning enjoooyers are still hungover from the busking/tipping fever that was kind of "current thing" in the early days of Lightning as a proof of concept when it wasn't reliable enough for actual useful things.
Everything everyone does is inherently selfish because it's based on their individual value systems and preferences.
agreed, but we naturally modulate because pure selfishness looks hideous. we teach children that "sharing is caring" because we see in them reflections of ourselves.
my discussion was only incidentally about the rewards system on sn. im more interested in the behaviours promoted by online platforms generally.
I think monetary incentives is the wrong place to draw the line.
Every platform uses a variety of incentives to try to achieve their objectives. The quality of an online community speaks to the quality of the incentive scheme they've employed.
i like zaps, i like the rewards, and i like the community these attract, and i think we owe these things working to monetary incentives. i have said nothing to the contrary.
when someone is rewarded for doing what they think others will do (in this case, zapping top posts and comments) then my question is, doesnt this lead to conformity?
even your challenging comments force me to articulate in new ways, which makes me better and hopefully clarifies my thinking to you. if you just zapped and agreed, we would have gotten none of that, and still you would have earned rewards because now the post is 'hot.'
my thinking is, how can sn encourage more of this?
TBH, I don't think we really need to overthink about the metric of post quality, what's why been zapped, why this or why that on SN. We need to, if stress on anything, is make this platform as much enjoyable as possible while learning and promoting the v4v at the core.
I accept when I was new here, I used to overthink a lot about this or that on SN. But now I just enjoy it. I don't care whats and whys. And this transformation is much more satisfactory because it makes me feel at home rather something is imposed.
No matter what you and I think of rewards or zapping behaviour among Stackers, SN will grow exponentially only when it's more acceptable and enjoying.
The mechanism of zap CC must be changed. You tip someone 100 CC so if this user has external wallet received let's says for CC conversion to sats SN takes subscription commission of 24 CC per day or 24 satoshis means you get 100 satoshis when someone zap you with CC with taking same rules of 70 % of 100 satoshis and could buy a Cowboy Credits conversion subscription like 24 CC per day means you specify and pay cowboy credits. It will be additionnal revenue to SN itself. And you choose for example I want to pay for 100 days I pay 2400 CC.
I think Stacker News, just like any platform, needs new users; it's different from FB,X,Tiktok,Reddit and Insta, where you're assured that out of these millions of users, someone will post something that will make you stick to it. Stacker News is small, and I guess you won't see many users around here if people won't have fun and get a little amount of sats for the content they create. See Nostr? People use it because it has lots of users, and no matter if people get or send zaps, they'll still stick to it because of many like minded users and lots of content. Stacker News will has a decent user base, but not enough to make newcomers stick to it. You can choose which posts and comments to zap and how much, according to how much you're benefited from the information or had a good laugh with a meme. When a big user base becomes a reality, rewards will be removed because everyone would have something to create, share, and discuss all the time.
This is how I understand this platform. We have great creators here like Darthcoin, Undisciplined, Grayruby, realBitcoindog, Aardvark, ek, and many more I'm missing out on. Also pay2post makes Stacker News literally spam proof and down zaps work like cherries on top.
So, wait invite as many users as you can, create great content, and choose your zaps wisely.
Here is my view please don't hate lol. I look at the amount of money I can earn from zaps very trivial, and it is more about engaging with others cool bitcoiners in the community. I know some people seek to optimize zaps, optimizing rewards - but I could uber for 3 hours and earn a couple hundred thousand sats, or hustle on primal/SN/ or some other zap to earn service and maybe get like 20K zaps in that same time frame.
Zapping needs to put into the wider context of how Stacker News works.
There are some contributors whose thoughts I value so much that I have turned notifications on for e.g. Justin Shocknet and Kepford.
Interaction and incentives are not immune to zapping but are also not primarily shaped by them.
As long as sites allow users to shape the UX so that bad elements can be filtered out and good elements enhanced, the impact of zaps is not a big deal.
This really hits home. Zaps are awesome! Being able to send sats from anywhere in the world is wild. But I get what you're saying: it’s easy to fall into the trap of zapping instead of actually engaging.
Sometimes it feels like we’re all just chasing the next sat payout rather than having real conversations. I’ve caught myself zapping something and moving on, when maybe I should’ve taken a moment to reply or share a thought. Feels like we’re losing that older social vibe where people showed up just to talk, think, and connect—no scoreboard, no expectations. Don’t get me wrong, I love SN, but I think you're right: the problem isn’t the zap itself, it’s what the whole online culture is doing to our motivations. Maybe the challenge now is to use the zap to start the conversation, not replace it.
The mindset that I keep on SN is that it is "pay to post/interact", and "pay to boost". I upzap what I think is quality content or what is of use to me, and I try to upzap more if there is more value. Downzap slop even though I probably don't have enough
trustfor that to mean something. Also, if I'm having a conversation with someone here - even if we're disagreeing - I will often zap the other side. Because conversation is important to me.I'm not really bothered by anything getting upzaps from others; apparently someone found it important enough to part with their ultra-scarce sats. Although "bribery" as you put it in the not displayed footnote (can still see it through quote-reply) may make for some distortion, I feel that this is not something to dwell on. No system is perfect, the question is whether it's good enough and for me personally, SN is definitely good enough right now: we get to interact with awesome people here.
I think the question is: are you getting the meaningful interactions you're obviously looking for, and if not (do give it a little more than 2.5 weeks into territory existence), what are you going to do about it? Let us know if you need help, you're probably not alone in this quest.
thanks i appreciate that.
despite the provocative title, i didnt mean it as a complaint, but a reflection on how even though what we have on sn is great, the rewards structure seems to promote conformist behaviour for zaps/comments. but, then again, it promotes zaps, which might be good enough.
this was tangential, not a major concern of mine.
yes, this is indeed the question. i'll admit i'm learning and i'm quite enjoying the process. good thing i enjoy a challenge!
I don't really see the conformism; do you see that expressed in the desire to comment or the desire to earn sats through posts / comments?
deleted by author
I'm not sure about top-post zapping as a form of conformity. I tell myself that if I happen to get a front-page post, it gets zapped because people became aware, read and then appreciated my post. Yes, I guess that I'm that naive, haha.
Either way, in the spirit of being the delusion you want to have, I mostly zap non front-page posts: more in recent and what I get alerted about in notifications from stackers I subscribe to. And the majority is comments.
ha-ha! i'm something of an expert in this myself, and i'm not talking about zapping...
@DarthCoin is exactly correct on this point: the value of SN isn't that you earn but that you pay.
You pay to post. You pay to comment. You pay to like (zap). These are the most important parts of how SN works.
The rewards system is trickier and it may be the case that the cost to zap is not correct. Just like territory owners can select the cost to post in their territory, and setting it too low will encourage spam, perhaps providing too much in rewards is encouraging spammy zapping.
When you zap someone, there is a 30% sybil fee. This means if you zap a post 100 sats, the poster only gets 70 sats. The reason for the sybil fee is to make it costly to zap your own articles. If it wasn't costly, you could be both poster and zapper and endlessly zap yourself without any consequence -- ruining the signal provided by zaps.
If zappers are able to reliably make back their zaps (or even a profit), it stands to reason that this would also cloud (or potentially ruin) the signal provided by zaps.
So why bother with rewards at all? Well, my assumption is that people aren't used to paying money for things like "likes" or commenting and posting. Rewards are a way to soften the blow and encourage the behavior. But they are probably also a distortion.
One possible solution could be for SN to reduce the size of its donation to the daily rewards pool. (If my memory serves, it used to be 100k a good while ago and it seems to be about 50k now. Maybe it's time to drop it to 25k or something). Alternatively, the share of rewards that goes to top zappers could decrease while the share that goes to less active zappers increases (this might just increase the number of sock puppets on SN, though).
In general, I think financialization of our interactions online is actually pretty great. I believe that interactions in the digital space are such that they benefit from having a cost associated with them.
My suspicion is that online culture is massively under-financialized. It's a product of our money (until bitcoin) not being natively digital. So lots of weird middlemen (ads, selling user data, tracking) have crept in to online interactions and this has made so many interactions gross and unpleasant. I'm hopeful that bringing money into play will solve or at least ameliorate many of the things we don't like about the internet.
Two years ago, they did a bunch of experiments with different rewards parameters. I thought it was really fun and interesting. Certainly the site has changed a lot since then, so it might be time to do some further testing.
deleted by author
You've inspired me to write up some longer thoughts about how to address these issues. There's a principle of experimental economics called "saliency" that can help us out.
Glad to hear it. I'm very interested I'm this.
I agree with your sentiment. I also don't like to shove money into every corner of the internet, see #882169.
However, I like the alternatives to monetize content, rank content or fight spam less:
So, considering all trade-offs, I think using money is the most neutral form of curating online experiences.
We're probably still missing a lot of tweaks though, see #770966 for example.
Yes, I know, most user-generated content like replies don't need to earn money, but the content that generates most users usually does so. Most content users want to consume might be free to consume, but isn't free to produce. ↩
you've given the trade offs more thought than I have. thanks for laying them out clearly here.
id push back by saying that money doesnt "curate" but provides the incentives. not saying this to split hairs, but just because it is always the users that do the work curating. this seems important to say because zaps help to determine the kind of content users will share, but its the user's decision ultimately.
also, i find this interesting, "that the content that generates most users usually does [earn money]" which i think is the case because for platforms to compete online, attractive content should be rewarded, to create a flywheel effect for more users to join in. these are business decisions beyond my paygrade.
as i wrote to denlillaapan, my critique comes from a place of wanting to see less of the gambling on what we think will get the most attention, and more meaningful interaction. it seems the reward system promotes the former.
just an idea: maybe a "territory rewards" configuration where owners can reward top posters and commenters with a portion of the daily territory revenue
I think this is coming
yeah something like that
I zapped your reply instead of leaving a comment (until now). Am I part of the problem?
I assume your reply is related to this from me in #882169:
Mhhh, maybe what I mentioned there wasn't a problem, but wishful thinking. I thought if I didn't have the option to zap, I would think "Oh, I can't zap, so now I need to reply with something so they know I appreciate them, because that's really important to me."
Now that I think about it again, I actually don't think that happens, lol. If I'd truly cared about them knowing that I appreciate them, I would zap and reply, no? One doesn't prevent the other in the cases it actually matters.
So even though what I wrote above sounded like I think zaps prevent engagement with content via thoughtful replies, I actually don't, or at least not anymore. It just allows us to show appreciation more granular?
But then again, one could argue that "more granular appreciation" also means that when you now not only have the choice between 0 (do nothing) and 100 appreciation (reply), but also everything in between, more 100's get turned into something less than 0's get turned into something more ... I don't know, thinking about this breaks my brain, I am no expert in human behavior or psychology, haha
almost forgets to zap
I used to have a dilemma between 1)holding onto the world’s greatest money and 2)tapping it away frivolously with zaps. But here’s how I see it now. No one makes a sole vocation of this work, at least not that I know of. Some territories even operate at a loss. And for perspective it’s a such a small scale.
I estimate that over the past year, at the most, I’m plus or minus 5k sats across SN, nostr and zap stream. It’s just not that much. Why do I think that? Because I get wayy more value reading and learning. Zaps remind me that there’s an opportunity cost. I still choose to participate. And it incentives good content. I wonder if people would still post as much without it. In short Value>Cost
I think most territories operate at a loss
On the first point, I would say if bitcoin didn’t exist, and you were just trying to save fiat as part of financial planning, you would still spend money on fun, gifts, services (music subscription, newspapers, take your pick), tips, etc. with the goal of maximizing savings but spending along the way. It seems like when it comes to bitcoin, though, people have a much tougher time parting with it.
If bitcoin really is supposed to be a superior currency, if most of your assets are in bitcoin / you’re not really liquid in a fiat; you should be spending it.
Incredible! Yes, very well-formulated as to why zaps and comments feel so weird on SN.
Here, as somewhat opposed to Nostr, the zaps aren't genuine but self-interested since zappers know they get the funds back via rewards. What did SN do about it? remove the leaderboard, so we just can't tell in real time where we're at. Pretty ridiculous; treating symptom not cause etc.
zaps don't have to be genuine, that's what is so great about them. Genuine or not, a zap has a cost. So, any system built on the signal provided by zaps is more reliable than a system built on some far less costly signal (likes, views, even followers).
This seems to be the more relevant question: is the way rewards are calibrated now breaking the important cost-elements of SN?
that seems reasonable enough... in eq, the cost element should matter more than whether something is genuine (who cares, really?!)
Nostr zaps feel like virtue signalling to me
I would love to treat the cause, any ideas considering what I mentioned here?
Also, isn't treating a symptom better than doing nothing at all?
I guess, yeah. -.-
Not sure how you un-gamify what SN has become. It's a little chicken-and-egg, too, because it's greatest selling point as a product/platform is exactly that people zap like crazy...
Interesting. I've probably never zapped on Nostr.
I'm not coming at this as a critique of anything they're doing on SN, because to be competitive online these days, you have to hook users' engagement.
i wasn't aware. but, yea, i'm not sure how I would have them approach this, and wanted to hazard away from prescribing anything out of my depths. maybe giving more weight to comments in the rewards system?
I zap on SN and nostr and from my own personal experience it seems to be more personal on this platform than on nostr.
Here in SN I zap for the hell if it on nostr I often the only one zapping a post and it feels like it’s going to the ether from someone I’m never going see or hear from again.
your are too focused on zaps.
Yes, costliness is the main feature.
its probably the main reason im here, i have no qualms about that.
theres the crux of my argument.
There's something missing in zap incentives that's upstream of all this, haven't quite put my finger on it yet though...
On Nostr, zap's can be faked, so there's really no signal in them with regards to social context
Here on SN they're notarized as a centralization trade-off, but still not useful for the zapper other than the loose hopes each engagement incentivizes better content/peers... but the niche and still shrinking scale shows that's not playing out
Free-Zapping ecosystems seem to have plateaued as a niche selection criteria, I distinguish this from micro-paywalls and payments. Entirely possible Lightning enjoooyers are still hungover from the busking/tipping fever that was kind of "current thing" in the early days of Lightning as a proof of concept when it wasn't reliable enough for actual useful things.
What's the problem with "reward seeking" behaviour?
Ultimately this will bring in a competitiveness and those who excel would survive, rest will die.
selfishness.
Everything everyone does is inherently selfish because it's based on their individual value systems and preferences.
The point of the rewards is to incentivize higher quality engagement than exists on any other platform. To my knowledge, this seems to be working.
agreed, but we naturally modulate because pure selfishness looks hideous. we teach children that "sharing is caring" because we see in them reflections of ourselves.
my discussion was only incidentally about the rewards system on sn. im more interested in the behaviours promoted by online platforms generally.
I think monetary incentives is the wrong place to draw the line.
Every platform uses a variety of incentives to try to achieve their objectives. The quality of an online community speaks to the quality of the incentive scheme they've employed.
i like zaps, i like the rewards, and i like the community these attract, and i think we owe these things working to monetary incentives. i have said nothing to the contrary.
when someone is rewarded for doing what they think others will do (in this case, zapping top posts and comments) then my question is, doesnt this lead to conformity?
even your challenging comments force me to articulate in new ways, which makes me better and hopefully clarifies my thinking to you. if you just zapped and agreed, we would have gotten none of that, and still you would have earned rewards because now the post is 'hot.'
my thinking is, how can sn encourage more of this?
As I've written about before, SN is a Keynesian Beauty Contest. As such, it has well known incentive problems, exactly as you're pointing out.
You're exactly right to look for remedies to these.
The problem is that we have no other metric of post quality than what stackers indicate are quality posts.
i wasnt aware of the term, but that's exactly it.
It may feel redundant for some but i feel it's a conversation worth returning to.
TBH, I don't think we really need to overthink about the metric of post quality, what's why been zapped, why this or why that on SN. We need to, if stress on anything, is make this platform as much enjoyable as possible while learning and promoting the v4v at the core.
I accept when I was new here, I used to overthink a lot about this or that on SN. But now I just enjoy it. I don't care whats and whys. And this transformation is much more satisfactory because it makes me feel at home rather something is imposed.
No matter what you and I think of rewards or zapping behaviour among Stackers, SN will grow exponentially only when it's more acceptable and enjoying.
the love of money
The mechanism of zap CC must be changed. You tip someone 100 CC so if this user has external wallet received let's says for CC conversion to sats SN takes subscription commission of 24 CC per day or 24 satoshis means you get 100 satoshis when someone zap you with CC with taking same rules of 70 % of 100 satoshis and could buy a Cowboy Credits conversion subscription like 24 CC per day means you specify and pay cowboy credits. It will be additionnal revenue to SN itself. And you choose for example I want to pay for 100 days I pay 2400 CC.
I think Stacker News, just like any platform, needs new users; it's different from FB,X,Tiktok,Reddit and Insta, where you're assured that out of these millions of users, someone will post something that will make you stick to it. Stacker News is small, and I guess you won't see many users around here if people won't have fun and get a little amount of sats for the content they create. See Nostr? People use it because it has lots of users, and no matter if people get or send zaps, they'll still stick to it because of many like minded users and lots of content. Stacker News will has a decent user base, but not enough to make newcomers stick to it. You can choose which posts and comments to zap and how much, according to how much you're benefited from the information or had a good laugh with a meme.
When a big user base becomes a reality, rewards will be removed because everyone would have something to create, share, and discuss all the time.
This is how I understand this platform. We have great creators here like Darthcoin, Undisciplined, Grayruby, realBitcoindog, Aardvark, ek, and many more I'm missing out on. Also pay2post makes Stacker News literally spam proof and down zaps work like cherries on top.
So, wait invite as many users as you can, create great content, and choose your zaps wisely.
Here is my view please don't hate lol. I look at the amount of money I can earn from zaps very trivial, and it is more about engaging with others cool bitcoiners in the community. I know some people seek to optimize zaps, optimizing rewards - but I could uber for 3 hours and earn a couple hundred thousand sats, or hustle on primal/SN/ or some other zap to earn service and maybe get like 20K zaps in that same time frame.
Zapping needs to put into the wider context of how Stacker News works.
There are some contributors whose thoughts I value so much that I have turned notifications on for e.g. Justin Shocknet and Kepford.
Interaction and incentives are not immune to zapping but are also not primarily shaped by them.
As long as sites allow users to shape the UX so that bad elements can be filtered out and good elements enhanced, the impact of zaps is not a big deal.
This really hits home. Zaps are awesome! Being able to send sats from anywhere in the world is wild. But I get what you're saying: it’s easy to fall into the trap of zapping instead of actually engaging.
Sometimes it feels like we’re all just chasing the next sat payout rather than having real conversations. I’ve caught myself zapping something and moving on, when maybe I should’ve taken a moment to reply or share a thought. Feels like we’re losing that older social vibe where people showed up just to talk, think, and connect—no scoreboard, no expectations. Don’t get me wrong, I love SN, but I think you're right: the problem isn’t the zap itself, it’s what the whole online culture is doing to our motivations. Maybe the challenge now is to use the zap to start the conversation, not replace it.
I tend to read a post and if I have something I want to say I'll engage and zap. If I like the post and don't have much else to say I'll just zap.
nothing against this. comments are higher stakes, and take more effort.
Good
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