the premise that 'zapping popular content ' should be rewarded is flawed at the outset
Right. The issue is that they don't want people just randomly zapping crap for the sake of a reward payout. They want people to zap "good" content. How do you gauge that other than by equating "good" and "popular"?
Btw, the trust score does a lot of work here, as I understand it. However, that also compounds the problem. It doesn't take long to get a sense of who has the high trust scores and then you can attempt to mimic them.
It always has to be 'high trust scores to me'. My zaps go to reward those I trust locally and their rewards can only go to me if they trust me locally.
just randomly zapping crap for the sake of a reward payout
There must be something I don't understand. I don't see how this could be economically viable? How would spending sats randomly earn me sats overall?
Any system must incentivize creators more than zappers. Zappers being incentivized to zap may be necessary, but it reminds me of the fallacy that tax/theft + welfare programs are needed because humans aren't kind enough to take care of each other. Not equivalent, but similar. If it is needed, perhaps it should just be by lottery. I have to think on it more.
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I don't see how this could be economically viable? How would spending sats randomly earn me sats overall?
It doesn't make sense as an equilibrium outcome (absent some outside subsidy). However, most stackers are zapping well below the equilibrium level right now, so there are sats to be made just by zapping content. I'm living proof of this and I've been admonishing everyone else for their miserly behavior pretty much the entire time I've been on SN. The hodl mentality is working against them in this case.
I actually like incentivizing zappers more, since there's no other financial reason to do it. If people are rewarded for zapping "well", then by necessity creators are being rewarded. Shifting the burden of producing zaps onto creators seems like pushing on a rope to me.
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Just a quick thought, I wonder if changing the color of their username or cowboy hat based on how much they have zapped would cause others to zap them back more.
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Many cool cowboy hat ideas have been discussed. I tried to aggregate them here: #383551
I think there's some low-hanging fruit there.
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