I consider myself not be early here but when I first heard about SN, I started to share my enthusiam for these kind of places where people can publish content and most important, you pay the party.

I'm truly happy for this and the first responses from my inner circles when I showed them this beautiful place was: "well, you're in a eco chamber where maxis will tell you what you want to hear, no other projects" and got me thinking.

And started to check other forum alternatives about it. The main difference between them and us is simple: To insert an answer, you must pay. To insert a post, you must pay. To insert a poll, you must pay.

People who aren't willing to pay for their speech, isn't worth to read. And I don't mean you'll be censored if you don't pay, it's the other way around. Our literature system is totally broken. Writers can't live for their words anymore because internet made everything cheap, which is a good thing but publishers, media and other people in general started to earn through ads, hidden ads, researchs made by [insert your company] and I can still going on and on.

Mostly, writing doesn't have a reason to be because write is free but if we're going to be precise, writing is sponsored by other people who take good care about what you publish in order to no bother the establishment. Writing stopped to be revolutionary, artificial intelligence promotes non-critical thinking because people just don't want to think anymore; what is supposed to be a tool to help you debug faster your code, is now the main assistant of most people, including thinking and being rational.

That's why Stacker is becoming slowly but in a certain way the favorite place to be, user not only earn something but also have quality, good and certain answers. So, to the question: why people don't see what we see here? Aren't we listening other projects? Maybe is because here, we prefer long time preference post and long time preference answers, we avoid casinos, memes and x125 leverage as a way of life¹. You could but, would you pay for it? Would it be that interesting? That's the point.

I know libertarians claiming that bitcoin is not revolutionary² but as many things, it'll take time. And by the way, we're not toxic. We can be assholes and bit rudes, toxic never. Keep you work sir, sooner or later, they realize that we already won.

My two cents.

Sounds like a BTC problem, not necessarily a SN problem.

I get where they are coming from...

There is a long list of people who are in prison because they used BTC "the wrong way". Does not sound like "freedom money" to me.

Many wallets have dust UTXOs that are effectively unspendable due to rising fees. Does not sound like a practical currency to me.

The largest miner has nearly 50% hashrate. Does not sound like trustless money to me if we're all trusting the miner not to reorg.

All the "scaling solutions" are just multisigs where you give up some/all custody to get faster and cheaper payments using some token (LN sats in a channel, or eCash) issued "on top" of BTC. Might as well use a shitcoin instead of deal with complicated tech and custody tradeoffs.

The loudest bitcoiners tend to be dogmatic and/or toxic people on the outside. Nobody wants to converse with (argue with) someone who won't ever change their mind or even recognize that there is a problem with the status quo.

Honestly, I first came here for the sats. The desire to learn n have good conversations came later when I felt embarrassed about the generosity of some Stackers (maybe you were one of them) towards me. I think these Minds users may just want a place to air their views, hopefully earn some quick crypto, and not have to engage with others. Because engagement requires thinking, and maybe some netizens aren’t looking for a place to think deeper and sharper.

I have been quite consistent in getting people from Publish0x, a site that pays writers ETH and OP on the OP chain. At least two active Stackers are my referrals from Publish0x. Darn proud of myself, okay. And yup I confess. I quite like ETH too. Haha.

Edited to add that I don’t think it was a failed experiment. Because you sowed the seeds. Who knows how long it would take some of them to germinate? Not many people are motivated to explore a whole new site based on a MINDS post. If you keep up your publicity efforts, maybe some of these people would be enticed to come to SN to look see look see (popular Singlish term) in due time.

I've been having a hard time recruiting for SN as well. I think the biggest issue is people want breadth and depth of topics. It is kind of the chicken and egg problem.

I will keep trying, because in the end - this is the future of Reddit or any other short/medium form content. Its an excellent community - with engaging posts.

What I don't get is why people distance themselves from bitcoin if it is free. I tried to sign up my coworker with a lightning wallet and give him 10K sats for free - and he said no. I can't believe it!

Minds is where I could make enough to buy myself a cup of coffee doing & sharing exactly what I wanted myself, with no one else either interfering with the content or shitty taxes & regulations!

So I'll always be happy about that, and plan to check it out again later, I have an account with a history and followers. I do expect it to be a stale echo chamber at this point, but if/when we get the next part of the bull run that might change things...

Would be happy to try pulling people over here in collaboration with others, on platforms like Minds and Hive. I think its doable, but it will take a while, its probably about being very persistent but also non-toxic ;-)

I'm not implying you were that, of course, its just hard to disturb people when they're on their "home turf", even when its barren land...

I haven't used minds for quite some times, and was never very active there anyway... One of the things I believe sn does right is that it makes you pay for posting, this has a direct noticeable impact on the quality of the content.

The "crypto" complex has done a wonderful job demonizing bitcoiners and bitcoin centric projects as "toxic". When they are usually just toxic for the "crypto" complex.

You could offer sats loaded invite links to anyone who genuinely want to try it out but that's about all you can do.

I can just say that it's better not to be discouraged by a single effort. I've never tried to lure people to anything through online methods till now, so can't suggest a lot. But, I can tell one thing that bringing quality is better than quantity.

I think Stacker News could be a thing that people learn about first before being Bitcoiners. A way to orangepill. 🟠

Unfortunately this doesn't work. Every territory is just circlejerking about Bitcoin. I generally like that but there is no way I tell a movie enthusiast about ~movie territory first and they go there for the movies and stay for the Bitcoin afterwards. 🤷🏻‍♀️

Not gonna happen.

Yes we are still so early. Gold took thousands of years. In 15 years I’m impressed how far we have come.

It will come from word of mouth, some simple examples

I encouraged at the local Honolulu Bitcoin Dev group meeting.

I tell my non bitcoiner, non-tech customers, suppliers to post on the B2B territory as they are looking for ways to find new ways to accept payments other than fiat.

I use SN.

word of mouth is powerful.

I used Minds a few years back. I liked the idea behind it and met some interesting people. I don't think I have logged in for a few years. Definitely not since I discovered SN. Bill Ottman is a smart guy, but he would definitely not back a bitcoin maxi ethos. Most of the accounts I ran into felt the same way. I think the token ran on eth, right?

I didn't have a lot of luck on recruiting payment via sats for print copies of my book (or ebooks), or for driving the writing of the next version(more of a donation in this case). Of course, I hate marketing, and I didn't really expect anyone to donate since everyone expects most things for free. The most response I got was posting up the chapters in books and articles.

I think that's no longer the case with the territories. It's almost certain that it's still the most populous territory, but the others have a good share.

Shitcoiners are gonna shitcoin.

what about posting the most interesting stacker.news discussions into the Minds? like the most zapped or hot discussion?

I would suggest you to crosspost more and put your refferal link under the post.

That's what has actually worked better for me.

I flip flop between mass adoption and focussing on the misfits that care today😆

bitcoin is only 15 years old and good things take time to adopt.

if you really care, contribute to SN, Nostr or whatever you care about the most💜

stay humble and zap sats. 🤙🏽

personally i believe that recruiters often evaluate candidates not only based on skills but also on cultural fit within the organisation. Rejection might mean that your professional style or personality didn't align with the company's values and work culture.

I think everything will continue as long as we just keep creating good quality content, SN keeps growing, at a higher or lower pace, but it keeps growing, and surely the people who come here are genuinely interested in what we write here, probably also in Bitcoin, of course, 2 references is better than nothing, don't you think?

Friend, don't be discouraged even though it hasn't been as you expected. Your initiative has tried to include more people in this, which allows us to move forward and learn more every day. Turning your project into a grain of sand in the digital world.

Keep trying. One day you will definitely get success.

As I see it, SN is for the Faithful Remnant, those left of a community after it undergoes a catastrophe. Our numbers will always be few, but our conviction will be unwavering.