You say that you could have done it earlier, but it was good to wait for the technology, because no one would have believed you otherwise?
I am not saying that. There is a truth to that. We feel a sense of urgency for being the defacto platform for creators because of competition in the market for them, and we don't feel like we're doing enough. For a very long time, the market fit with creators has been very good. The value of creators has been wised up by a lot of other platforms. Competition for creators and creators business has exploded as power shifted from institutions to individuals. It has created a strong incentive for us to do more to help creators make a living.
Traditionally, creators monetize their audience. I don't know how much branded content is on the photo sharing site. We are building more ways for creators to make a living. The first test of NFTs was performed this week, with tests around affiliate marketing, revenue sharing and longer-form video. We are still testing the subscriptions.
If we agree with those who say we shouldn't build anything new if there's ever a bad incident on the photo sharing site, then we're never going to build anything again.
Discuss your hypothetical country singer, Lisa. She sells a subscription to her content. Lisa probably wants software that connects transactions to a list of actual subscribers so she can grant them access to her content, and that's one of the things that requires other services. Maybe she needs a database. She still depends on the platforms to distribute her content. Her stuff can be taken off, or the platforms can go bust. Is Lisa just as beholden to centralized platforms as before? She doesn't have control over everything, but she is on the hook for everything.
I don't agree with the characterization at the end. I agree with everything before that. She has dependency in this world. The idea is that she can move without losing her community. She could switch payment providers, she could move platforms, and she would still maintain her relationships with her subscribers even if she was kicked off Twitter. There is an expectation that her subscribers have of her, but she has more independence. Subscribers can vote with their pocket, so if she doesn't produce good content, they will stop paying. That is a healthy incentive.
There is a public record of transactions. If someone wants to badly enough, they could probably figure out who your subscribers are. It probably doesn't matter if it's a country music subscriber. If Lisa makes videos for the BDSM movement or has a newsletter, that is different. It would be useful to know how many subscribers Lisa has. How do she protect that information?
There are a lot of privacy implications and trade-offs when it comes to what you store on the public ledger. It is publicly accessible so you can count the number of subscribers. It is going to be interesting as we try to design this system in collaboration with the community.
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