It might sound like I'm trying to criticize the goose that is laying the proverbial golden eggs, but sometimes I really have to wonder about the whole monetization and rewarding content creators for their activities.

Don't get me wrong, I'm all in favor of rewarding those who genuinely add value to the information stream, but I end up back at one of the things that I learned about several decades ago which is the importance of "signal" versus "noise."

And, in that context, it seems like we're increasingly trying to find ways to reward noise rather than focusing purely on rewarding signal.

We could philosophize at great lengths over why this is happening; I think the simplest explanation amounts to the fundamental trait of human greed. When you see somebody getting something you want it, too, and soon everybody piles on.

It doesn't necessarily have anything to do with AI or rising technology so much as just with human nature. Some of you may be old enough to remember when it seemed like there was a video store on every corner and a couple in between. With the emergence of video suddenly everybody had to start a video store and ultimately the result was that no video store was actually making money because there were way more video stores than there were people looking to rent videos.

Now, we can point to the fact that it is a magnificent thing how free markets adjust themselves to demand, but that broadly ignores the fact that a huge volume of resources were wasted and lots of people we're left with financial ruin.

But I am digressing here.

Let's get back to looking at what adds value to the information stream.

If I add something original that has value to people... then that's absolutely a positive thing, right? But to what degree is it a positive thing when I expect to be handed payment for saying that "Bob said that Joe tweeted that Fred on Instagram said that Jeff wrote an article?" The eternal dilution of 3rd, 4th, and 5th hand pass along information is dubious as to value and definitely a major contribution to the noise level in our world.

I'm not necessarily talking about just Hive here — or any kind of crypto social platform — or even conventional social media. I'm watching it happen right now with coverage of the World Cup, in the way that whenever there is a match being played dozens of "skimmers" are in there trying to get page views from pretending that their "live game transmission" of any given match actually constitutes a live broadcast.

It's pure noise! I want to watch the actual matches, not some animated imaginary version of what the match could be. And yet? Perhaps due to the "greater sucker theory" these individuals were getting lots of page views — and subsequently rewards — for doing this crap.

I suppose apologists for this situation would argue that (A) "it's a free country" and (B) "well done them for being so creative!" but doesn't that miss the point?

If what you're doing is only workable as a deception, what have you really got?

Feel free to leave a comment — this IS "social" media, after all!

As always, a 10% @commentrewarder bonus is active on this post!

=^..^=