art club
Hello, I am Brian. I go by Beezer. I am an artist and web developer.
As you may have noticed, the internet is in decline.Finding anything of value is getting more difficult and sharing your own content is getting increasingly frustrating. I am trying to fix that.
Basically a decline in quality and effectiveness in exchange for profits. Cory Doctorow has coined the term enshittification
Data collection and advertising are the main methods of funding legacy internet services. Companies like Meta employ powerful algorithms to keep you scrolling, ensuring more ads viewed. They track your engagement and sell this data for marketing. I think that's very manipulative and gross. They adjust your feed to feature promoted content and push users' posts further away.
Also, AI slop is starting to flood all the established channels, diluting the little remaining humanity.
All this so a handful of oligarchs can hoard more wealth. It's a bummer.
I propose an online space which we treat as a community or club and not as a product. Community-based means decisions on the platform's features and future will be decided by the users. I'm envisioning a discord and weekly/monthly town-hall style streams. I want users to have ownership of their platform. I'm specifically targeting content-sharing but I believe this same solution can be applied to any online service. I'm calling my application 2-Cents , a content sharing site for artists.
First and foremost, this is not profit-seeking. If I'm doing my job right, 2-Cents will never make a profit. Here's how:
If something is free on the internet, YOU are the product. I'm thinking the club-fee can be pretty small. My current math is based on $1 / month.
The money collected goes to hosting the site first. Leftover money then goes back to the community. More on that later.
Your feed will be the artists you've chosen to follow. Their posts will be listed chronologically. If you only spend 3 minutes or whatever on the site, that's great. Go enjoy your life.
I will only ask for information I absolutely have to. None of it will be given away or sold. I believe in privacy and anonymity.
...in my opinion. I'm hesitant to make hard bans on anything, but I believe slop will be discouraged by the lack of algorithms. If you choose to follow it, that's your choice.
It's gross, but let's talk about the money. All the numbers here are pretty fluid. They are likely to change, but the logic is static.
This turns into ~$.67 after payment-processing fees.
This money goes to:
It costs money to host a site. My main priority is having the site running, so 100% of funds go here first. This number will increase with user count, but so will the funds. Once the hosting is paid for the month, the rest of the money gets split between:
I would love for 2-Cents to be my career. I would need a paycheck though. Admin money would go towards that salary (which will be capped at an average rate for my experience, probably $100k/year). Admin money also goes toward the costs associated with running a business (TBD, I'm not a businessman).
This is the fun part. The other half of money not spent on hosting goes to 'Tokens'. You get tokens every month representing this money, you can also buy more at-cost ( no hosting or admin costs are taken out). Each token is worth $.02 (get it?). You use these tokens as you would 'likes' or 'upvotes'. You can cash-out these tokens for real money.
The amount of money distributed into these areas will be estimated each month. The amount of tokens will change. Any remaining money leftover goes into a kitty which will be used for fun stuff like swag or meat-space events. It does not go to me or shareholders or anything like that.
That should ensure ZERO profits. I will be so proud of that.
It's gross, but let's talk about the money. All the numbers here are pretty fluid. They are likely to change, but the logic is static.
This turns into ~$.67 after payment-processing fees.
This money goes to:
It costs money to host a site. My main priority is having the site running, so 100% of funds go here first. This number will increase with user count, but so will the funds. Once the hosting is paid for the month, the rest of the money gets split between:
I would love for 2-Cents to be my career. I would need a paycheck though. Admin money would go towards that salary (which will be capped at an average rate for my experience, probably $100k/year). Admin money also goes toward the costs associated with running a business (TBD, I'm not a businessman).
This is the fun part. The other half of money not spent on hosting goes to 'Tokens'. You get tokens every month representing this money, you can also buy more at-cost ( no hosting or admin costs are taken out). Each token is worth $.02 (get it?). You use these tokens as you would 'likes' or 'upvotes'. You can cash-out these tokens for real money.
The amount of money distributed into these areas will be estimated each month. The amount of tokens will change. Any remaining money leftover goes into a kitty which will be used for fun stuff like swag or meat-space events. It does not go to me or shareholders or anything like that.
That should ensure ZERO profits. I will be so proud of that.