Bees are Capitalists
Alice is a Capitalist
Alice has been falling down several rabbit holes lately and decides it’s time for a break. She takes a long overdue shower and gets her thoughts straight on some of her experiences.
She writes a post about how “Bees are Capitalists”. However, like any real Lady, she’s got some criteria:
- She wants to have some great conversations around this topic
- She wants her post to be publicly readable by anyone
- She doesn’t want to be bothered by a bunch of trolls though
- She doesn’t want to be the main moderator for these conversations
- She obviously wouldn’t mind some zaps, but doesn’t want her post to be hijacked by some rich top zapper neither
In short: she wants to get the most out of her post with the least amount of overhead.
Luckily, she has Nostr profile and is part of several communities (publicly readable NIP-29 groups). So, she just selects the communities that overlap with this topic (let’s say “₿-keepers”, “Austrian Economy Class” and “Permaculture Pirates”) and publishes her post …
In all of them at the same time!
Communities are Capitalists
Now, anyone that is a member of any of these communities can join in on the conversation. The same conversation. One post, one event ID.
Just like for a real life event, Alice didn’t invite the whole universe but she selected certain groups of people. That way, she set the stage for rich discussions with perspectives from Beekeepers and hardcore Austrian economists alike. Discussions that are still readable by anyone, but that do require membership of a selected community for write-access.
The incentives play out into a win-win-win for everyone involved.
Alice’s criteria are met and her post doesn’t have to fit into one neat category. She isn’t left with the current internet’s false choice between “pick 1 community” or “blast bluntly into the universe and pay Big Tech to maybe get it to the RiGhT people”. Here, she gets to publish to selected lists of recipients that she doesn’t have to curate herself, while also adding it to her feed for her followers to pick up on.
Her Followers can be watching her every post, they can only pick up on certain location- or hashtags, or they can let algo’s filter for posts that have proven to be high signal in the relevant communities first.
Community members get to organically discover adjacent communities, following links they’d never have considered themselves. (Beekeepers getting into Mises in this example).
Lurkers can still read, share, embed and get a quick idea of the value prop of joining communities, following certain members, etc…
Bob, the Community Admin for ₿-keepers, makes money by providing Curation, Computation & Hosting. He gets free marketing and exposure to people that actually might be interested. As in: he doesn’t really need Facebook Ads when he’s got plenty of Alices, writing posts with overlapping interests of the one his community is built around. He also gets more people posting to his niche community, since creators are not forced to pick just one.
Relays are Capitalists
Since Bob is in the business of Curating, Computing & Hosting stuff, he prefers doing that in the most efficient way. He prefers handling everything from 1 Relay (and maybe even 1 Blossom server, 1 GPU set-up, 1 mint, … ).
Yes, Bob likes it simple. When the Community is the Relay, every part of his service gets easier:
- fast loading of messages and media
- content moderation
- handling memberships
- curating things like custom community, GIF’s, emoji, …
- curating other relays he does or doesn’t want to be involved with
- self-hosting the entire thing
- handing over Admin rights
- letting others fork the entire thing
- handling back ups in whatever way suits him
- handling fast access the collective preferences of his members (favorite movies of this group of people, most valued apps, …)
- having a clear overview of his own costs, attack vectors, …
- giving members guarantees in terms of pricing, privacy, …
Bob is a Capitalist
Bob got great value out of the conversations that followed Alice’s first post in his community. So much so, that some real-life rendez-vous’ and home-brewed mead later, they now call each other …
“Honey”.