When I was living in Japan as a child, I have memories of going to candy shops where you had to put in 100 yen coins to play on a Famicon (the original NES) for 15 minutes - it was something that most kids didn't own at home, so it was something that was still viable as a business model at the time. It was a crude device that the lady who owned the store jerry-rigged on her own TV - but to a kid who just wanted to play some Mario, I didn't really care - I spent the money I was supposed to buy candy with and played for those few moments of glory instead.
Video games has come a very long way since those days of the coin-operated machines - that was the transition from arcades into home-entertainment systems, which later became wired to the Internet, then onto mobile devices and virtual reality, then now, Artificial Intelligence. As our entertainment mediums became more and more digital, so did our intake of information as a whole - there aren't many parts of the world left that hasn't been touched by the global consciousness that we now call "online".
In recent years, however, we've seen an avalanche of AI-generated fakes pour into every corner of everyday life, which threatens the coherency of our collective consciousness as whole. "Fake news" has been a problem in the media outlets for while now, but AI technology has accelerated these trends in ways that are causing fear and unrest among everyone as a whole.
Is that "sixth finger" an AI error or an artifact of poor rendering? People are questioning the questioning, and there is no real "evidence" anymore because there is no way to tell where anything came from, who made it, and what it even is.
This is the world that we live in today - the post-truth world where everything is a mirage and we're left to question even the most basic of assumptions of reality at every moment of our lives.
Copyright and attribution systems are (still) the antidotes to these problems - in a way, why they were invented to begin with. And blockchain systems are still the ideal solution to deploy these models in a way that's both verifiable and objective. No longer will you have to ask the "Source?" question anymore because it will go without saying that every content you see will have its own receipt.
But that hasn't happened yet. The tech to do these things have been around for a while but the reason why we don't have these things yet is mostly due to the lack of will. Most tech companies decided to reject rather than embrace the idea of attribution - we were lead to believe that the contrarians and the innovators would come out of Silicon Valley, fixing the biggest problems of our day, but it had gotten complacent and essentially conformed to the monoculture that reinforces, rather than rebels, against the status quo. Where are the great innovators and entrepreneurs of our time? Where did they go, when they were needed the most?
At least for ourselves, after many failed attempts at trying to convince people to do the right thing, we decided to go on our own this year. Proud of the fact that teia.cafe still does not have a database yet, despite the multitudes of people recommending to do otherwise. Our site has no logins, no emails, no tracking, and weird behavioral tracking that borders on perversion - you just sync your wallet, do your thing, then have a nice day, goodbye. This is supposed to be a tool built for business, not a confessional or a therapy session.
The thing is - the concept of decentralization is an all-or-nothing game, at least at its transaction levels. You either have rights or no rights - you either respect people's autonomy or you don't. If decentralization is something that happens only when you feel like it, that's not decentralization at all - it's just a glorified suggestion box that costs money to particpate in. That essentially was "The Big Grift" of crypto in the last few years, really.
Real decentralization takes discipline, patience, foresight and a long-term vision - something that has been lacking in tech up until now. Now is the time to change.
The "Slow" Social Media (Social Media for People With Attention Spans)
These days social media sites optimize for 5-second attention spans, under the assumption that most people are basically incapable of focusing on anything longer than that. I find that attitude to be insulting at worst, cynical at best. You can see the infantalization happening not only the business models, but in the interfaces that have been pushed lately - rounded corners, huge buttons, logos and icons that resemble a scene from Idiocracy - life imitates art and all, but haven't we had enough?
We decided to make the things that is exactly the opposite of that. A "slow" social media network that rewards intentionality over speed and volume.
All of the features we are pushing on TEIA over the next few months will run entirely on the blockchain - again, no logins, no data centers, no tracking - everything runs on-chain, peer-to-peer.
That means, however, that every message you send will trigger a transaction. If you want to hit the "like" button, you will have to pay. Uploading media and images will have to be done with a mint, which you will also have to pay. It will be expensive (at least relative to "free"), slow, and probably feel "clunky" to people who have gotten used to the high-speed freebies that most existing sites have to offer.
But this "slowness" is the feature, not the bug - these cheap but non-zero transactions serve as a natural filter for spam, bots, and other malicious actors that have plagued the online platforms for decades now. When everything is "free" it opens up windows to security vulnerabilities and abuse, while also diluting the quality of data due to bot farms and weaponized traffic - the blockchain transactions have a much higher quality signal because it is better measurement of "intent".
If the intent is to maximize quality rather than quantity, there is no better way than to ask the user to make a contribution themselves. Actions speak louder than words - online, where physical actions are not possible, asking people to open up their wallets is the next best thing.
The industry term to describe this would be called "microtransactions" - where the user pays a fee per transaction, on an on-going basis. On current models of social media where the user itself is the product, we are "paying" for all of the "free" things with our posts and attention - the "slow" model merely puts these costs up front, with the added benefit of being able to maintain control of your own identity and labor. (Particularly important for artists, who have gotten the worst bargains in the attention economy.)
In the day and age where we're connected to everything all the time, where people have literally died while playing PC games in their homes for days on end, where we are constantly bombarded with endless "content" but still feel empty - the quantity of content available hasn't been a problem for a very long time, it's the quality.
The internet has seen a rapid decline in quality over the years due to its rejection of attribution systems - and the results are more than obvious - the occasional false reports has turned into the norm, misinformation into "fake news", journalism into propaganda, and data analysis into "AI slop". People are visibly tired - many people - both old and young - are now looking for an escape from the post-truth world that we find ourselves in right now. There is such a thing as too much of a good thing, and the good thing itself is starting to get tired too - we need something new, and we need it now.
So this will be it. The slow, but intentional, web. Will the internet finally be able to kick the habit of its addiction to cheap thrills and use the internet in a more meaningful way? We'll find out soon enough, I guess.
Sure, well, I did spend a dollar or two chatting online with my friends this week, but that's still way less than you'd spend on one beer at some bar somewhere or going out to any event in real-life. If it gives you meaning, the costs seem fair to me, honestly.
But whenever I'm working on this stuff, my mind always goes back to those days as a kid, throwing coins into arcade machines for those few moments of joy. Looking back, it was the limitations that made it fun. If I'd had unlimited access, I would've finished the game, gotten bored, and the mystery would've been gone. I would've had nothing to look forward to when I went back the next time. We are all that bored kid these days - we know too much, see where things go (usually nowhere good), and can't really see beyond the existing fog of what comes after.
These features we're working on now remind me of those days when my decisions seemed to matter - even in something as simple as a silly video game I played just for fun. We're building a system where every choice you make, every word you say, everything you create and upload... actually matters. One cent at a time. And over time, it adds up.