social overview
overview
reinvent social media by creating an economy based on community, content, and social interaction.
problem
societal
on a long enough timescale, automation and artificial intelligence will replace every job without exception.
worldwide governments will try, but can't replace citizens' lost income; their attempts will devalue fiat currency.
businesses will reduce labor expense and increase marketing and advertising expense to gain mind share.
what seems like a small amount of money is a meaningful daily income to the majority of the world's population.
all things being equal, self employment and independence is superior to employment or institutionalization.
traditional social media model
traditional social platforms use censorship as an act of moral authority and advertiser appeasement. they anoint themselves to be the arbiters of truth and decency. they continually increase censorship in reaction to a mob mentality that decides the voices and words considered to be offensive, which changes on a weekly basis.
traditional social platforms abuse users' privacy and confiscate user's value. they do not reveal how much they know about users and the extent to which they track users on and offline. investors obligate them to extract ever-increasing profit from the users.
traditional social media accepts payment from businesses to build an audience, then algorithmically filters how much of the businesses' content is seen by the audience that the business paid for. at best, this makes it impossible to confidently plan and invest in audience growth. at worst, it is a fraudulent violation of trust.
technology provides humans access to decreasing income, but increasing time and computing resources.
solution
provide every human the opportunity to earn a living for activities they already do for free. stop giving existing social media platforms free content to profit from, in exchange for them abusing your privacy. reward all humans time, creativity and unused computing resources.
tangled.com does not aspire to benefit from monetizing user data, does not prioritize advertisers over freedom of expression nor appease investor demands for profit.
tangled functionality
every user is a content creator.
content is not filtered or affected by an algorithm.
users and content are not banned from the platform unless they violate United States law.
content creators post text, links, images, audio, video files, live streams and comments.
content creators earn from user engagement, sponsors, subscriptions, tips (gratuity) and investors.
content creators pay to boost their content and increase their audience.
active users receive stimulus payments every hour. content creators can store content as NFTs on the millix decentralized cryptocurrency ledger.
active users receive stimulus payments every hour.
the balances of inactive users are redistributed to the community of active users.
tangled economics
tangled.com is built from the ground up on a foundation of financial plumbing. the social features of tangled.com are built on top of the financial layer, as opposed to financial features being wedged into social features as an afterthought. all activities on the network are an opportunity to earn, spend and invest.
millix is the reserve currency of tangled.com and can be bought and sold directly on tangled.com. the millix cryptocurrency was designed with the tangled.com use case in mind: high speed, high scale, low energy, low cost, and the ability to store large amounts of data within each transaction.
tangled users are provided with tools and audiences to earn from community engagement, sponsors and investors. tangled users spend to grow their audience and to unlock features.
earning from users
every piece of content that is posted to tangled has an opportunity to earn. every interaction that users have with the content is a financial event. as a user's audience grows, their earning potential grows.
engagement
users react to content and comments in a variety of ways. each reaction is similar to a micro tip to the content creator from the user reacting to the content. for example, "liking" content is accompanied with a $0.01 payment to the content creator.
content posts and comments are considered to be distinct content items owned by different users. comments can be just as creative and popular as the content that it is reacting to, and the comment author deserves to earn for their contribution.
example: John has an active audience of 1,000 followers. John posts a link to a provocative news story. all 1,000 audience members are presented with the news story; it is not filtered by algorithms. 200 users react to the post (i.e. like, dislike), 50 of them share the story to their audience (which increases the size of the audience) and there are 100 comments. John earns $3 from his audience's engagement and $15 that was split with the users that shared the post.
the users that commented on the news story are paid for the reactions to their comments.
tips from users
users can send other users tips as appreciation for their content contributions. tips can be made with extremely small values, which encourages users to tip often and without inhibition. a community scoreboard indicates which users send and receive the most tips.
community support
content creators can configure patron programs that accept recurring payments from their audience.
premium content - pay as you go
content creators can configure individual content items that are unlocked by a one-time payment from users.
premium subscription
content creators can offer exclusive content access to premium subscribers. premium subscribers automatically pay an agreed upon amount to the content creator for continued access to the premium content. the payment could be recurring or one-time.
tangled does not take a percentage of user-to-user transactions. the recipient receives 100% of all payments.
earning from advertisers
there are no banner ads or embedded video ads on tangled. users and companies are only able to promote their content and their profile page. the content is their product and their profile page is their brand.
404score
similar to the comscore, which advertisers use to quantify the audience of media companies, each tangled user and content item has a 404score that quantifies its audience. all 404scores are visible to everyone. the 404score is not used by the system to filter content or affect users' access to features.
the 404score is influenced by a variety of metrics that help advertisers to decide who and what to sponsor. the 404score is not based on personal or private data or individual behavior. broadly speaking, the 404score considers the following factors:
analysis of the audience.
analysis of the content.
analysis of the engagement.
boosted content
any user can create promotional campaigns to expose their content to new users and grow their audience.
there is no bidding to boost content, the cost-per-view is the same for every user regardless of age, gender, language and geography. boosted content appears in its own section of the user's content wall. by default, boosted content is sorted by 404score; causing the best content (as determined by the community) to appear on top
when a user views the boosted content, it drops from their content wall and is replaced by new boosted content. boosted content that falls below a minimum 404score is dropped from the bottom of the listed content.
the money spent to boost the content is paid directly to the users that view the content. this direct advertiser-consumer model is made possible because of tangled's approach to preventing bots and fake users.
example: John wants to build an audience of movie lovers. John posts a video of himself reacting to a new movie. John sets a budget of $10 to boost the video to his desired demographic. the video appears on Mary's wall. Mary watches the video and is paid $0.01 from John's budget. Mary enjoys the video and joins John's audience by subscribing to his content.
users can configure auto boosting for their content. in this way, any content that earns more than $X is considered to have good engagement and triggers the auto boost. when the auto boost is triggered, Y% of the content's earning is automatically allocated to boost the content to a broader audience and enhance earnings. in addition, any user in the audience can react to content with a booster, which pays to boost the content on the content creator's behalf.
sponsors: brand advertising
any user can pay to sponsor other user's content. by sponsoring content, their user name and profile picture appears with the content. content creators set a minimum amount they are willing to accept from sponsors.
the first sponsor pays an amount equal to or greater than the minimum amount set by the content creator. subsequent sponsors pay a multiple of what the previous sponsor paid. game theory incentivizes sponsors to become a sponsor early in the content's life and pay a high amount to secure their position, knowing that subsequent sponsors will have to pay a multiple of what they paid to displace them. the amount the sponsor pays determines the order in which they appear. the payment goes directly to the content creator.
content creators can reject a sponsor, triggering a refund to the sponsor. sponsors appear between the content and the comments.
example: Peter posts a funny cat video. the video has an audience of 100 people and catches the attention of a local pet store. the pet store pays Peter $1.00 to sponsor the cat video. the pet store's profile picture now appears with the video. the pet store benefits from more people seeing the video, so they share it to their audience of 1,000 people. the pet store's audience sees the video, including two cat food companies
the first cat food company pays Peter $10 to sponsor the cat video and replaces the pet store in the first sponsor position. the second cat food company then pays Peter $100 and appears in the first sponsor position. both cat food companies benefit from more people seeing the video, so they both share it to their audience of 100,000 people. a beverage company sees the video and pays Peter $1,000 to sponsor the video, shares it to their audience of 1,000,000 people etc etc.
sponsorship game theory
the tangled sponsorship model uses game theory to revolutionize internet economics. there are no ads: no banners and no embedded video ads. there are no advertisement policies or ad approval processes. the moral perspective of the advertiser is balanced against the specific content they choose to appear on.
money spent by sponsors inherently promotes tangled itself. advertisers must have a presence on tangled to participate, because their presence (profile page) is all that is advertised. it has a simple, built-in auction bid model. The cost of the sponsorship is not calculated by the exposure of the content, so there is no need for fraud detection. there is no advertising budget to control. sponsorships are single purchases, not ongoing campaigns. the content creator sets the cost and advertisers take it or leave it.
when a sponsor is outbid and a new sponsor overtakes their position at a higher cost, the new sponsor is incentivized to promote the content to a larger audience, which inherently benefits all previous sponsors. this encourages a positive feedback loop of sponsors paying the content creators while simultaneously contributing to the content going viral, which attracts more sponsors.
the creator is incentivized to produce great content. the advertisers are incentivized to make the content go viral to increase the exposure of their sponsorship. the audience has no use for ad blockers. all the incentives of the content creator, audience, advertisers and site operator are balanced and harmonious.
users are incentivized to subscribe to brands to increase their potential to be sponsored by the brand. brands are incentivized to share user's content that they promote.
as there is no algorithm to match ads with users or content, there is no need to abuse user privacy by compiling vast amounts of personal data to target advertisements to them.
sponsors that have been bid off the content page appear in the top positions on secondary pages. for example, sponsors 1 - 5 appear with the content itself, and sponsors 1, 6, 7, 8, 9 appear on the analysis page for the content.
earning from tangled
there are no banner ads or embedded video ads on tangled. users and companies are only able to promote their content and their profile page. the content is their product and their profile page is their brand.
stimulus payments
for every hour that a user is active, a stimulus payment is sent from the tangled system to the user. the payment is intended to cover the cost of normal levels of engagement with content and posting content. the size of the stimulus payments acts as a throttle (spam deterrent) on how frequently a user can post content until the community assigns a value to the user's content through engagement earnings. using the tangled browser increases the size of the stimulus payments.
as the tangled economy matures and money supply and money velocity increases within the tangled community, the frequency or size of the stimulus payments can be adjusted.
refer-a-friend
each user is provided with a referral link to share with their friends. when a new user joins tangled with the referral link, tangled pays the referrer a 5% commission from the new user's earnings. the referrer is eligible to earn commission from each referred user for one year. commissions are paid daily and terms apply to prevent users from coordinating to abuse the commission program.
example: John invites his friends Julie and Tommy to join tangled. Julie builds an audience for her travel review videos and earns $10,000 in her first year on tangled.com. Tommy builds an audience for his video game streams and earns $8,000 in his first year on tangled.com. during that first year, tangled pays John a total of $500 in daily commissions for referring Julie, and a total of $400 in daily commissions for referring Tommy.
moderating content
any user can report content that they believe violates the tangled.com content policy. the user reporting the content pays a small moderation staking fee to the tangled.com team to compensate them for reviewing the violation and to disincentivize moderation abuse. if a moderating user persistently reports false positive violations, their moderation staking fee increases.
the tangled moderation team reviews each reported violation and determines whether it is enforceable. if a user violates the content policy, they are assessed a moderation fee. the moderation fee is comprised of two components:
violation penalty: an amount proportionate to the severity of the violation.
administrative fee: an amount proportionate to the cost of responding to the violation and the damage the violation caused to the tangled.com brand.
the violation penalty portion of the fee is paid to the user who reported the violation. if the reported violation is not considered to be an actual violation, but the report is borderline and considered to have merit, the moderation staking fee is refunded from tangled to the user that reported the content. this model makes content moderation a business model for any user to operate for profit.
example: Mark familiarizes himself with the tangled content policy and spends his time reviewing content. when Mark finds content posted by Jason that he considers to be in violation of the policy (content that is either illegal in the United States or mature content that is not properly identified as such) he reports the content. Mark pays a $0.10 moderation staking fee. the tangled team reviews the reported violation. if the tangled team agrees that the content is in violation of the content policy, a $2 penalty is deducted from Jason's current balance and is paid to Mark. Jason is charged an administrative fee for the violation, which is paid to tangled. Jason can continue to post content, but as a convicted violator, he is forced to allocate a portion of his balance in a content staking account to cover potential future violations.
copyright monetization
traditional social media is a battleground between copyright owners and users. users live in fear of being punished with copyright strikes and copyright owners spend resources trying to reduce copyright theft. tangled.com facilitates user's ability to merge copyrighted content with their own content in a structured way that shares revenue with the content owner. in this way, copyright owners are incentivized to post their content on the platform and make it available to earn revenue instead of not posting their content on tangled and continuing to spend resources to defend its use on other social media platforms.
tangled acts as a safe harbor. copyright owners can submit DMCA takedown requests to tangled. tangled will review each DMCA request, and if enforced, will charge the offending user an administrative fee.
agency representation
the tangled platform is built with copyright ownership, licensing and financial plumbing in place for managers, agents, publishers, labels and studios to bring in content from their talent rosters and develop new revenue streams from their content.
tangled.com is launching with support from the media studio L'America, which will find talent on tangled, sign the talent and promote their content. any talent representation group can join the platform and conduct business with the features, available talent, and audience of tangled.
content placement
content creators can make their content eligible for licensing from other users. for example, a content creator can post a photo and select another user's music to accompany their photo when it is viewed. the tangled platform manages the license and pays the musician a share of the photo's revenue.
infrastructure economics
storing user content has economic, nostalgic, ownership and censorship resistance considerations that are at odds with each other. tangled offers users flexibility to satisfy users' goals while protecting tangled's economic considerations.
storing user content has economic, nostalgic, ownership and censorship resistance considerations that are at odds with each other. tangled offers users flexibility to satisfy users' goals while protecting tangled's economic considerations.
users have data storage options to meet their economic and nostalgic needs for each item of content:
- pay a micro fee to store content on tangled servers briefly:
by default the user pays a micro fee for tangled to host the content for a brief time. the fee covers the infrastructure cost of storage and also acts as economic friction to discourage content spam. when the time has expired the user is notified of their options and the content is removed from the tangled servers.
- pay an ongoing fee to extend content hosting on tangled servers:
if content engagement sustains beyond the scheduled pruning date, the pruning date is extended with a fee that is withheld from the content's ongoing earnings. this continues until the content engagement falls below the threshold that can pay to extend the pruning date. the user can manually pay to extend the pruning date at any time.
- store the content permanently on the millix network:
the millix protocol is designed to store large amounts of data within signed transactions. the content is encrypted with a key that is accessible to the tangled system and the user. this allows tangled to display the content from the millix network and allows the user to access, sell or move the content independently of tangled.com. this can be used to extend tangled content into an NFT (non-fungible token) marketplace.
wealth redistribution
users who have not logged in to tangled within 30 days are charged a daily inactive fee of 0.1% of their balance (with a maximum daily ceiling for larger balances) until they become active again by logging in. the inactive fees are pooled and redistributed as payments to the active users as stimulus payments. this increases the velocity of money and perpetually redistributes wealth from the inactive generation to the active generation of users. the inactive fee can be avoided by logging in regularly or leaving a zero balance prior to going inactive.
content policy
user's need to have a clear understanding about what content is allowed and how it's presented by the system to the user. tangled exists without moral perspective or bias to content. tangled is not a safe space, though users can choose to insulate themselves from controversial or aggressive topics by muting users or unsubscribing from users whose content upsets them.
the content on tangled is an unfiltered reflection of society, moderated only by US law. tangled is a marketplace of content where each user decides for themselves what content to seek out and avoid.
there is no moral review process to determine what content is true or appropriate. tangled embodies freedom of speech without bias or agenda. tangled doesn't filter, prioritize or deprioritize content. tangled does not moderate content based on advertisers' perspective or preferences. tangled does not respond to public outcry. tangled does not modify its content policy on a country-by-country basis.
users decide what content to subscribe to, and advertisers decide what content to associate with. tangled does not.
premise
active users receive stimulus payments hourly.
users that value the network buy millix to spend.
users that contribute to the network earn millix to keep, sell or invest. .
behavior
content creators pay a micro payment to post content, which pays for infrastructure and reduces low effort content and spam. if spamming becomes an issue, the micro payment to post content can increase progressively throughout a rolling 24 hour period.
good content gains exposure and reactions from the audience.
bad or spam content causes the audience to unsubscribe and neuter the content creator's reach.
the audience engage with content using micro payments, which is paid directly to the content creator.
example: John posts a photo and pays tangled.com $0.05 to host the photo for 30 days. the photo is well received by John's audience and immediately receives 20 likes and 5 comments. John receives $0.25 from the audience reactions for a profit of $0.20. John can decide whether to keep the payments as profit, invest it to boost the photo to a larger audience, extend the time that the photo is hosted, or use it to pay for his next content posts.
since the content's popularity and exposure is related to the amount of engagement it gets from users who can afford to engage, users that value and contribute to the network have the most to spend; thus wielding the biggest potential influence. influence is not assigned algorithmically and does not persist. influence is spent, causing it to diminish over time unless the user's value to the network persists.
content reactions
users can react to content in a variety of ways. each reaction is a micropayment from the user to the content creator.
as a guideline, the cost of reactions are influenced by the dollar value of traffic in the general internet market. for example: if the general internet market values content as 1,000 views = $1 in revenue, and there is generally a 10% relationship between a view and a reaction, then 100 reactions = $1 in revenue and each reaction is worth $0.01. these rates are managed by tangled to achieve a balance between encouraging engagement and maximizing content creator's earnings
emoji based reactions
each emoji reaction has the same earning value. a dislike is not less desirable than a like. polarizing content is just as important as universally liked content.
like | dislike
funny | stunned
sad | angry
believe | skeptical
inspired | disappointed
comments
comments are their own form of content that earns from reactions to the comment. comments can be just as valuable to the community as the content they are reacting to. a good comment enhances the value and overall engagement of the original post and deserves compensation. reactions to a comment are paid directly to the commenter. it is possible for a comment to earn more than the content it is reacting to. content creators are able to delete unwanted comments and block unwanted users from commenting on their content.
comment example: John posts a photo and Mary comments on the photo, John earns $0.01 from Mary for her reaction. if Peter, Matthew and Paul like Mary's comment, Mary's comment earns $0.03 from them. if Luke comments on Mary's comment, Mary earns $0.01 from Luke.
sharing content
users share other users' content, making it visible to their own audience. in this case, the original content becomes a new piece of content that is attributed to the original user. the relationship between the content creator and the sharer is symbiotic: the content creator produced quality content and the sharer has an audience to curate and expose quality content to. the reaction revenue from the shared content is split between the original content creator and the user that shared the content.
when shared, the original content is attributed to the content creator and is presented with the complete accumulation of reactions from it's exposure across tangled.com. sharing content costs the same as any other reaction, but it's earning potential to the sharer is higher than other forms of reactions. this incentivizes sharing, which creates an incentive to make content go viral.
share example: John posts a photo. Mary and Peter both share the photo. John earns $0.02 from Mary and Peter for sharing the photo. the photo is exposed to Mary's audience and gains 100 reactions ($1) and to Peter's audience and gains 1,000 reactions ($10). John and Mary each earn $0.50 from Mary's audience. John and Peter each earn $5 from Peter's audience.
content investments
content creators aren't always the best promoters. promoters and curators aren't always the best content creators. investors and financiers provide capital and no content or promotion. each benefits from relationships with each other.
tangled facilitates a marketplace for content creators to sell future content earnings to investors. this idea has been developed by content creators like metallica and david bowie; who have monetized content catalogs' future earnings using multi-million dollar celebrity bonds.
content investments add a macro layer of investors and publishers to the tangled community. the terms, accounting and enforcement of the content investments are managed by the tangled platform. content creators sell content investments to investors by configuring standard terms from a simple menu of choices (i.e. duration, price). the content investments are capable of operating at micro levels of contract duration (minutes) and value (fractions of pennies).
content investors make decisions on what to invest in using publically available analytical data about content and content creators.
content with investors remain hosted on tangled and contain a use license to the investor for the period of the contract. the content can't be deleted or edited while under contract.
the following are examples of how content investing can be utilized:
virtual music label / movie studio
any user can create a virtual label or studio by contracting content and promoting the content as they see fit. the content can be contracted for short durations, allowing the investor to experiment before agreeing to longer terms. the investor can consider the duration and cost of the content with the perspective that, if they repeatedly secure the same content at a low price for short durations, the content creator may sense the demand and increase their pricing in response.
combining the idea of an investor contracting content and the ability to charge for access to a tangled page with a subscription option is similar to running a streaming video service.
content as a service
traditional content libraries (i.e. stock photography and video catalogs) charge a prohibitive amount for a perpetual license or a recurring subscription amount.
both types of existing content licenses are priced inefficiently and are expensive to enforce via crawlers and copyright lawyers. the tangled content investment model is efficient and self enforcing because the investor is expecting to receive revenue from the license. when the license expires, so does the revenue. continued promotion or exposure of the content beyond the duration of the contract only benefits the content creator.
publisher & aggregator
publishers on tangled prepay content creators for content they intend to share or promote. the publisher benefits from the power and value of their promotion. the content creator earns risk free income up-front and free audience exposure.
example: if a news aggregator like fiatleak.com is choosing between two newsworthy content items on tangled.com to share with its audience, and one of the content items is available as a content investment and the other content item is not, fiatleak.com is incentivized to choose the content that they can purchase a 24 hour revenue contract on.
in this example, fiatleak.com assumes that they will drive $5 worth of traffic to the piece of content, so they purchase a 24 hour content contract for $0.50 expecting to earn $5 back. The content creator doesn't know in advance that the content will be shared by fiatleak.com. they simply benefit from the prepayment and the free exposure.
content annuities
investors with capital seeking yield can gain cash flow by selecting content or content creators that have historically produced predictable revenue. they simply invest in content that meets their criteria by prepaying for future revenues at a rate discounted for risk.
example 1: a content creator with a track record of producing $100 in monthly passive income from their existing content catalog could be contracted by an investor paying $80 for one months' future earnings. if the $100 historical income repeats, the investor yields a 25% return. this could be repeated by the annuity investor millions of times to deliver institution size income streams.
example 2: a highlight video of a popular athlete has consistently earned $5,000 per year and is considered to have predictable revenue in future years. an investor prepays the content creator $8,000 for a two year contract expecting a 20% return.
content tranches
banks assemble hundreds of mortgages of varying risk into a single investment. a tangled content investor could assemble a collection of diverse content futures and reissue the bundle as a single contract. this lowers the risk that a single content creator or content item underperforms expectations. the duration of the bundled contract couldn't exceed the shortest duration of underlying contracts.
advance contracts
content creators can list ideas for upcoming content posts to potential investors; and based on bids for titles, decide which to produce.
example: an established content creator can list their upcoming content and investors could predict how popular each will be and pre-contract it's revenue accordingly. The contract payment from investor to content creator wouldn't settle until the content was published.
community pages
anyone can make a page for any topic. community pages have the same features and earning potential as user pages. the creator of each community page assigns moderators and policies for the page. the engagement revenue from the page is paid to the creator of the page and shared with the moderators of the page at the creator's discretion.
unlike user pages located on a subdomain with the users name (john.tangled.com), community pages are located on URLs using the page name after the domain name (tangled.com/+cats).
if a community page name conflicts with a trade mark registered in the United States, the owner of the trade mark can claim the community page through a process, at which point the community page becomes verified and reassigned.
content analysis
any user can view engagement, earnings and visualizations for any content. this allows journalists to view and report on trends and global events, advertisers to seek out content to sponsor and users to study top tangled user's performance.
default subscriptions
new users are presented with a menu of suggested users to subscribe to. this starts their subscription feed with content and gives them wide ranging gateways to large communities. for launch, the default users presented for subscription are house accounts in high level categories that are managed by tangled editors.
user data monetization
existing social media companies profit by secretly sharing user data with marketing partners at the expense of user privacy. tangled offers self-directed monetization of user data as an option that individuals can opt-in to. users explicitly share their data with partners who are interested in knowing more about them. the user then receives payment from the data partners.
content policy
the tangled content policy mirrors United States law. as laws change over time, so too does the policy. tangled's mirroring of its policy to United States law is not a broad endorsement of the law, it's a defense against legal burden and domestic corporate survival. in response to the existential threat of policy violations, policy enforcement is proactive and prioritized. examples of content law include:
federal content laws: CFAA, CDA, COPA, DMCA, COPPA, CIPA, TWEA, CISA, SAVE, ADA, FOSTA-SESTA
mature content is allowed. however, content that is unsuitable for minors without being categorized by the content creator as adult audience only results in fees or moderation.
copyright protected content must adhere to the wishes of the copyright holder; either through attribution or deletion.
enforcement
content violations add expense and inefficiency to tangled operations. users believed to have violated content policies are not accommodated with a convenient or free avenue to dispute. content violations may result in the content creator being financially penalized to offset the cost of content review and compliance. if the content creator cannot satisfy financial penalties, their activity may be restricted until they satisfy assessed penalties. appeals may have a fee to cover the cost of the review.
when deciding whether or not content is in violation, enforcement will error on the side of United States law. content violations can be reported by tangled users, but user reported content is reviewed before any action is taken. tangled cooperates with subpoenas issued by United States courts. copyright holders and United States judicial and law enforcement agencies.