Yes. Some. In this system the only way to excersize that power is by paying some of that money to other people, and in the case of direct self promotion or suppressing others, by paying everybody. There are distinct limits to the ability of money to command eyeballs on this system, probably to the point that sometimes the money is better spent elsewhere for the desired gains.
If a sufficiently moneyed individual were to impose heavily on rankings and annoy people the result would be an overall richer community who would avail themselves of the available feed filtering tools to ignore them and perhaps pay special attention to anybody who was suppressed by them. Taking the idea to absurd extreme, if an individual or group paid their way to complete domination of rankings they would find themselves in imposing position on a less meaningful ranking system and to maintain that position they would need to continue pouring value into the common. At this point people could simply filter out the top ranking posts and enjoy the windfall.
The upside for the big spending participants is quite limited compared to the downside. Now consider the least moneyed participants. The potential upside from a well placed insightful post is relatively open.
How indeed will people behave in the abscence of clear authority? Hopefully better than some would presume. Lack of singular authority doesn't mean lack of regulation or moderation, mind. Every participant wields partial authority and the means to award merit and consequence. Conventions will emerge, some obvious, maybe some novel, some strict, some loose. Currently implemented unmoderated forums frequently trend towards antisocial environments but the hope is that anchoring a reward system in tangible value will give rationality and merit room to flourish.
There's a button for that, called kip. It's a little bit of shoosh that you can wield on behalf of everybody when the occasion warrants it. You will need to pay the common in proportion to how heavily you wield it, and if done wisely people might be doubly grateful. You could also just filter out potential vileness as you see fit.
Report criminal activity to the geographically relevant civil authority. The forum management will comply with court orders in the jurisdictions it is subject to.
If the offender is in a jurisdiction that doesn't find the post prosecutable, maybe enough people will be equally willing to suppress the offensive item out of sight for everyone except those who definitely don't mind seeing it.
Now that's just herding vileness into hidden cliques.
Agreed. Other approaches are available here. Maybe some kind words and even a pip on one of the poster's non-vile posts will illuminate a path away from vileness? At some point it may be neccessary to accept that some vileness will always exist and carry on regardless. You can't win em all.
The system will involve some accumulation of power to the administration. The administration will be trusted with stawardship of the common capitalisation and user transactions, content, and interface. The administrators are subject to incentive and whim as much as anyone so every measure will need to be taken to hinder deviance. Here's a partial list:
- The power to influence the balance of content and of value is the exclusive right of the participants
- Administrative actions must be universal and favourless
- Administrative fees must be as proximal to cause as possible
- No Secrets policy is pervasive and applies to all administrative dealings.
- Highly transparent and prudent management of market capital and participant shares.
- Encapsulation of functions: infrastructure, data, interface, transactional, capital, legal, security.
Having taken all structural and contractual precautions there still are potential and unforseen hazards wherever such power accumulates and ultimately there are two things that will assure progressive abuse of power; the will to transgress and submission of the transgressed.
Be it the state or some intermediate inervening force, the administration may be compelled to compromise financially or editorially. The onus is on the administration to locate in a place or places that minimise this possibility. Inevitably choices between compromising ideals and existing at all in particular places will be somewhat frequent.
Lobbying for special exemption, sanction, or subsidy will inevitably arise from time to time. As long as the adminstration remains rigid on it's principles it will happen fairly rarely. The system wide principle of giving and not taking helps greatly here. People can employ value and words to sway the populace directly and there is always the freedom to leave the system without penalty.
The allure of using one's power for the greater good is pretty darn universal. The remediation to this is mainly ideological humility which will be constitutionally enshrined and infused throughly into the administration and the system.
The social market is not precisely a social credit system but it does have features that make it partly comparable. This need not be a bad thing and may in fact improve the situation.
- Inevitable is the rise of a variety of methods and technologies for sorting massive and distributed populations by trust and value.
- Manipulation (nudging) of these populations will be attempted of course.
- Explicit absolute abstenance from influence by this system will not only make it attractive but also grant competitive advantage through lower management costs.
- Influence and attempted manipulation will still be attempted but the means of doing so will be universally accessible and subject to marginal market forces.
This project commits unreservedly to an assumption that markets can remain stably progressive without external manipulation but it is a fairly common belief that markets inevitably fail without some oversight by authority. The believed consequences vary; regression towards total inequity, sustained disequillibrium, insurmountable game theoretic hazards. If the latter position is true then this project will proceed to failure and serve as a cautionary tale.
That feels like it's right but maybe the important part of a double voluntary exchange is the lack of coercion. This system excludes coercion and still entails all the other hallmarks of a free market; supply, demand, and marginal utility reflected by prices.