Does facebook’s economic structure promote incivility?

What I'm thinking about at the moment:

In the past couple of evenings, I've spent a little time playing around with tsu.co and steemit.com. These two social media sites differ from facebook because they pay their members for contributing content. I have already posted in facebook several times that I think it will be necessary for all social media sites to adopt that model and pay their users at some point in the future. Eventually, I think that free won’t be good enough, and people will demand a share of the revenue that their content draws in.  But today, my thoughts have drifted in a different direction. How does the monetary incentive affect the way that people interact in social media?



I've been on tsu.co for somewhere around a year and a half, and it's markedly different now than it was when I signed up. I don’t use it often, but I check in on it every few months. In the beginning, it was basically just “facebook lite” (really lite), but now it's starting to look like a mature and self-directed site. People who are skilled at photography might find especially good value there now. If you want to sign up and check it out, I believe you need an invitation. If so, you can use https://www.tsu.co/remlaps with shortcode == remlaps.

I’m a brand-new newbie at steemit.com, but my first impression is that it’s a reddit like site, where authors get paid for their content in cryptocurrency. When I signed up, two days ago, I was given an allotment of cryptocurrency that was supposedly worth $15. At the moment, it’s up to $17.60. Even if I never post anything there, I can’t complain about a 17% gain in two days, especially when the initial stake cost $0. No invitation needed if you want to poke around there.

Tonight, I am especially cognizant of what I do not see on either of those sites. I don’t see a swarm of people ruthlessly mocking a political candidate’s wife over a trivial faux pas. My feed isn’t flooded with juvenile internet memes pointing out that a certain pair of candidates happen to have the same initials as “Toilet Paper”. I see no click-bait and no viral misinformation that needs to be fact checked at snopes.com. In general, the textual content seems substantive, and (to my undiscerning eye) the photos seem to be fairly high quality.

It’s counterintuitive. Facebook blocks tsu.co, allegedly because they think the monetary incentive encourages spaming, but honestly, facebook seems a lot spammier than either of those other sites. Why? Maybe it’s just because those sites have fewer members. Maybe I just haven’t spent enough time there. But, I’m wondering if there’s something deeper at play. Maybe people are just a little bit nicer to each other when everyone is everyone else’s customer? When someone is hoping to collect revenue for their post, and when the amount of revenue depends on likes, upvotes, or views, maybe a person becomes a little bit more conscientious about the quality and tone of the things they post?

Maybe? Don’t know. Time will tell, I guess...