"I agree with Berners-Lee's diagnosis. But regulation is not the cure. The web's decline is not merely a design failure; it is also an economic one. Design choices follow incentives, and those incentives have been distorted by fiat money and the advertising model it props up. Cheap credit from the fiat-fuelled venture capital system pushed Silicon Valley away from hacker-led engineering and toward surveillance-driven profit extraction."
"To fix the web, we need open source protocols and open source money. The internet can be fixed without regulation. But we cannot engineer a solution while ignoring the monetary headwinds that shape design. The economic system - quarterly shareholder primacy and fiat inflation - pressures companies to prioritize engagement, outrage and surveillance advertising. Bitcoin changes this equation. It removes inflationary pressure, potentially breaks the ad model by enabling new forms of monetization that align with user interests rather than exploit them."
Polarization and mental-health harm on social platforms result from both technical design and distorted economic incentives. Design choices follow incentives shaped by fiat money, the advertising model, and cheap venture capital, which shifted firms toward surveillance-driven profit extraction and engagement-maximizing products. Quarterly shareholder primacy and inflationary pressures push companies to prioritize outrage and user attention. Regulation alone will not reverse these incentives. A combined approach of open-source protocols and open-source money can change the economic calculus. Bitcoin can remove inflationary pressure and enable alternative monetization aligned with user interests, potentially undermining surveillance advertising and enabling a freer, more ethical web.
Read at Bitcoin Magazine
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