How to Monetize a Low Moderated Social Network Platform
Ideas for making money and preserving speech.
The following are my own original thoughts. They do not represent the thoughts or values of any other individual or organization. Also, this is not financial advice…
Elon Musk made the tops of News Feeds last week by offering to buy Twitter and taking the platform private. The goal of this grandiose display of wealth and power was to move the application to follow absolute freedom of speech philosophy. Big E is concerned that Twitter’s censorship has gone to far. While it’s easy to make fun of this plan and Elon himself stated that he is not interested in turning a profit, creating a bare minimum moderated social media platform that can be monetized is an interesting problem to solve.
Some moderation is always necessary, otherwise your platform will quickly become overrun by bots that spam newsfeeds. Removing all restrictions on individual speech is also a challenge with the business model that most social media platforms use today. A dependence on Ad Revenue suggests that you are beholden to your advertisers. As much as Coca Cola loves advertising attention, I don’t think they would be thrilled having their ad placed right next to Russian State Sponsored propaganda. Second, a completely unrestricted site will promote the…
