 Herzlich Willkommen zu den heutigen Vorträgen live aus der Bitwashererei hier in Zürich. Wenn ihr Fragen habt, die ihr euch zu den Vorträgen und zu den Speakers stehen wollt, dann verwendet doch bitte den Chat, den Link dazu findet ihr unterhalt dieses Livestreams hier. Mein erster Gaff heute ist Vardom, er wird seinen Vortrag auch ähnlich halten, deswegen wechsle ich nun auch die Sprache. Vardom, Sie sagen uns über die Medien und wie es sich in den Medien verändert. Mehr genau, warum wir die Medien und wie? Und jetzt freue ich mich, um mehr zu lernen. Vielen Dank, Daniel. Hallo alle, es ist ein tolles Glück und ein tolles Honour, um hier zu sprechen, in front von euch, sogar wenn es remotely ist und ich dich nicht direkt sehen kann. Wer bin ich? Mein Name ist Vardom und ich habe ein Problem. Mein Problem sieht ein bisschen so aus. Ich consume viele Content-Media, das fühlt sich wie ein Geräusch. Content, das nicht auf mich einen Lastenimpakt hat. Content, das vielleicht meine Emotionen targetiert und es fühlt sich gut in dem Moment. Content, das ist wirklich, wir nennen es Clickbait. Content, das keine Substanz hat. Content, das wirklich like junk food. Und ich frage mich oft, was würde der Welt so sein, wenn wir die meisten prominenten Content-Media hatten, dass es eigentlich die meisten Content-Media hatten. Und es war so, dass es die meisten Content-Media hatten. Und es war so, dass es die meisten Content-Media hatten. Die meisten prominenten Content-Media war eigentlich Content, das ist transformational Content, das macht euch denken. Content, das hat diese kinden Substanz. Ich nenne es manchmal Butterfly-Content, das kann einen Butterfly-Affekt auf dein Leben haben. Ich bin sicher, dass alle von euch erlebt haben, dass ihr etwas hattet oder wascht oder hört etwas, was wirklich verändert hat, wie ihr etwas schaut und wie ihr eine neue Insight into a topic. So, it has really been transformational to you. I ask myself, what would the world look like if we had more of this type of content. If this type of content was the most prominent and not the junk food content. In order to answer that question, what would the world look like in such a case, we have to take a step back and ask ourselves, well, why is it not the case today? Why is the world not like that today? It seems like the content that screams the loudest is the one that is heard most. And to answer the question, why is it not the case today, we have to look or to, let's say, follow the money and look at the business models of the places where we consume media today. And there are two business models that are the most common ones. The most common is the advertisement business model, which you see on this illustration. And you see simplified how this model works. So, at the top you have an intermediary, which can be a platform or an online newspaper, for example. And at the bottom left you have the advertisers and at the bottom right the users and creators. So, what happens is that the advertisers pay the platform and the platform provides free service with that money to the users. Why free in brackets? Because we don't pay anything financially, but we pay the platform as users with our attention and with clicks. And that's what the platform gives back to the advertisers. So, the advertisers pay the platform in order to get our attention and our clicks. And so, what's the alternative today? The alternative today are paywalls and paywalls work like that. Again, you have at the top an intermediary, but this time the users and the creators are split into two groups. And this paywall model is mostly used with online newspapers, for example, where the creators are journalists, for example. So, the journalists, they create content for the platform. The platform gives that content to us, the users. And we pay something to the platform. The platform takes that money and gives a little bit of that to the creators back to the journalists. So, it's a classic intermediary model. Now, let's look at the good and bad sides of those two models. The good and bad sides about the advertisement model. Well, first, a good thing is that it's very inclusive in the sense that you don't have to pay money in order to get access to the information. To be financially invested, you can be a part of the platform, no matter who you are. And you can also be a user and a creator at the same time. So, you can publish on the platform, as well as consume content. And it's openly accessible generally. So, if you think about, I don't know, Twitter, the information is not behind the paywall. The information is generally openly accessible for everyone. It's a good side, but the bad side is obviously heavily outweighed. And they are tied generally to the click-rate business model, meaning that the business model has this incentive of generating as much clicks as possible, getting as much attention as possible. So, that leads to low-quality content and to attention and data mining. Why? It's simply not important how high the quality of the content is, as long as it makes us click, as long as it grabs our attention. So, it's actually, that's why we get clickbait content. Because there's a financial incentive for the platform to do that and to mine our attention and our data. Meaning that the more data the platform has on us, the better they can predict what we will click on next. And also, obviously they work with the help of algorithms to find out how to best capture our attention. That's what makes those platforms so addictive. It's just the business model that provides the incentive for the platforms. It's not that they are evil or something. It's really their financial interest to do that. And that obviously can lead to huge problems, because, well, it can be used also for political purposes. All kinds of people or organizations can use this model to pay in order to push their content. And that's how we got to the point where we are on a societal level today. This raise to the bottom is exactly because of that. So, on top of that, one of the downsides is that the creators don't get any payment or any financial reward. So, they also don't have an incentive to provide high quality content. And the platforms that use advertising-based models are usually centralized. So, you have a central instance that is being paid by the advertisers. Now, the good and bad sides about paywalls. Well, first, it's good that the quality of the content is higher, because actually someone is willing to spend money on the content. So, that's one good thing. And the other good thing is that a part of that money goes to the creators. So, for example, the journalists are then paid with the money that people provide. But the problem with the paywalls is that they are not inclusive. Meaning that if you don't have money, you don't get the information. You're left out. And that it also means that the users and creators are not the same. You cannot be as a user a creator at the same time. So, you could not say, for example, oh, well, I'm going to publish tomorrow at the New York Times or something like that. Meaning that the platform decides or the newspaper decides who is a creator and who is a user. And the paywalls fragment the web. Meaning that they go against the very basic principle of the internet, the open principle, the open accessibility of information. And that fragments the web. It puts content literally behind walls where only people who have money can access it. On top of that, it's not transparent. I mean, you pay monthly sum to a medium and you hope that they will provide you with good content. But you don't pay for single pieces of content. You pay a monthly sum to the medium. And paywall-based models are usually even more centralized because the decision lies with the newspaper or the platform, the decision who publishes and what gets published. This decision is in the hands of the platform or the newspaper in the business model of paywalls. Now, I've asked the question, what would a world look like if we had more of this transformational content, that really has a super high quality, makes you think content that provides you with new insight? So in order to have that new world, what would a business model look like to provide that? Well, it would have to combine the good things of those two models that we have talked about now and with as little of the downsides as possible. Meaning that it would have to have the overarching goal of high quality transformational content, as I said. That would have to be the big goal, the big incentive for every stakeholder in that system. And then everyone who contributes in that system towards that goal of high quality transformational content, everyone who contributes to that should be also financially rewarded so that they have a stake in that goal. Plus it should be openly accessible, meaning that even if you don't have money, you should be able to take part and also get the information. It should be inclusive in that sense and it should also enable everyone who wants to also publish to be able to do that. So everybody should be able to also be a creator or a user as they choose. And then it should be decentralized and democratic, meaning that there should not be a central instance that decides what is high quality content, what is published and not. So those should be decisions that should be democratic and crowdsourced. So that's actually what we are working on. We think we have found a solution that could be very interesting. We call it Butterfy without the L, so Butterfy. And we call it a crowd filtering system. And you see on this slide how it would work. So at the top left you have the creators. The creators create content. And this content then goes through a filter with four different stages. And that's actually where the users are. So the people are split into four stages and they filter the noise away and they filter through that noise and actually the content becomes better and better and better. So each person decides for themselves, well is that piece of content something I want to send to the next stage? Is it transformational? Does it have this Butterfly effect on my life? Or does it have the potential for that? If yes, I'm going to send it to the next stage. If not, it's not going to go to the next stage. So it's a democratic filter in that sense. Now, you see that stages three and four have a blue color. And that is because they are the ones who spend money. So they pay money for what? They pay money for the privilege of getting only this high quality transformational substantial content. They pay for the privilege of not having to filter through the noise themselves. Other people do that for them and they pay for that work. Important is that they only pay for the pieces of content which they think have that transformational power in which they think can really have this impact on other people. So they pay only for the content that they send to the next stage. And also very important, the money that they pay is split. So the money is split and it goes first to all the people who have filtered the content for them. So that means if you are in the stage one or two you consume everything for free. Of course there is a little bit more noise in there, but you consume everything for free. Plus you can even make money because you get a little share. If you find high quality transformational content that the next stages are going to pay for. And apart from the people who filter, the money is also split towards the creators obviously because they created high quality content that went through that filter. And also a small share goes to the platform for providing the infrastructure and the service. So every stakeholder, everyone in that system has an incentive of finding and producing high quality content, transformational content that has really an impact in other people's lives. Very important, you cannot come on the platform and say, oh okay, I want to be at stage four directly, I'm gonna pay, no problem, but I want to be at stage four, not possible. Everyone has to start at stage one. So it's really democratic in a sense that you have to start at the stage one and you have to prove that you provide the system with value. You have to prove that you can do that and that you are willing to do that and only then can you go to the next stage. And that's a democratic decision, so if you don't think that I or the platform decides, it's just a democratic decision making process. And what else makes the platform democratic is that there's a separation of powers, meaning there's four different stages and none of those stages have more power than the other. People are split in those stages so no one can be at all the stages at the same time. It's different stages, different people. It means that, for example, also the stages three and four who pay, they don't have more power than the others because they get only to choose from the things that have been provided to them by the stages one and two. So it's really democratic in the sense of there is a separation of power. The users have to go through that transformation process themselves. That's also democratic. Nobody can come and say, I want to be at stage four directly. And it's decentralized, and the people decide, and it's not something where a central instance decides what is good or bad, transformational or not. And then there's the equality of opportunity, which is also very important. Everyone can be a creator. Everyone can publish to the platform and if they provide a story, if they have something to share that is really of value for other people, then it doesn't matter where they are or who they are, if they live in a so-called third-world country. Because I truly believe that today the most important stories have not been heard yet. Because in the paywall-based model, well, many people don't have the opportunity to publish at such a newspaper, for example, at such a publication. And in the advertising-based model, the important stories are really drowning and being drowned out in the noise of everyone else. There's really no quality filter in there. So I truly believe that this could be a system that leads to also those voices being heard. So it's a democratic system in every sense. That also means that, well, let's go to the first stage here. That's what we're working on right now. So that means that you can go in this moment to butterfly.me. Again, butterfly without the L. Butterfly.me is the website where you, if you open it, you see a screenshot here, you see the stage one actually. So you get the question, what are the most life-changing things you've ever read on the web? And then please think hard and try to provide other people with value. If you have something that has had this kind of butterfly effect on your life, share that with a platform. And if people democratically also decide that they see value in that, you will be promoted to the next stage. And very important, this is a project that is non-profit. As you have seen, the system is self-sustaining. It doesn't need any third party investment or something. So that means it's a community project. It should be as democratically as possible. So that's why we're really looking for people, maybe people like you, who can help us with that, who want to be a part of that, because the more people are a part of it, the more democratic it actually becomes. So with that, I think I will give back the word. And if you have any questions or also have any feedback, please also feel free to reach us either through our website, or at support at butterfly.me, which is our email address. Please feel free to reach out to us. And now I'm available for, if you have any questions. Thank you for your interesting talk. And this kind of invention you just presented to us, I'm pleased to hear. Maybe for all of you again, the hints that you can ask questions directly now to Berlin by using our chat channel. I will try to ask them for you too. But let me start with my question first. So you're saying that there are many stages and then my question would be how would you pass on a majority vote or can one user decide an article or a news byte in a broader sense of the video or whatever it is and can pass on to the next stage? Well, it's a decision obviously of everyone, but then we plan to introduce randomness to prevent bias. That means that it's not like if you have 100 people, it's not like the case that if 51% of those people don't like the content, it doesn't go through. We add a little randomness, meaning that maybe the content is not shown to all 100 people directly, but maybe only to 40. And then if the majority of those 40 randomly chosen people think that the content should go to the next stage, then it's actually being sent to the next stage. So, we want to prevent with that like a let's say that the majority always can rule. There's a certain element of randomness in it. But this would then need to pass two times the vote? Yeah, so because it's two stages, right? Well, no, actually it's every person takes a vote but maybe out of those 40 people that have randomly been chosen to be shown that content if the majority of those decide that it should go to the next next stage, then the content will go to the next stage. So, it's actually just one vote that the people take at that stage. Now, a question from the web we get. So, first person is kind of criticizing that you're still kind of fragmenting the web in stages three and four? Well, the information it's not fragmenting because at the stages one and two where everything is freely accessible for everyone you have the information accessible for everyone. So, it's not fragmenting in the sense that all pieces of content are there at the stages one and two freely available for everyone but then they get filtered in the sense that people decide what they find valuable or not and then at the stages three and four you only have a subset of all this available information and people actually pay for the privilege of only seeing that because the crowd has decided that this is the most transformational content and the people at stages three and four they maybe don't want to get through all the noise, they don't want to see all the information they only want to see what is important to them because maybe they don't have a lot of time or they choose to spend money in that sense but it's not a fragmentation because everything is freely available for everyone. Well, the work that you do is something that you get paid for so you, it's not a lot of work after each piece of content you just have to decide whether it has the potential to be transformational or not that's the only work you have to do after each piece of content and that's really literally a matter of seconds but you can, if you choose things that really prove to be transformational and of value for other people as well, you get financially rewarded and the other, like downside that you have when you're on the free stages is that you have a little bit more noise but that's the case today as well in the advertisement-based models even worse, I would say because on this platform there's pretty much only people who have that aligned interest in finding transformational content finding things that are not polarizing not this kind of clickbait content so, yeah I think you definitely have a lot of upsides even in the free stages where you don't pay anything sure, if I get the question 100% but maybe you do so the question is the information is already there now but people's feelings are the problem so you are drawing attention to the wrong posts is it possible in our system that the most emotional information reveals oh, okay, so that's like the classic question what comes first do the people want sensational content we're so used to bad content that we don't know anything else and I'm deeply I'm really deeply convinced that none of us actually enjoys seeing this kind of junk food and trashy content some content can be entertaining and that's really no problem in that system nobody says what is good or bad you can also reward entertaining content or content that doesn't always have to be very rational or something but it's about providing value and I'm sure you've all experienced that you've read articles where you just thought I just wasted my time so that's what we would try to get rid of in that system and I really maybe I'm believing too much in the good side of people but I really don't think that we actually enjoy the mess we're in right now and that everyone I talk to has a similar problem in the sense that they feel overwhelmed and it's really this race to the bottom that we're in, especially with the advertising based model I think it's really time for something else and time for something that has at its core the interest of transforming transforming people but also then society at large so that would be my answer to that question now we have three questions from two people but they are at least to me very strong links so I formalize all three together so the question is how are you reaching out to people to initialize the system first and then related to this how can you make sure that the initial stage is not biased because you reach out for example only to people like the one from who are now listening to RHD3 or Siviner so that you have here a broader sense and while that's probably the same problem as the next question which is a bit more reveal how do you prevent the system of being controlled by bots so if you have in one layer all biased people all right so the first question well obviously we have to start somewhere and I really think that I am in the right place to tell you all of you that idea because I think it's important who is on the on the platform first because the one thing that is important in the beginning is that you are open minded in the sense that you look at the quality of the content and everything in the system is designed to enhance that so for example the user transformation or maybe let's come to that later but there are many features that should prevent this type of bias and the most important one is certainly the user transformation meaning that everyone has to start at those first stages and then the more people come on the platform the less the bias of each individual matters right so the more people come on the platform the less it will become important who is on the platform right now but in the sense that how we reach out we start reaching out to people like you in the beginning so you heard now about this project and we really invite you to be part of this project right now and we are not advertising this in other circles at the moment so many people come on it the more democratic it gets and the less it is important who is on the platform right now and then the question with the bots well the system has this kind of score that the system looks at for example if you are a creator the content that you provide or if you are a filterer the content that you filter it looks at how far it goes of the content that you send to the next stage is then sent to the next stage and if you are a bot and the system detects that for example this score is really low like all the people in the next stage determine your content to be really really bad and don't let it to the next stage then the system would warn you and maybe block you for a certain time so that you cannot be you cannot introduce new content to the platform in order to prevent spamming and then also there is a report function where like if you feel like there is content which is spammy or you feel like it's something that a bot has brought to the platform you can also report that but it's not reported to a central instance it chooses randomly a certain amount of people who are shown the content and then it's a democratic decision of this random set of people if the content stays on the platform so it's kind of a democratic decentralized report function so that's one aspect and then also we have the aspect of time I haven't talked about that right now because it's actually important but it's like a technical detail that we have a time lag in the system so each decision you take is recorded on the system but not immediately done in the system implemented in the system meaning that butterfly will ask you after a few days will show you again the content and ask you hey do you remember you have wanted to send that content to the next stage do you even still remember that article or video or whatever it was if not it's probably not been transformational if yes do you really still want to send it to the next stage also prevents kind of bots from immediately doing something or it enables or it enhances increases the chances that people that we all really take a step back and ask ourselves is it really something that has had now over those days, over this time an impact on my life or is it just something that has made me in that moment feel good or I wanted to reward it in that moment but today I don't think it's the case anymore and that time lag would also increase in my opinion a highly increased the chances that the content that goes to the next stage is really people have thought about it and really carefully chosen to send it to the next stage so speaking of time there is another question related to it which sees this probably a bit of the week so the question is sometimes feed it crucial security vulnerability publication of course so passing all four stages takes time and you might miss the news if you only subscribe to stage four how do you deal with that? that's definitely a disadvantage of every democracy that's why it takes time decision making takes time in every democracy and it's something that you haven't prevented with that system it just takes time and I think it's actually a feature that it takes time because it's more I think probably it would not be the right platform to publish or at least not in that form that I presented now it wouldn't be the right platform to publish a security vulnerability straight away when maybe you could alert the public but I also believe that if the security vulnerability that you would share with the world that people would actually see that there's a value in that we have to make that heard and then it would also go through the stages it still would take a little bit of time but I'm really convinced that it would go through the stages and of course sometimes time is critical and then maybe that would not be the best but I think that this feature that this aspect that it takes time is actually really a feature because it makes you take a step back and actually really reflect on your choice alright, you're already over time but there is one more question which is stated twice once on Twitter and once in the channel your channel here so a really cool idea yeah then I do not understand why do you want everybody to start on stage one so that way you are cutting your target group and get less user or customer and the person in Twitter has similar concern it says so if people who are willing to pay basically have a lot of money they might be valued their time higher and are not willing to pay more time to go through stage one but they will be willing to pay already moderated content in the stream before alright, so I think it's actually very important that everyone has to go through the transformation model because it aligns your interest only the people who take that time and go through all those stages prove that they are interested in that high overarching goal that the system has only if you prove that you are interested in that you are allowed to proceed in the next stages that's really essential to that democratic function of the system and I compared a bit to Wikipedia where also you cannot just immediately edit something and it will be edited you have to take the time it has to go through different stages and I think it's actually that's very important because it also doesn't tie money to status or something money does not influence that decision making process and I think it just aligns the interest of everyone and it assures the platform or the system to it helps it to know that the people who go through the stages are really invested in the idea and I think even if you have money now and would like to use such a system but don't want to go through the stages I think you would have to ask yourself why not just do it provide value and you will get to the next stages and it allows the system to stay democratic for the people who have money and advantage over everyone else so a link to this maybe you can answer it yesterday is it possible to choose to stay on stage 1 or 2 yes definitely, that's something I haven't mentioned but definitely it's always your own choice if you want to spend money or not so you can definitely also stay at the stages 1 and 2 you will be alerted that hey you could go to stage 3 if you want to obviously you don't want to alright, thank you very much for this talk and also all the answers to the questions so we take a little break here and we are back in about 25 minutes this is a talk about net spotting things in the future