[BrendanEich]

You're wrong, nothing leaves the user's browser for us to take a cut in the case of an unverified creator. Those tips or donations sit in the browser, and cancel after 90 days. The user gets the tokens back and can cancel the pending tips or contributions at any time.

The ad ecosystem is multisided, not two-sided. We put the user in first place and cut out the ad-tech intermediaries who raid privacy, enable fraud, and take north of 50%, 70% in one case (the Guardian bought out its ad space and got 30p on the GBP).

Please check your facts before attacking us. It's one thing to operate on misinformation, but another to throw "escheated" around like a lawyer. It sounds impressive, but it's based on falsehoods all the way down. Again, tips from rewards users to unverified sites and channels sit in the browser, time out back to the user, and can be canceled. Look for "Pending tips" in rewards settings.

[vrc]

Because you’re you and I was basing it on working in the space 3 years ago, I admit I was wrong. But I really do want to solve this problem. Despite my mistake, the spirit of the question is unresolved — you claim that you allow publishers/creators to be paid for their work. In the case a pub isn’t on your platform, you don’t pay them — you return payment to the user. So content continues to go unfunded. How do you intend to get publishers to hook in to your system and get paid, instead of just making users feel like they’re supporting the open internet and instead not actually funding the sites they care about?

[BrendanEich]

Please be careful with "you". The tokens tipped or otherwise contributed to unverified creators never leave the browser. We do not track them or intermediate them. They stay pending as noted.

It's up to the browser user to notify the creator about the tip or contribution they're sending. We don't and can't know who the creator is and we wouldn't spam them. Fans can and do get creators to sign up. This is the clean way to do it, and fits our user-first principle.

If you want a publisher-first play, Scroll (Twitter bought it) was doing a portable paywall with publishers. Not user-first, no rev share to users, users pay. Not us. Have to serve one master or the other.

But I claim our user-first way is best because users can then get sites and channels they've tipped to come and sign up. Going the other way means getting users to subscribe, always a conversion funnel and usually low rate.