From Attention Economy to Trust Economy
From Attention Economy to Trust Economy
We live in an attention economy. Platforms made it their job to capture our attention and sell it to the highest bidder. This results in 2 categories of problems:
1. Mental health: Prioritizing constant engagement results in addiction and amplifies comparison, reducing self-worth to fleeting digital validation.
2. Uneven playfield: Big corps with deep pockets pay to be seen, placing themselves above your local small business in feeds or search results. Small creative businesses who self-produce goods (henceforth; creatives), may offer superior products, but with little money for promotion, nor time for the craft of content creation they struggle to reach customers on these attention-platforms.
This is not the first time someone points out problems caused by the attention economy. I find stuff about it in the media on a daily basis. It usually revolves around bans, regulations, and apps and tools that block attention-grabbing platforms.
While these things may be helpful, they don’t feel sufficient to me. They attempt to block symptoms of the attention economy without resolving the cause.
It's time to make a deeper change, the change from an Attention Economy - where platforms have made it their job to harvest human attention, to a Trust Economy — where platforms make it their job to serve individual humans. Imagine platforms with no upsell pop-ups, no sponsored ads, and no distractions — just the best results tailored to your needs, regardless of a supplier’s marketing budget.
My hypothesis is that once people know they can trust a platform to be on their side, they will only want to be there, and suppliers will follow them. The way I seek to gain that trust is to give users full control of their personal data and algorithms, as well as banning sponsored content or upsell practices.
What is needed for this to happen, is to create alternative streams of revenue, as current big tech heavily relies on sponsorship deals. We start with a subscription model, but there is a plan to ultimately make it free, that'll become feasible once significant transaction volumes are met.
I am surrounded by creatives, so it made sense to start the transition from attention to trust economy by helping my creative peers. I found they often suffer from the 2nd problem, the uneven playing field. I’ve been creating content for them in the interview series , trying to cut through the noise on current attention economy platforms, while hacking together the first Trust Economy “STARBO.AT” platform.
For now, the platform is only for creatives, to have their digital portfolio and connect to clients online. (Sign up here)
This platform is a stepping stone toward a new internet, a find engine instead of a search engine. One where your personal data works for you, and not against you. One where algorithmic power is placed in the end user’s hand.
To get there things need to be build.
I currently manually help creatives with content creation, this should be replaced by software.
I currently only focus on art and design, this should gradually expand across domains.
I currently address the 2nd problem of the attention economy: levelling the playing field for creatives, but ultimately the aim is to solve the 1st issue of mental health too, creating the first trust economy platform — one where personal data empowers people.
I enjoy learning how to code and building the first version of Starboat, but I can’t do this alone. I hope to inspire the best engineers to work toward this trust economy, for that, I launched a podcast where experts come by, discussing a future where the tech industry serves humanity.
I am seeking technically exceptional individuals to join Starboat and help redefine what the internet can be.
The Trust-economy vision is non-negotiable. To safeguard it, me and all future shareholders will sign a binding pledge stating we are here to:
• strengthen the autonomy of our individual end users.
• program algorithms to help people achieve their goals.
• continually develop tools to intuitively change or delete your personal data.
• never accept money for ad placements.
• never sell user data to third parties.
• never program algorithms to increase watch time.
• Filter out upsell practices that obstruct our user in executing their desired action, as these will never be permitted on the platform.
Any shareholder, myself included, who violates the oath will forfeit their shares, which will be nullified immediately.
If you’re:
• A creative seeking a better way to share your work and connect with your audience,
• An engineer seeking to work on technology that helps humanity
• A policymaker or investor ready to help push for the Trust Economy
Reach out to find how you can contribute to Starboat. Let’s build the Trust Economy.
Boris de Wit