The high costs of free

This week's Medium post from young brother Insight points out some glaring contradictions of the crypto world. Namely, IMO, that on balance the community doesn't practice what it preaches re: decentralization.

In his piece Insight posits why there isn't another platform other than Twitter, which is anything but decentralization, that's more suited for the crypto community.

The simple way to explain the answer is this: Twitter is free. But there's more to the story.

Twitter comes from the dotcom days. It was funded by Venture Capital (VC's). The model of dotcom was give it away for free, grow quickly, lose money as fast as possible along the way, go public, then use public money to eventually get to a profitable position.

In Twitter's case, their warchest of money was so great that they effectively squashed any threat of competition. Because by the time anyone even thought of competing against them they'd amassed a few million users - all of whom use Twitter for free. By then the chances of competing against them or anyone with that many users are...not favorable.    

So to compete against Twitter one would have to have a warchest of money to operate at losses while the enterprise figures out how to make a profit. Who can do this?

The other choice is charge users for the service. That all sounds good. But why would anyone pay for something they can get for free? They won't. They'll keep using Twitter. They don't care that Twitter is a monopoly, or that Twitter is surveillance capitalism, the very opposite of what crypto wants to be. Nope, none of that matters. All that matters, is free.

And therein folks, is the problem of free and what it's costing our society.

Twitter is a monopoly, no different than Amazon. And if the crypto world stays on Twitter, they're supporting a monopoly. They're building on a platform that will one day suck them in and appropriate whatever is left of "decentralization" by then. Full stop.

I'd like to think that the crypto world will wake up one day, see that platforms such as Twitter and Discord are the antithesis of Satoshi's vision. I hope they'll put their money where their mouth is. But the odds aren't good. Because people are hooked on free and cheap.

But it's even worse. Now, the VC's are elbowing their way into crypto. The white man is coming to ruin crypto.

Proof positive that history doesn't repeat itself - but it often rhymes.

Worse still.
Just as I posted this, @Ohhshiny, a popular Twitter influencer blocked me.

Him and I were having a conversation about a DM I sent him. Here's what I wrote to him in a private message. I'm going to omit my sister's name.

####
Howdy,

My sister was the first female firefighter hired here in CO.

She had back surgery that went bad. The doctors gave her OxyContin, an opioid. OxyContin was marketed as "safe", "not addictive". Both claims have since been proven to be lies. If you're not familiar with opioid crisis watch Dopesick, the docudrama on Hulu. It's painfully accurate.

She got hooked - because she believed what the doctors told her. Then she went to heroin. She used heroin to try and get off her addiction to OxyContin, the opioid that CVS Pharmacy ("CVS") handed out like candy. She died of an overdose from heroin.

Last November a federal jury in Cleveland found that CVS had substantially contributed to the opioid crisis, overdoses and deaths.

Today you celebrated World of Women's (Wow) success.

Guy Oseary is now a big part of WoW.

Guy Oseary is invested in Calm. Right now, on Calm's website, Calm lists CVS as "Friends of Calm".

A company that Oseary is invested in lists CVS, a company that a jury found to have substantially contributed to the opioid crisis, overdoses and deaths of thousands from opioids, as friends.

How on earth can you promote this man? Have you no conscience?

I've attached a picture of an article written about her. I helped her train for the physical agility part of the fire fighter test. I think about her daily.

Shame on you and anyone involved with this man.
###

His response to me was not unfamiliar. He basically told me that I'm crazy to call out Oseary. And how dare I shame him. Him and I went back and forth. But in no way did I swear at him or disparage him. In fact it was the opposite. He ridiculed me for having the gall to speak out against the machine. Not only that, he ignored our loss. Not one word of condolence.

What Ohshiny did is censorship, he blocked free speech. Not just with him - but any of this 100k followers, or any of their followers. Because that's how Twitter works. Twitter is about group think. It supports and encourages censorship.

So Ohshiny, a man who claims to be for crypto (which is free speech), blocks people for having an oppositie view. Not only that, he blocks his followers and anyone down the line from seeing opposite views. Hypothetically, my views could be blocked from millions on Twitter.

This is progress? No. This is more of the same.

If people don't start taking a stand and speaking out, what's coming isn't Web3. It's  Web2 redux.