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'How do we make stacker news appeal to more people... Who have never tried bitcoin, who don't know what lightning is, who don't understand the basic premise...'
I think this is self-selective and short of having 'more time'...
Better wallet UI, more reliable lightning spends, more places to spend bitcoin (like square), and the ****coiners getting absolutely recked.
To me the entire premise of bitcoin is the harvesting of extra energy to create capital - money basically - with decentralized traits that allows for better human interaction.
Right now we 'pay' using the internet with surveillance, ads, or slop (ai slop everywhere). The cost of posting and the small drip drip of sats should be the 'proof of life' that the user has something to say that they have 'skin in the game' when they interact with others.
Otherwise the power goes to advertisers, big tech and we are overrun with bots who 99% have nothing to say.
The fact that bitcoin is sound and transparent... And you can mine to your own bolt-12 or LNaddress is the 'drip' that you take with you to forums and online interaction. Basically the hash-cash of online interaction that proves you're not a bot.
I think the fallacy is thinking stacker or anything Bitcoin related should be 'cheap' or 'free' or 'just lowering costs' makes the service more valuable - people pay lots of money to use things that provide them positive feedback and in fact... Most high-value experiences require some form of payment to start.
Take for example Proton Mail. When they wanted to offer paid email... They got laughed at.
Look at them now. People will clearly pay for 'better email' that eliminates advertising and minimizes surveillance (although there is always some).
I see this period where useful apps and experiences are built on bitcoin that are NOT about more money or speculation noone is getting rich on zaps.
Nor should the focus be on being a 'bitcoin forum' just as amazon wasn't an 'internet company' they were a shopping company that was more appealing to customers who could now shop conveniently.
IMO we need the killer app that uses micropayments and I think SN is on the right track but it requires all this other baseline knowledge... And that's why the userbase is so small right now.
I appreciate your emphasis on the viability of micropayments. Zaps are awesome and definitely work and I'm still of the belief that it is one of the basic use cases of bitcoin.
SN is based on the idea that monetary actions generally carry more signal than free actions. I think this is bearing out, but I do wonder if it has been proven in the case of spam. I think SN has less spam than other social media, but it might just be that we have less users and are less of a target. Spam reduction is certainly another use case of bitcoin, but I don't think we have made the most convincing case of it, yet.
You say this twice and I agree with you. How do you think we can make Stacker News more appealing to lazy people?