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Topic: A bitcoin-fueled, anonymous, decentralized 'The Onion' : bitbanter.com (Read 746 times)

newbie
Activity: 3
Merit: 0
Does anyone know any Burn Trauma Centers that accept bitcoins? Someone should update that Wikipedia article...

But I totally agree, unkind Internet stranger. If I'm the only one posting jokes, it'll fail harder than fiat (I had an alternate "your mother" joke here but we both know it would have sucked). That's why anyone can post! Feel free to 1up me, in satire, message board posts...anything really.
sr. member
Activity: 252
Merit: 250
Still the Best 1973
This needs a lot of work. In the humour department.

Buuuuurrrrrrn
hero member
Activity: 952
Merit: 1009
This needs a lot of work. In the humour department.
newbie
Activity: 3
Merit: 0
Check it out here: http://www.bitbanter.com/
Its Twitterbot: http://twitter.com/bitbanters/
Me on the Twitters: http://twitter.com/flailfast/

New to the forums, but longtime bitcoin watcher and general rabble-rouser. For more background on the site, click on 'pi' in the header (I hope it's a mildly entertaining read). Some other details below:

1) Built with Meteor.js and Coinbase; happy to talk through implementation challenges if anyone's interested.

2) The lofty goal behind Bitbanter: reduce barriers between (potentially anonymous) satirists and consumers while forgoing the traditional data collection/ad model. Besides the data a user voluntarily submits, zero data collection goes on (even bitcoin amounts come straight from the blockchain). I'm not 100% opposed to Big Data, but to me there's a strong philosophical argument for unbundling content from advertising and trying something "pure."

3) The less lofty goal behind Bitbanter: I love making people laugh, and wanted a place to showcase and scale my satire. But blogs are boring, so I made this instead.

4) Yes, I'm aware that at scale there are some huge problems with the way articles are promoted (e.g. spam, someone with big pockets could push an article to the top and my whole anti-bundling-ads argument goes to shit). Still thinking through those issues, but figured they wouldn't matter as long as the site was tiny.

5) Man bitcoin is cool. Without bitcoin, it would have been much, much more difficult (I think impossible, but I have a small mind) to build a platform where people can post things anonymously and get value from others seamlessly (I was definitely inspired by the reddit bitcoin tipper bot). Even if this f(l)ails, I'm pretty excited about bitcoin's future. There are more nascent bitcoin ideas on Earth than are dreamt of in my philosophy...and I'd love to see them.

Let me know what you think! Feedback/insults always welcome.
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