Noise.Cash aka How people sell their souls for pennies

Noise.Cash is a wonderful social media platform, best described as a hybrid of Twitter and Instagram. Text messages as well as pictures can be posted there and the icing on the cake; You will be rewarded with Bitcoin Cash for this.

A new rating system has been introduced over the Easter holidays and has from now on divided users into different categories:

- Eligible to receive Free Tips

- Not eligible to receive Free Tips

This triggered a small earthquake. Due to the enormous amount of posts it was not possible to apply this manually but was chosen by an algorithm. As is so often the case, this did not do everyone justice, but it certainly did for the absolute majority.

Even among the people I follow there were some who were no longer authorized to receive and give free tips from now on. The outcry was great among many, others looked at it reflectedly.

I came across Noise.Cash because I wanted to see if it really is that easy to be rewarded for things that I enjoy doing anyway. In the meantime, however, it has become a place for me where I have met great people and have not been there for a long time only for the reason of the reward. Accordingly, I was not particularly happy to learn that a lot of people were only represented on the platform because they were rewarded for it.

This got me thinking and I decided to start a little experiment.

From now on I changed the way I use Noise.Cash, in fact I did the following things.

• I looked again exactly at who I am following and what they were doing

Many now tended to post even more things, but the quality largely fell by the wayside. In the original post of the Noise.Cash profile it was mentioned that the distribution of "Bitcoin Cash" would be rewarded. Some call this so literally that from then on some quotes were posted every minute and sold as a world first.

• Instead of rewarding contributions that I liked with a donation, I tried to interact with them.

How could it be otherwise, a not inconsiderable part of it didn't matter at all. I discovered the following grid: Although good content is produced and is largely the property of the creator, interaction does not play a role. You simply log in several times a day, write a posting and then browse the donations. Everything else is of no interest.

• I started using Google Images' reverse search and the number of images stolen was terrifying. It should be mentioned that I only looked at people I followed.

How I would like to name a few names, but I don't want to let myself down to this level. I can only advise everyone to move around the platform with their eyes open.

• I also took a closer look at the frequency and type of postings by individual users.

It should also be said that I just followed people who seemed interesting to me and then looked at where the journey was going. I lost many of them very quickly, but I gave others a chance and was (unfortunately quite often) bitterly disappointed.

I will save myself mentioning names here, but there are tons of users who can sell stolen content pretty well as their own. We are actually at a point where more time is spent on packing stolen content well than simply using the energy and creating something of our own.

I don't even want to mention the umpteen second accounts, the beggars and a new phenomenon: the copiers. It has now become fashionable to copy other people's contributions 1: 1 and sell them as your own.

Unfortunately the new system still has a small bug. Said users do not receive any more free donations to spend, but you can still forward your donations to them. Of course, this is also rigorously exploited. You look at which contributions have been generously rewarded and simply copy them.

Playing with emotions is as old as humanity itself. Whether you assume the identity of a pretty woman and sell yourself as such, or try to generate pity, you will always find someone who falls for it.

With the new changes in the system, I am very confident that the quality of the platform will continue to improve very soon. The effects can already be felt and it is getting better every day.

This should by no means be an attack against the Noise.Cash team, on the contrary. From their side everything is done to steer the platform in the right direction.

This post should only show that people are selling your soul if you can benefit from it in any way. I was always aware that it made such dramatic exceptions, even me a little shocked.

PS: I would have liked to have taken the game a little further and tried 24 hours a day with a fake account to produce as much reach as possible through stolen content and above all I would have been interested in which group of people I would have reached with it. However, after consultation with the admin, this would have permanently damaged my account - and it was not worth it to me.