# Is it Time to Rewrite the Unwritten Contract?

By [New Economic Revolution](https://paragraph.com/@abundance) · 2025-08-26

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For the last 20 years we had an unwritten contract between users and platforms, is it time to change it?

The contract went like this:

Users will drive attention to the platform, and in exchange the platform will provide them with distribution

Sounds like a win-win, right?

Well, not exactly.

Because platforms didn’t care _how_ users drove attention — they only cared that they did

And what’s the most effective way to drive it?

Conflict and drama

The users who pushed outrage porn and sensationalism, exaggerated facts or fabricated claims for clicks, were therefore also those that got the most attention — and most distribution — on the platform

But that came at a price — both to other users and to society as a whole

Users could no longer tell what’s true and what’s made up, the media and institutions suffered from a crisis of trust, society became polarized, and the platforms turned into cesspools of toxicity

But what almost everyone forgot was that there was nothing sacred about the Attention-for-Distribution contract

It was not some fundamental principle of nature.

In reality, platforms could determine distribution in any way they chose

Attention-for-Distribution made sense in one context: when the platform makes money from advertising it wants to maximize user attention on the platform

But in the age of open graphs and cryptocurrencies, attention is not the only game in town

And once [Network Economies](https://paragraph.com/@abundance/network-economies) enter the picture, things can change dramatically

Then we’d see the emergence of a new mode of production; where contributors collaborate, build in public, and get paid not for the attention they drive but for the value they create

This new social network paradigm would look something like this: communities, startups and businesses wish to grow and prosper from the new mode of production

They put money into the Network based on how much growth and benefits they expect to get from the system

A community may want unbiased reporting on local events

Startups may want to leverage the network’s collective intelligence to get advice and services that they otherwise couldn't afford on their own

Businesses may similarly benefit from the speed and compounding value of a vast network of builders creating open source systems

The platform’s role in this new economy is to serve as the medium for flow of value (both monetary and information) throughout the network.

The Network would then want to compensate the platform for the value it provides, and for the ongoing development and maintenance that goes into running it 

The new unwritten contract between the platform and users would thus be based on value creation, and not on attention — the more value users create on the platform the more they are rewarded

This is a true win-win-win; for users, for the platform, and for the Network Economy as a whole

Because unlike attention — that could benefit or harm others — value creation is always positive sum; it benefits everyone on the network

The new unwritten contract would therefore not only benefit the network, it would also pave the way for a new kind of social network and a new mode of production for the economy.

We can finally restore sensemaking, bring trust back to media and harmony to society

Let's write that contract!

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*Originally published on [New Economic Revolution](https://paragraph.com/@abundance/unwritten-contract)*