Mike C.

Minds pays you to use their Social Media site. Or rather advertisers pay and you get a decent cut of the profits. Even better, they pay you in cryptocurrency.

The two screenshots below are my token balance and my Minds+ balance. The first is rewards for people liking, commenting on and retweeting your posts, the latter is a share of site revenue.

If you wish you'd got into cryptocurrencies years ago then this site is for you. Frankly the education I've received in terms of DeFi, staking and the crypto community is worth far more than the rather impressive figures I've managed to earn.

In many ways Minds embodies the philosophy of the crypto community. Ownership and governance should be shared ( so no Bill Gates or Zuckerberg types), centralisation of power is wrong and code is law.

Hence there is no censorship and if someone transgresses the law then it is a jury panel of 12 users who decide what to do about it. Not moderators.

On a user experience level it feels a bit like twitter only without the character limit. However where twitter is a cess pit the rewards structure seems to prevent Minds from becomming the same. If someone want's to organise a pile on on Minds then they are giving points to that user, hence things tend to be a lot more civilised. Hence if you disagree with something, you are incentivised to ignore it.

It also has blogs and groups, some of the art and creator / NFT ones are particularly good. Artists and the like create things, turn them into NFTs and get points whn people comment or like them. It also allows them to showcase their wares on NFT markets, though I believe Minds are working on such too.

It can feel a bit empty at first, though once you've followed some hashtags, cashtags or people your network seems to expand quickly. I'd suggest using your first tokens to 'boost' your content. One token = 1000 views so if you pick up a few subscribers then it's well worth it.

It is still under active development and the rewards system has only been in place for a few months now. I have found the odd bug, though as it is open source reporting these helps to fix them. Whilst it isn't quite the finished article it is 98% there and the support staff seem to take any suggestions for how it can be improved. The roadmap for the future is impressive too, they recently raised $10 million and will be using this to make it even more decentralised... Which is the future I think.

Without any censorship, shadowbanning or deboosting you can make an impression fairly quickly on Minds. I was verified after a couple of weeks, have well over 100 followers and really enjoy it there.

Course the most impressive part is their integration into the Ethereum blockchain. You can take the tokens you have earned and convert them into Eth. The exchange rate varies but it's currently about 2500 tokens per Eth, I'd say it is reasonably easy to earn 2 or 3 tokens a day.

Course this does attract people who view it as a cash machine rather than a social media site. As a free speech site you'll also find almost everyone who has been banned from Twitter, Facebook and the rest. The likes of Stefan Molyneux, Alex Jones and David Icke. If you don't follow them, you won't see it. There is also some content which is NSFW or reprehensible, though it must be marked such. Personally I don't really like the anime though there is a cotterie of people who insist that posting cartoons of worryingly young looking toons is free speech. The block button is your friend, so you'll only see it once from each user.

Certainly the cryptocurrency, artists, conspiracy theorists and onlyfans types seem to be over-represented but there's plenty or normality and cute cat videos too. It is what you make of it.

I took out plus membership ($5 a month) after a couple of weeks on the site, despite being stingy, which gets me a 25% share of ad revenue pro rata. You can also get Pro membership for $40, and 50% share of ad revenue. Thus far the ad revenue doesn't quite cover the $5 a month outlay, though it does considerably reduce it and you can buy plus membership with tokens, making it entirely free. I think you'd need quite a loyal following already to make real use of Pro membership.

I love it, as you might be able to tell. It's a complete breath of fresh air and reminds me a bit of the internet back in the late 90s. The Wild West maybe, but thus far a very profitable and fun experience.

I'm guessing that the negative reviews have been written by employees from rival sites.