Its high time that social media companies start compensating content creators with some revenue

Its no hidden fact that users on any social media platform are typically both consumers and publishers of content. The content which the user wearing "consumer" shoes relishes to read or watch is exactly what another user wearing the "publisher" shoes has put online. Consequently, the "publisher" user automatically deserves a fair amount of income generated out of all content activity on a given platform.

Quora did indeed start such an experiment of compensating question seekers on their platform briefly. But none of the other social media giants like twitter, facebook, reddit, etc. have done any such attempt to my knowledge. The social media companies must understand that going forward, competition is only going to increase tremendously. The Internet wastes no time in crushing the hubris of uncrowned kings when the right time comes. We already saw it happen to Myspace, Orkut, StumbleUpon, Google Plus and many other social networks. All of them were once uncrowned kings in their own rights.

And we are seeing the signs of history being repeated once again. New alternatives like ruqqus, raddle, lemmy.ml, saidit, etc. are emerging day by day in response to Reddit's Stalinian censorship and hold on their platform. The freedom activists of the interwebs will ensure that these platforms will only keep growing in future. Judging by the present trend, one can easily see their user numbers growing to match the levels of reddit, etc. in the next 4-5 years and that's when the hubris of the old guards of social media will be fully crushed.

To avoid that situation and stop losing their market share, existing platforms must innovate. And one innovative way of doing that is to start compensating the content creators on their platforms with some part of their revenue. This can have tremendous benefits:

1. Platform's market share will see an instant surge upward as earning prospects will attract lots of users (and keep existing ones tied) to their platform.

2. Platform's content quality will also see a tremendous rise simply because money is the biggest motivator. The best writers will leave your competitor's platform and join yours because now they are getting their skill's worth, not just upvotes and comments.

3. Platform will be seen as a socially benevolent institution which helps millions of people worldwide to earn their daily bread.

4. Trolls will naturally decline on the platform (provided the revenue sharing model is tied to anti-trolling behavior somehow. For ex: you will face a 10% cut on every troll tweet).

Thus, the competition is cut-throat and the cost of not innovating could be astronomical and devastating. To ensure their own survival and glory, the social media giants must start implementing the revenue sharing model today itself, and the freedom activists of the interwebs must keep pushing and proding them towards that model.