Both BBS and Minds are decentralised platforms where users can make posts and be paid with Cryptos.
Both the BBS tokens and Mind tokens are ERC 20 tokens based on the Ethereum network.
BBS was developed by deWeb Ltd whereas Minds is open source. Being open source, the public including the users of Minds can make changes to the platform. The users of BBS cannot do so and can only make suggestions that the developing team may consider.
Those who contribute to the open source code are rewarded. Users of BBS whose suggestions for changes are implemented are not rewarded. Perhaps BBS can consider giving rewards for suggestions that are implemented. The amount of the reward can be based on how significant is the change.
Minds was launched in June 2015 and so has been in operation for 7 years. BBS launched in March 2021 is much younger at just 1.5 years.
Initially funding of $1.35M for Minds mainly came from crowd funding of $1 million and so comes from many people.
Initial funding for BBS came from 6 lead investors that includes Binance and Bancor (our boss Eyal). This means that the 6 lead investors are whales in BBS and have a lot of say.
However subsequent fund raising from venture capitalists also created powerful whales in Minds. $6M was raised in 2018 from Medici Ventures and $10M in 2021 from FUTO.
The subsequent funding for BBS came in the form of $500K from a SHO (Strong Holders Offering) and approximately from a Copper auction that raised approximately $9.6M
Minds is a platform that gives its users a lot of freedom in the type of contents they post. They pride themselves in not censoring and removing content based on criteria of owners of other social media platforms like Facebook or Twitter.
In 2018, about 150K Vietnamese Facebook users moved to Minds and begining May 2020 about 250K Thai moved to Minds from Twitter. These movements were due to pressure from the governments of those countries and the fear of disclosure of information to the governments.
In 2021 tens of thousands of the supporters of Donald Trump were removed by You Tube and Facebook. Minds was one of the social media they joined.
BBS is also decentralised and does not exercise central censorship. The owners of the individual BBS boards have the right to decide for themselves what is allowed in their communities.
This freedom in BBS has been eroded by the requirement of having a focused topic in order to qualify for Engagement Mining. Posts that are out of topic and comments that are undesirable are hidden.
The mechanics of earning tokens in BBS is different from that in Minds.
BBS users have to become top contributors in the Communities and get partnered before they can earn cashables. After they have been partnered they earn cashables based on the number of Impressions of registered users of BBS. In order to prevent fraudulent impressions, a registered user can only contribute 1 impression per post.
In order to prevent fraudulent impressions, BBS has to keep track of the activities of its users. BBS is able to read post, comments, and direct messages of its users even after they have been hidden.
Minds pride itself that it does not keep track of its users and the messages between users are end to end encrypted. So Minds does not sell information of its users to third parties for targeted advertisements based on the users activities (which the mainstream social media platforms do)
Activities of users of Mind earn points. Activities like logging in and liking earn less points than making posts and meaningful comments. All the points earned by users for each day are added up. The number of mind tokens earned by a user is based on the number of points he has for that day compared to the total number of points for that day.
Thus the number of tokens earned by a certain amount of activities on a slow day can be more than the same amount of activities done on a day with high traffic.
Such differences will not happen in BBS
Advertising and promotion of posts in the 2 platforms are also different.
In BBS promoting posts no longer earn cashables but only earn Reputation Points (RP). The RP can be used to promote other posts to make them more noticeable. RP is not a direct factor that helps to get partnership although it can help to get us recognised
Mind tokens can be used to pay for premium subscriptions that gives us access to limited access posts (like it in patreon) .Mind tokens can also be used to boost or promote a post so that it shows up in the newsfeed of other users
An interesting feature that Minds has is the jury system. If a person is not happy with the decision of the moderators, he can ask for the matter to be referred to a jury. A randomly chosen jury of 12 person will then decide on the matter.
There are 3 points that I want to point out about such a jury.
1) A 15 man jury is preferable. Odd number (assuming no abstaining allowed) prevents a deadlock2) A larger number enhances randomness or inadvertant bias (intentional bias in the selection of the jury is possible)
3) instead of a jury have a poll and every registered user can vote. Sort of like a country having a referendum
Minds has been in operation for 7 years and has benefited from the influx of members from other social media platforms because of the censorship mentioned above. As at 2020, it has 2.5 million registered users and 300K monthly users.
As a young platform BBS has not much more than 100K registered users and less than 50K monthly users (11 to 12K per week)
So currently, the amount of activity in BBS is much lower than in Minds.
Such higher user base can help users get more views for his posts. However it can also dilute his points compared to the total number of points for the day.
I like BBS because I am confident that I can make good posts and comments that will get me partnered. In the long term I will benefit as the user base in BBS increase. Hopefully the soon to be launched App in BBS will help the user base of BBS to grow faster.
Mind already has the App for both Android and IOS.