Date: 2026-04-03
The tension
The current specs frame Curiate as a creator monetization platform — true fans, 1000 true fans, direct payments. But the name encodes something different. Curiate comes from curia (Roman assembly — deliberate collective judgment). To curate is to exercise discernment, not just preference.
Three directions are in play and haven't been resolved yet:
Direction A — Creator platform (true fans). Help independent musicians and visual artists find and sustain their first 1000 paying fans. Algorithmic transparency, built-in monetization, 90% to creators. The tension: discovery is still unsolved without an algorithm.
Direction B — Small web discovery layer. The small web and webrings are having a cultural resurgence. People are building personal sites again. The missing piece is a social layer that makes human editorial judgment visible and followable — RSS as the distribution primitive, interest-based clusters that form and dissolve rather than fixed groups. The tension: harder to monetize.
Direction C — Curatorial identity as social object. The person who curates is the product. Not a creator sharing work, not an algorithm — a human editor whose judgment others can follow and trust. Your curation history as a reputation and track record. More critic than taste-maker.
What all three share
Human judgment over algorithmic curation. Ownership of distribution. The name already says what this is.
Note on "taste"
The AI world is using "taste" as shorthand for editorial judgment right now. The concept is valid but the word will age poorly. Better terms: discernment, sensibility, judgment, point of view.
Open questions
- Who are the first 10 users, and which direction serves them?
- Can groups be a unifying primitive across all three — filter-based, ephemeral, interest-driven clusters rather than fixed communities?
- Where does federation (ActivityPub) fit — infrastructure or feature?
Documented in MISSION.md.