A New Social Platform Is Rewarding Uplifting Content

Logo of newly launched information platform "Gan Jing World." (Courtesy of Gan Jing World)

Goodness pays, literally, in Gan Jing World.

This social platform offers new creators cash rewards for achieving followership and viewership milestones in their first 90 days. For example, a creator may get up to $1,000 for building a community of 20,000 followers and get up to $250 for two videos reaching beyond 200,000 views each.

“Gan Jing means clean,” reads the official website of the platform, founded by Chinese Americans in New York in 2022. “Our mission is to create the world’s largest entertainment community, providing uplifting and meaningful content and family-friendly entertainment for all ages. We want to create an online platform free from violent, erotic, criminal, and harmful content for kids and adults alike to enjoy safely.”

The cash reward campaign shows the company’s confidence in its business model and that goodness and profit are achievable simultaneously.

A Different Platform

According to Nick Janicki, Gan Jing’s director of media relations, the company’s economics is no different from those of other social platforms. However, Gan Jing’s uniqueness stems from “the combination of having clean content and educating the consumer on how this stuff works,” he told The Epoch Times.

In the tech industry, advertisers are customers, he said. Users, who consume content, are considered end products because advertisers pay for results, which are ultimately driven by mining and operating on user data.

Janicki pointed out that only two industries call their consumers users: the tech and drug industries. In that light, the recommendation-generation algorithms on other social media platforms keep users on the addiction loops to maximize advertisement revenue or sell more premium subscriptions for an advertisement-free experience, he said.

Researchers have identified the biological substance for social media addictions: dopamine.

“Social media platforms drive surges of dopamine to the brain to keep consumers coming back over and over again. The shares, likes, and comments on these platforms trigger the brain’s reward center, resulting in a high similar to the one people feel when gambling or using drugs,” said Nancy DeAngelis, director of behavioral health at Jefferson Health, a regional health care provider, according to its website.

Janicki said that, unlike other platforms, Gan Jing is transparent about how it works and allows consumers to configure their virtual environment. Upon registration, one can set up three main topics or categories of one’s top interests. Then, the algorithm will use viewer history and topics configuration to recommend other content.

That’s how Gan Jing helps an account owner to achieve self-improvement, according to Janicki.

“All of the biology being used against you is now for you to go find more and better uplifting content,” he said. “With Gan Jing World, you can select what categories you want to see. And it’s still going to use dopamine to give you a jolt of joy, but it’s going to give you a jolt of joy to something that uplifts you or educates you.”

No other platforms have afforded this transparency and control to viewers or “end products,” he said.

Nick Janicki, a tech entrepreneur and director of media relations of Gan Jing World. (California Insider)

Is Clean Content Profitable?

Is clean content profitable? Gan Jing believes so.

“The marketplace and the demand is there for clean content, without a doubt,” Janicki said.

One example he gave is Pure Flix, the clean version of Netflix. Pure Flix is a faith-based family video subscription platform; Sony acquired it for an undisclosed amount in 2020. Pure Flix’s subscription fee today is $7.99 per month or $69.99 per year. Its YouTube channel has 221,000 subscribers, and NBC reported in 2018 that the streaming platform had 125,000 subscribers who paid $10.99 per month.

“God’s Not Dead,” a $2-million 2014 movie co-produced by Pure Flix Entertainment, which wasn’t part of the acquisition, grossed about $65 million at the box office. “Miracles From Heaven,” a Christian drama film distributed by Sony Pictures, grossed $74 million at the global box office in 2016, with $18 million during its first five days in theaters.

“G-rated movies are some of the best movies in the world in terms of engagement. Just because it’s clean doesn’t mean it cannot be engaging,” Janicki said in response to the question about whether clean content might be boring. “That problem will easily be solved once more content creators come on Gan Jing World.”

That’s why Gan Jing is working to attract influencers on other social platforms with milestone-related cash rewards. He said the current rewards offer, which Gan Jing markets as “challenges,” remains active until further notice.