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I've noticed a good model for discourse online is when people have to pay a small amount to be part of the group. The comments on a $1/month patreon are an ord

I've noticed a good model for discourse online is when people have to pay a small amount to be part of the group. The comments on a $1/month patreon are an order of magnitude better than in a free-for-all subreddit for example. Some places can buck this trend but it usually requires a huge burden and dedicated moderation staff (which doesn't come for free).

papito 5y ago
A tiny barrier of entry increases the quality of participators by a huge amount. Show me a thing that has not been defiled by opening it wide to the horror that is the average intelligence. Twitter and Facebook is a dumpster fire, ultimately destroying political discourse and locking almost half of the population in a dangerous alternate reality. They now turned violent and will continue to do so. Masses of hodlers are now destabilizing markets with their GME raids and crypto. Etc...
freddie_mercury 5y ago
I agree with you but I've been astounded at how many people I've seen paying for Substack subscriptions apparently for the sole purpose of disagreeing with everything single thing written by the author, often in not very polite ways that end up getting them banned.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- IshKebab 5y ago
  Maybe it filters for the people who reeeally want to disagree with the author.
alisonatwork 5y ago
I'm not sure I agree. Although it is true that comment politeness appears to improve behind a paywall, I also find that the diversity of opinion decreases, which tends to make the comments less interesting to read in the first place.
mynameishere 5y ago
Anonymity is gone if you pay even 1 cent of course.
- ipaddr 5y ago
  Pay with a coin.
- ineedasername 5y ago
  Then there's room for a startup that will make payments by proxy.
tptacek 5y ago
They probably are, but I think an underreported phenomenon here is that tendentious and annoying comments are disproportionately driven by a few outlier commenters, and when you ask for $1/mo, they'll pay just to have an entitlement to continue the behavior.
- lamontcg 5y ago
  A/B test only them to see how high they'll go
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
squeaky-clean 5y ago
I have a buddy who will DM Dungeons And Dragons games on Roll20 with random strangers online. He charges $5 per person per campaign. That's not per game, $5 gets almost weekly sessions in a campaign that can go on for months. He doesn't do it to make any money. He says that the small fee entirely eliminated trolls, and almost entirely eliminated people who join for week 1 and never return.
gamacodre 5y ago
That makes a lot of sense. Taking it further, you could also introduce a sliding scale for comment volume, like $1 for <10 comments/mo, $5 for up to 30 comments/mo, or the $100 "troll package" for up to 80 comments/mo.
- qbasic_forever 5y ago
  It doesn't even need to be that fancy in practice. It's just the simple fact that you now have to pay real money, even a trivial amount, to contribute to the discussion that keeps out a huge amount of low quality content. It also disincentivizes bots and abuse (too costly), and can help with serious threats/issues as there's a paper trail to some payment processor somewhere should authorities ever need to get involved (not that there aren't ways people get around that, but it's just more speedbumps against trolls).
squarefoot 5y ago
This is likely true, but it doesn't scale. What if I want to participate say to 100 blogs, do I have to pay $100/month just for subscription? Some central authority might be created to make things much easier, but then we would be back to square one with big corporations owning people's data and all related privacy concerns. Not to criticize that possible solution, as I also agree with it in principle, but it is probably much harder to implement well than it looks, and should be created from scratch with scalability in mind: micropayments per post probably are the best option, which if applied to email too would eliminate spam in seconds, although that would also sound like admitting the defeat of the Internet as we knew it.
- freddie_mercury 5y ago
  On the other hand, your objection is just an objection about standard economic pricing. "What if I want to fly first class every week? That's really expensive. Someone should make it cheaper for me." I mean, I totally understand where you're coming from because it is very different from the current model where almost everything is free. But at the end of the day if you're not willing to pay $100/month (which is less than many people pay for cable TV!) then maybe you don't really want to comment on that 100 blogs all that much
  - squarefoot 5y ago
    If I had to pay $100/month for cable TV plus $100/month for various subscriptions, I would have been bankrupt 10 years ago. There are places on Earth where that money makes a difference when one is unemployed or essentially retired. My point wasn't related to the amount of money however but rather just having to pay something since the goal is not to make a business but to discourage trolls and spammers. If email cost everywhere say 2 €cents per email sent, I would gladly pay because I know that the side effect of it would be the immediate elimination of spammers, whose existence rely on how easy is today sending bulks of hundreds of thousands posts for free.

papito 5y ago

A tiny barrier of entry increases the quality of participators by a huge amount. Show me a thing that has not been defiled by opening it wide to the horror that is the average intelligence. Twitter and Facebook is a dumpster fire, ultimately destroying political discourse and locking almost half of the population in a dangerous alternate reality. They now turned violent and will continue to do so. Masses of hodlers are now destabilizing markets with their GME raids and crypto. Etc...

freddie_mercury 5y ago

I agree with you but I've been astounded at how many people I've seen paying for Substack subscriptions apparently for the sole purpose of disagreeing with everything single thing written by the author, often in not very polite ways that end up getting them banned.

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
IshKebab 5y ago
Maybe it filters for the people who reeeally want to disagree with the author.

alisonatwork 5y ago

I'm not sure I agree. Although it is true that comment politeness appears to improve behind a paywall, I also find that the diversity of opinion decreases, which tends to make the comments less interesting to read in the first place.

mynameishere 5y ago

Anonymity is gone if you pay even 1 cent of course.

ipaddr 5y ago
Pay with a coin.
ineedasername 5y ago
Then there's room for a startup that will make payments by proxy.

tptacek 5y ago

They probably are, but I think an underreported phenomenon here is that tendentious and annoying comments are disproportionately driven by a few outlier commenters, and when you ask for $1/mo, they'll pay just to have an entitlement to continue the behavior.

lamontcg 5y ago
A/B test only them to see how high they'll go
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]

squeaky-clean 5y ago

I have a buddy who will DM Dungeons And Dragons games on Roll20 with random strangers online. He charges $5 per person per campaign. That's not per game, $5 gets almost weekly sessions in a campaign that can go on for months. He doesn't do it to make any money. He says that the small fee entirely eliminated trolls, and almost entirely eliminated people who join for week 1 and never return.

gamacodre 5y ago

That makes a lot of sense. Taking it further, you could also introduce a sliding scale for comment volume, like $1 for <10 comments/mo, $5 for up to 30 comments/mo, or the $100 "troll package" for up to 80 comments/mo.

qbasic_forever 5y ago
It doesn't even need to be that fancy in practice. It's just the simple fact that you now have to pay real money, even a trivial amount, to contribute to the discussion that keeps out a huge amount of low quality content. It also disincentivizes bots and abuse (too costly), and can help with serious threats/issues as there's a paper trail to some payment processor somewhere should authorities ever need to get involved (not that there aren't ways people get around that, but it's just more speedbumps against trolls).

squarefoot 5y ago

This is likely true, but it doesn't scale. What if I want to participate say to 100 blogs, do I have to pay $100/month just for subscription? Some central authority might be created to make things much easier, but then we would be back to square one with big corporations owning people's data and all related privacy concerns. Not to criticize that possible solution, as I also agree with it in principle, but it is probably much harder to implement well than it looks, and should be created from scratch with scalability in mind: micropayments per post probably are the best option, which if applied to email too would eliminate spam in seconds, although that would also sound like admitting the defeat of the Internet as we knew it.

freddie_mercury 5y ago
On the other hand, your objection is just an objection about standard economic pricing. "What if I want to fly first class every week? That's really expensive. Someone should make it cheaper for me." I mean, I totally understand where you're coming from because it is very different from the current model where almost everything is free. But at the end of the day if you're not willing to pay $100/month (which is less than many people pay for cable TV!) then maybe you don't really want to comment on that 100 blogs all that much
- squarefoot 5y ago
  If I had to pay $100/month for cable TV plus $100/month for various subscriptions, I would have been bankrupt 10 years ago. There are places on Earth where that money makes a difference when one is unemployed or essentially retired. My point wasn't related to the amount of money however but rather just having to pay something since the goal is not to make a business but to discourage trolls and spammers. If email cost everywhere say 2 €cents per email sent, I would gladly pay because I know that the side effect of it would be the immediate elimination of spammers, whose existence rely on how easy is today sending bulks of hundreds of thousands posts for free.