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 d

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).