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You could launch it today if you felt like it, but only if you charged money for it and paid moderators to enforce an AUP. It's trivial to write such a thing,
by floatingatoll 5y ago
You could launch it today if you felt like it, but only if you charged money for it and paid moderators to enforce an AUP.
It's trivial to write such a thing, but someone has to host the content at an https:// https:// endpoint for browsers to access it, and so someone has to pay money for hosting, and someone has to charge users for it, which means enforcing an acceptable use policy, which requires staffing abuse reporting and moderation to keep up with usage, which requires charging users for that, too. Anyone who tries to skip any of those steps ends up going broke and shutting down or losing payment and hosting providers. And you might still find that the target market for this is very small (thousands of users worldwide), or that the target market is largely unwilling to tolerate enforcing a code of conduct. And don't forget the guaranteed lawsuits from companies who think they have a right to disallow you from recording comments about their site! Oh, and spammers and abusers, you'll have to have a plan for dealing with those, except that your target market may be largely unwilling to tolerate identity verification checks (simply charging money isn't enough).
None of this is an obstacle to launching a site that charges users from day one to participate, as long as you build it lean, with a cost model that effectively scales as users participate, and with a working anti-spam/abuse model. It's just that most modern startups want to launch with a 'free' tier, and that's simply not compatible with this idea on the modern anonymous internet.
- LegitShady 5y agoI feel like a text service as proposed could be paid for by ads rather than membership. Spam/abuse is always an issue but matter less because you're not on someone else's platform who will kick you off at a whim.
- floatingatoll 5y agoYou're on someone's platform. Whether it's the T-1 to your hosting server or the datacenter in which your site resides or the CDN provider, you are always at the mercy of someone else's Acceptable Use Policy. There is no alt-Internet using mesh-networked radio transmitters that's accessible from within a browser today, and so you will, by definition, be subject to being kicked off "at a whim" for violations of AUP or simply "we don't wish to serve you anymore", no matter what decisions you make.
- LegitShady 5y agoSo go on Rumble or Odyseey's hosting and don't worry about it. It's ok to have acceptable use policy and moderation, but when you aren't running on google or amazon computers there's a lot more leeway and less sudden termination.
- floatingatoll 5y agoDon't forget the AUPs of the advertising networks, and the financial institutions that receive deposits from them, and the sites that convert cryptocoins into usable currency, and the tax/currency 'acceptable use' laws of the country(s) of all parties and currencies involved. You can, of course, choose to violate any/all AUPs, but it's best to be aware of them before doing so. Unwitting AUP violations are still sufficient cause for enforcement.