3 ms·

> Firstly - The '10 bux' could exclude a vast swathe of the poorest. Skipping a couple of Starbuck coffees vs. the local currency equivalent of whatever you are

by Kalium 4y ago

> Firstly - The '10 bux' could exclude a vast swathe of the poorest. Skipping a couple of Starbuck coffees vs. the local currency equivalent of whatever you are charging equating to a month's worth of food or being able to send at least one of your children to the local village school. I mean - your forum / site so you can gate it anyway you wish, I'm just pointing out that it could and would be exclusionary (perhaps unintentionally so). It is intentionally exclusionary. Not necessarily of the poorest among us, but of those who expect free service. Botters and spammers are disproportionately likely to look for free service. Pretty much any level of required spending in any currency will have a similar effect. By cutting off the abuse-prone free tier that many bad actors depend on, you dramatically decrease your exposure to abuse. The point is not to keep out the poor people. The point is to make it far more work to get over the hurdle than it's worth for abusers. If you have a way to do the latter without the former that doesn't hinge on pushing a bunch of extra work onto administrators, I suspect quite a lot of people would be very curious to hear about it.

strogonoff 4y ago
Providing paid service doesn’t make one exclusionary of the poorest. You are free to give discounts or free service to vulnerable groups in exceptional circumstances, requesting a verification of your choice in place of a financial roadblock. While giving them status otherwise equivalent to that of regular paid accounts, you can still apply more sensitive monitoring procedures to them if you have grounds to expect false positives and abuse—good thing now you don’t have to do it with every account. What being a paid service does make you is a player in a game with certain agreed-upon rules, by which your incentives are aligned with those of your customers. Giving your paying users the right of the ultimate vote (with their wallets), you in a way paint yourself into a corner where you can either act in their best interests or go broke. It matters less if you are a huge corporation (many revenue streams), and it doesn’t guarantee you won’t cheat and violate the rules (take my money and sell my data, why not!), but still as a user I find it a useful signal.

by Kalium 4y ago

strogonoff 4y ago

Providing paid service doesn’t make one exclusionary of the poorest. You are free to give discounts or free service to vulnerable groups in exceptional circumstances, requesting a verification of your choice in place of a financial roadblock. While giving them status otherwise equivalent to that of regular paid accounts, you can still apply more sensitive monitoring procedures to them if you have grounds to expect false positives and abuse—good thing now you don’t have to do it with every account. What being a paid service does make you is a player in a game with certain agreed-upon rules, by which your incentives are aligned with those of your customers. Giving your paying users the right of the ultimate vote (with their wallets), you in a way paint yourself into a corner where you can either act in their best interests or go broke. It matters less if you are a huge corporation (many revenue streams), and it doesn’t guarantee you won’t cheat and violate the rules (take my money and sell my data, why not!), but still as a user I find it a useful signal.