7 ms·

It's doesn't even have to be $5/month. Make a $10 deposit required for creating an account, and for each offense against the guidelines, you get a "fine" that p

It's doesn't even have to be $5/month. Make a $10 deposit required for creating an account, and for each offense against the guidelines, you get a "fine" that proportional for the severity of the infraction (uncivil discussion? $0.10 cents, participating in hell-threads? $0.50. Comparing HN with reddit? $1.337 Obvious spam? Your whole $10 is gone.) Repeat offenses get exponentially more expensive, and you only get to post with a positive balance.

joeldo 4y ago
On the surface I like this idea, but this makes it harder for participants from poorer countries from, well, participating. For some countries this is more than a week of the average wage!
- andsoitis 4y ago
  Price can vary by market. Many companies already do this both for products and services, as well as subscriptions.
  - midoridensha 4y ago
    I guess you haven't heard of a VPN?
    - andsoitis 4y ago
      You can require address as part of credit card validation.
      - midoridensha 4y ago
        So only people with credit cards are allowed to use the forum? That shuts out a lot of people, especially in places where credit cards aren't used.
        andsoitis 4y ago
        You’re right that credit cards are not a universal MOP (method of payment). Other options include debit cards, or systems like iDEAL, PayPal, etc.
        midoridensha 4y ago
        Right, and those completely vary from country to country. Trying to get one website to support the common authenticated payment systems worldwide is basically impossible unless that website is Google.com.
    - fragmede 4y ago
      I guess you haven't considered making a list of IPs VPNs use as an intern project to setup over the winter
  - ayewo 4y ago
    But once you throw a VPN into the mix, it's not so simple [1] [2]. It then becomes a game of whack-a-mole where you have to obscure how pricing parity is done [3]. 1: https://twitter.com/levelsio/status/1600232199243984897 https://twitter.com/levelsio/status/1600232199243984897 2: https://twitter.com/levelsio/status/1600246753348882432 https://twitter.com/levelsio/status/1600246753348882432 3: https://twitter.com/dannypostmaa/status/1600372062958538752 https://twitter.com/dannypostmaa/status/1600372062958538752
    - Archipelagia 4y ago
      I think the goal here is not money, but making it enough of a hassle that spammers wouldn't bother. So if someone from US actually wants to go through the trouble to save $3, well, at least they're unlikely to be a bot.
- ahmedtatum 4y ago
  - dang 4y ago
    Please don't post like this to HN. It's not what this site is for, and destroys what it is for. If you wouldn't mind reviewing https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and using HN as intended, we'd be grateful.
- noirscape 4y ago
  It's difficult to balance; unfortunately from experience in moderating, the poorer countries with a large anglo internet presence also tend to be the biggest sources of spam (not so much low-effort trolling, Americans do that wayyy more). You could to some extent make an argument that gatekeeping poorer economies is one way to prevent those bots from signing up. It's not one I necessarily agree with, but it is one way to mitigate the spam. My solution would probably be to permit users from poorer countries to request a signup from someone else at a discount appropriate to their economy using an invite chain. That way you can still offer a fair way for users from poor economies to engage, whilst allowing for easy banning of spambots simply by treebanning the original inviter if you get the spam issue.
- rglullis 4y ago
  If someone is living on $40/month, I'm pretty sure they will have other things to sort out before worrying about their inability to participate in discussions online.
noncoml 4y ago
Shut up and take my money
- rglullis 4y ago
  I am trying, really! [0] [0]: https://raphael.lullis.net/community-is-not-enough/ https://raphael.lullis.net/community-is-not-enough/
noirscape 4y ago
SomethingAwful does something like this iirc, signing up costs like 10$ (more if you want to read archives). It worked largely pretty well to keep out the trolls; as it turns out, a very low amount of people bother trying to troll others when it means that they get hit with an account ban and signing up again means paying the entry fee again. You could probably also see it as the reason that while SA culture is uh... pretty toxic, it still largely managed to be fairly consistent and polite to each other (towards other communities... less so). Take away the 10$ signup fee and what you get instead is 4chan (whose original culture was a wholesale copy of SA at the time, since it was made for SA users after moot got banned from SA).
metafunctor 4y ago
Wouldn't this be treated like parking fines by the very rich—just a tiny price to keep broadcasting whatever drivel they feel like?
- KirillPanov 4y ago
  No; it would be treated like parking fines by the very rich United Parcel Service corporation -- i.e., an extremely effective deterrent. The penalty scales with the number of bot accounts, but even Bill Gates can only drive one automobile at a time.
  - none_to_remain 4y ago
    I'm not quite sure what you're getting at about deterrent? I know here in NYC that UPS just parks as they please and has some kind of deal with the city to pay the tickets with a bulk discount
    - corry 4y ago
      Their point is that for an individual, yes, it's not that much of a deterrent - but that individual can only park poorly with 1 car at a time. The USPS has a fleet of many (hundreds of thousands?) vehicles, so their capacity to ruin it for everyone is much larger - but their potential liability from fines is too. So they treat it very seriously. The poster is saying that spam is more like the USPS situation, where single entities control thousands of potential infractions, not the rich individual.

joeldo 4y ago

On the surface I like this idea, but this makes it harder for participants from poorer countries from, well, participating. For some countries this is more than a week of the average wage!

andsoitis 4y ago
Price can vary by market. Many companies already do this both for products and services, as well as subscriptions.
- midoridensha 4y ago
  I guess you haven't heard of a VPN?
  - andsoitis 4y ago
    You can require address as part of credit card validation.
    - midoridensha 4y ago
      So only people with credit cards are allowed to use the forum? That shuts out a lot of people, especially in places where credit cards aren't used.
      - andsoitis 4y ago
        You’re right that credit cards are not a universal MOP (method of payment). Other options include debit cards, or systems like iDEAL, PayPal, etc.
        midoridensha 4y ago
        Right, and those completely vary from country to country. Trying to get one website to support the common authenticated payment systems worldwide is basically impossible unless that website is Google.com.
  - fragmede 4y ago
    I guess you haven't considered making a list of IPs VPNs use as an intern project to setup over the winter
- ayewo 4y ago
  But once you throw a VPN into the mix, it's not so simple [1] [2]. It then becomes a game of whack-a-mole where you have to obscure how pricing parity is done [3]. 1: https://twitter.com/levelsio/status/1600232199243984897 https://twitter.com/levelsio/status/1600232199243984897 2: https://twitter.com/levelsio/status/1600246753348882432 https://twitter.com/levelsio/status/1600246753348882432 3: https://twitter.com/dannypostmaa/status/1600372062958538752 https://twitter.com/dannypostmaa/status/1600372062958538752
  - Archipelagia 4y ago
    I think the goal here is not money, but making it enough of a hassle that spammers wouldn't bother. So if someone from US actually wants to go through the trouble to save $3, well, at least they're unlikely to be a bot.
ahmedtatum 4y ago
- dang 4y ago
  Please don't post like this to HN. It's not what this site is for, and destroys what it is for. If you wouldn't mind reviewing https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and using HN as intended, we'd be grateful.
noirscape 4y ago
It's difficult to balance; unfortunately from experience in moderating, the poorer countries with a large anglo internet presence also tend to be the biggest sources of spam (not so much low-effort trolling, Americans do that wayyy more). You could to some extent make an argument that gatekeeping poorer economies is one way to prevent those bots from signing up. It's not one I necessarily agree with, but it is one way to mitigate the spam. My solution would probably be to permit users from poorer countries to request a signup from someone else at a discount appropriate to their economy using an invite chain. That way you can still offer a fair way for users from poor economies to engage, whilst allowing for easy banning of spambots simply by treebanning the original inviter if you get the spam issue.
rglullis 4y ago
If someone is living on $40/month, I'm pretty sure they will have other things to sort out before worrying about their inability to participate in discussions online.

noncoml 4y ago

Shut up and take my money

rglullis 4y ago
I am trying, really! [0] [0]: https://raphael.lullis.net/community-is-not-enough/ https://raphael.lullis.net/community-is-not-enough/

noirscape 4y ago

SomethingAwful does something like this iirc, signing up costs like 10$ (more if you want to read archives). It worked largely pretty well to keep out the trolls; as it turns out, a very low amount of people bother trying to troll others when it means that they get hit with an account ban and signing up again means paying the entry fee again. You could probably also see it as the reason that while SA culture is uh... pretty toxic, it still largely managed to be fairly consistent and polite to each other (towards other communities... less so). Take away the 10$ signup fee and what you get instead is 4chan (whose original culture was a wholesale copy of SA at the time, since it was made for SA users after moot got banned from SA).

metafunctor 4y ago

Wouldn't this be treated like parking fines by the very rich—just a tiny price to keep broadcasting whatever drivel they feel like?

KirillPanov 4y ago
No; it would be treated like parking fines by the very rich United Parcel Service corporation -- i.e., an extremely effective deterrent. The penalty scales with the number of bot accounts, but even Bill Gates can only drive one automobile at a time.
- none_to_remain 4y ago
  I'm not quite sure what you're getting at about deterrent? I know here in NYC that UPS just parks as they please and has some kind of deal with the city to pay the tickets with a bulk discount
  - corry 4y ago
    Their point is that for an individual, yes, it's not that much of a deterrent - but that individual can only park poorly with 1 car at a time. The USPS has a fleet of many (hundreds of thousands?) vehicles, so their capacity to ruin it for everyone is much larger - but their potential liability from fines is too. So they treat it very seriously. The poster is saying that spam is more like the USPS situation, where single entities control thousands of potential infractions, not the rich individual.