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This is going to kill engagement. 90% of people don't care enough to pay for that and any sort of barrier will lower engagement. Twitter/X is going to be use

This is going to kill engagement. 90% of people don't care enough to pay for that and any sort of barrier will lower engagement. Twitter/X is going to be use this as a way to fight spammers and bots but those accounts never had a problem paying or using stolen money.

toomuchtodo 3y ago
> This is going to kill engagement. Maybe! The people who are still left must really like Twitter. I think charging a token amount to limit who can post from a Sybil attack mitigation perspective might actually be reasonable, and it’s exciting that someone who doesn’t care if they lose is willing to perform the experiment. If you’re not willing to pay at least a dollar to post, maybe your content doesn’t have any value to the audience or platform. I’d pay $1 to keep posting here (probably more! But don’t tell the YC folks).
- greenie_beans 3y ago
  i don't really like twitter. it's just where most of my network still hangs out online (for now).
- iamdelirium 3y ago
  Yes, the people remaining are addicted to/like Twitter. But this is the equivalent of imposing a sin tax on it and it will cost Twitter engagement like sin taxes lower alcohol or smoking. It will probably lose them even more money as their primary income is ads and lower engagement will drive advertising incoming even lower. Like all of new X/Twitter's changes, it doesn't seem to have any foresight or insight into the product at all.
  - joegahona 3y ago
    Sounds like this fee is for new accounts only.
    - toomuchtodo 3y ago
      Existing accounts would be seasoned, and they can filter existing bot accounts over time.
  - lysp 3y ago
    > Yes, the people remaining are addicted to/like Twitter. I remain because I still follow a lot of people on Twitter (news/tech/journos). There is not one single place that still has a majority of them apart from twitter.
    - RamenJunkie_ 3y ago
      They basically all have substack newsletters, just move there
- minimaxir 3y ago
  > If you’re not willing to pay at least a dollar to post, maybe your content doesn’t have any value to the audience or platform. Said $1 fee would kill my audience, and therefore my incentive for posting there. It's an inverse network effect, and why bad changes to social networks cause the death spiral effect.
glimshe 3y ago
The question is how much value Twitter is adding to people's lives. Netflix costs almost 200x this proposed price and yet it has over 200M subscribers. We got so used to free, but we all know that there is no such thing as free; today the only source of income for many web companies is to sell your data. So what if it loses engagement, I'd rather pay a bit for Twitter than the status quo which is getting followed by scam porn bots. I like seeing more and more services becoming paid like, well, everything else in life. You don't get free haircuts while watching 30 minutes of ads. This actually helps competition by taking some power and leverage away from the big ads cartels.
- rurp 3y ago
  But... Twitter users who pay will still be tracked constantly, see targetted ads, and run into tons of spam bots. But now they have to trust Twitter with their payment information for the privilege.
  - glimshe 3y ago
    Just wait until an ad-free option costing a lot more. Netflix, Hulu etc also have cheaper ad-supported plans. Regarding bots, it will be progressively harder to run a bot farm if you have to pay fees.
mgiannopoulos 3y ago
This is for new accounts only. Not existing ones.

toomuchtodo 3y ago

> This is going to kill engagement. Maybe! The people who are still left must really like Twitter. I think charging a token amount to limit who can post from a Sybil attack mitigation perspective might actually be reasonable, and it’s exciting that someone who doesn’t care if they lose is willing to perform the experiment. If you’re not willing to pay at least a dollar to post, maybe your content doesn’t have any value to the audience or platform. I’d pay $1 to keep posting here (probably more! But don’t tell the YC folks).

greenie_beans 3y ago
i don't really like twitter. it's just where most of my network still hangs out online (for now).
iamdelirium 3y ago
Yes, the people remaining are addicted to/like Twitter. But this is the equivalent of imposing a sin tax on it and it will cost Twitter engagement like sin taxes lower alcohol or smoking. It will probably lose them even more money as their primary income is ads and lower engagement will drive advertising incoming even lower. Like all of new X/Twitter's changes, it doesn't seem to have any foresight or insight into the product at all.
- joegahona 3y ago
  Sounds like this fee is for new accounts only.
  - toomuchtodo 3y ago
    Existing accounts would be seasoned, and they can filter existing bot accounts over time.
- lysp 3y ago
  > Yes, the people remaining are addicted to/like Twitter. I remain because I still follow a lot of people on Twitter (news/tech/journos). There is not one single place that still has a majority of them apart from twitter.
  - RamenJunkie_ 3y ago
    They basically all have substack newsletters, just move there
minimaxir 3y ago
> If you’re not willing to pay at least a dollar to post, maybe your content doesn’t have any value to the audience or platform. Said $1 fee would kill my audience, and therefore my incentive for posting there. It's an inverse network effect, and why bad changes to social networks cause the death spiral effect.

glimshe 3y ago

The question is how much value Twitter is adding to people's lives. Netflix costs almost 200x this proposed price and yet it has over 200M subscribers. We got so used to free, but we all know that there is no such thing as free; today the only source of income for many web companies is to sell your data. So what if it loses engagement, I'd rather pay a bit for Twitter than the status quo which is getting followed by scam porn bots. I like seeing more and more services becoming paid like, well, everything else in life. You don't get free haircuts while watching 30 minutes of ads. This actually helps competition by taking some power and leverage away from the big ads cartels.

rurp 3y ago
But... Twitter users who pay will still be tracked constantly, see targetted ads, and run into tons of spam bots. But now they have to trust Twitter with their payment information for the privilege.
- glimshe 3y ago
  Just wait until an ad-free option costing a lot more. Netflix, Hulu etc also have cheaper ad-supported plans. Regarding bots, it will be progressively harder to run a bot farm if you have to pay fees.

mgiannopoulos 3y ago

This is for new accounts only. Not existing ones.