4 ms·

Eventually HN is going to need to charge people $1 to post, just for spam filtering. Maybe donate the money to open source or something.

carra 7mo ago
Charging money does not seem a very good idea in a site like this where you expect users to upload all the content. Also this would require credit card info which is a massive barrier, even if you were to charge just 1 cent.
- mirekrusin 7mo ago
  Pay with karma?
- throwaway81523 7mo ago
  No credit card. You have to send a $1 bill by snail mail, which is proof of "work" (mailing the bill) as well as $$. You enter the bill's serial number when you enroll the account, and the account activates when the bill arrives. You can be pretty anonymous this way. I once proposed a scheme like this where you would donate to charities who would post lists of serial numbers they had received, for this purpose, but it never got anywhere. Maybe we need it more now than we did then. I guess instead of mailing a $1 bill, if necessary it could be a hand drawn picture of a kitten (artistry not required). Authentication would involve checking the paper for pressure marks made by the pen. I wonder how many would take the trouble to fake that.
- briHass 7mo ago
  It worked for years for the SomethingAwful forums. A nominal charge for the ability to post, with plenty of 'timeout' chances for rehabilitation before an outright ban keeps out most of the junk. It feels wrong at first to pay for commenting on a forum, but the alternative is almost always a gentle slide towards a trash dump. AI means that slide is almost a vertical slope.
- phs318u 7mo ago
  Those of us old enough to remember Compuserve know that the cost of entry was exactly why the quality was so high. I was lucky enough that my employer paid for it. I was also active on various comp.os.* Usenet forums. Both were great sources of quality information but Compuserve stayed “high signal” for longer. Usenet - the birthplace of trolling - eventually degraded to the point of near uselessness. The signal was drowning in noise. Mainly because some people are just shitty. Which is worth remembering here. Behind every AI agent spamming HN (and everywhere else) is a human who thought this was a good idea. Why do they think that? Maybe that’s the line to pursue for how to deal with this issue.
reddalo 7mo ago
$1 is not going to stop people from spamming. It's just $1 after all...
dmix 7mo ago
That was Elon's idea for Twitter but the X membership scope grew in scope. $1/m sounds better.
gpm 7mo ago
$1 is an incredibly low price to pay for advertising and an incredibly high price to pay for legitimately interacting with a community. This would have the exact opposite of the intended effect.
janfoeh 7mo ago
Ooh, it's time to pull out the classics! Please feel free to check the boxes as you see fit, as I am currently too lazy to have Claude do it for me. Your post advocates a ( ) technical ( ) legislative ( ) market-based ( ) vigilante approach to fighting spam. Your idea will not work. Here is why it won't work. (One or more of the following may apply to your particular idea, and it may have other flaws which used to vary from state to state before a bad federal law was passed.) ( ) Spammers can easily use it to harvest email addresses ( ) Mailing lists and other legitimate email uses would be affected ( ) No one will be able to find the guy or collect the money ( ) It is defenseless against brute force attacks ( ) It will stop spam for two weeks and then we'll be stuck with it ( ) Users of email will not put up with it ( ) Microsoft will not put up with it ( ) The police will not put up with it ( ) Requires too much cooperation from spammers ( ) Requires immediate total cooperation from everybody at once ( ) Many email users cannot afford to lose business or alienate potential employers ( ) Spammers don't care about invalid addresses in their lists ( ) Anyone could anonymously destroy anyone else's career or business Specifically, your plan fails to account for ( ) Laws expressly prohibiting it ( ) Lack of centrally controlling authority for email ( ) Open relays in foreign countries ( ) Ease of searching tiny alphanumeric address space of all email addresses ( ) Asshats ( ) Jurisdictional problems ( ) Unpopularity of weird new taxes ( ) Public reluctance to accept weird new forms of money ( ) Huge existing software investment in SMTP ( ) Susceptibility of protocols other than SMTP to attack ( ) Willingness of users to install OS patches received by email ( ) Armies of worm riddled broadband-connected Windows boxes ( ) Eternal arms race involved in all filtering approaches ( ) Extreme profitability of spam ( ) Joe jobs and/or identity theft ( ) Technically illiterate politicians ( ) Extreme stupidity on the part of people who do business with spammers ( ) Dishonesty on the part of spammers themselves ( ) Bandwidth costs that are unaffected by client filtering ( ) Outlook and the following philosophical objections may also apply: ( ) Ideas similar to yours are easy to come up with, yet none have ever been shown practical ( ) Any scheme based on opt-out is unacceptable ( ) SMTP headers should not be the subject of legislation ( ) Blacklists suck ( ) Whitelists suck ( ) We should be able to talk about Viagra without being censored ( ) Countermeasures should not involve wire fraud or credit card fraud ( ) Countermeasures should not involve sabotage of public networks ( ) Countermeasures must work if phased in gradually ( ) Sending email should be free ( ) Why should we have to trust you and your servers? ( ) Incompatiblity with open source or open source licenses ( ) Feel-good measures do nothing to solve the problem ( ) Temporary/one-time email addresses are cumbersome ( ) I don't want the government reading my email ( ) Killing them that way is not slow and painful enough Furthermore, this is what I think about you: ( ) Sorry dude, but I don't think it would work. ( ) This is a stupid idea, and you're a stupid person for suggesting it. ( ) Nice try, assh0le! I'm going to find out where you live and burn your house down!

carra 7mo ago

Charging money does not seem a very good idea in a site like this where you expect users to upload all the content. Also this would require credit card info which is a massive barrier, even if you were to charge just 1 cent.

mirekrusin 7mo ago
Pay with karma?
throwaway81523 7mo ago
No credit card. You have to send a $1 bill by snail mail, which is proof of "work" (mailing the bill) as well as $$. You enter the bill's serial number when you enroll the account, and the account activates when the bill arrives. You can be pretty anonymous this way. I once proposed a scheme like this where you would donate to charities who would post lists of serial numbers they had received, for this purpose, but it never got anywhere. Maybe we need it more now than we did then. I guess instead of mailing a $1 bill, if necessary it could be a hand drawn picture of a kitten (artistry not required). Authentication would involve checking the paper for pressure marks made by the pen. I wonder how many would take the trouble to fake that.
briHass 7mo ago
It worked for years for the SomethingAwful forums. A nominal charge for the ability to post, with plenty of 'timeout' chances for rehabilitation before an outright ban keeps out most of the junk. It feels wrong at first to pay for commenting on a forum, but the alternative is almost always a gentle slide towards a trash dump. AI means that slide is almost a vertical slope.
phs318u 7mo ago
Those of us old enough to remember Compuserve know that the cost of entry was exactly why the quality was so high. I was lucky enough that my employer paid for it. I was also active on various comp.os.* Usenet forums. Both were great sources of quality information but Compuserve stayed “high signal” for longer. Usenet - the birthplace of trolling - eventually degraded to the point of near uselessness. The signal was drowning in noise. Mainly because some people are just shitty. Which is worth remembering here. Behind every AI agent spamming HN (and everywhere else) is a human who thought this was a good idea. Why do they think that? Maybe that’s the line to pursue for how to deal with this issue.

reddalo 7mo ago

$1 is not going to stop people from spamming. It's just $1 after all...

dmix 7mo ago

That was Elon's idea for Twitter but the X membership scope grew in scope. $1/m sounds better.

gpm 7mo ago

$1 is an incredibly low price to pay for advertising and an incredibly high price to pay for legitimately interacting with a community. This would have the exact opposite of the intended effect.

janfoeh 7mo ago

Ooh, it's time to pull out the classics! Please feel free to check the boxes as you see fit, as I am currently too lazy to have Claude do it for me. Your post advocates a ( ) technical ( ) legislative ( ) market-based ( ) vigilante approach to fighting spam. Your idea will not work. Here is why it won't work. (One or more of the following may apply to your particular idea, and it may have other flaws which used to vary from state to state before a bad federal law was passed.) ( ) Spammers can easily use it to harvest email addresses ( ) Mailing lists and other legitimate email uses would be affected ( ) No one will be able to find the guy or collect the money ( ) It is defenseless against brute force attacks ( ) It will stop spam for two weeks and then we'll be stuck with it ( ) Users of email will not put up with it ( ) Microsoft will not put up with it ( ) The police will not put up with it ( ) Requires too much cooperation from spammers ( ) Requires immediate total cooperation from everybody at once ( ) Many email users cannot afford to lose business or alienate potential employers ( ) Spammers don't care about invalid addresses in their lists ( ) Anyone could anonymously destroy anyone else's career or business Specifically, your plan fails to account for ( ) Laws expressly prohibiting it ( ) Lack of centrally controlling authority for email ( ) Open relays in foreign countries ( ) Ease of searching tiny alphanumeric address space of all email addresses ( ) Asshats ( ) Jurisdictional problems ( ) Unpopularity of weird new taxes ( ) Public reluctance to accept weird new forms of money ( ) Huge existing software investment in SMTP ( ) Susceptibility of protocols other than SMTP to attack ( ) Willingness of users to install OS patches received by email ( ) Armies of worm riddled broadband-connected Windows boxes ( ) Eternal arms race involved in all filtering approaches ( ) Extreme profitability of spam ( ) Joe jobs and/or identity theft ( ) Technically illiterate politicians ( ) Extreme stupidity on the part of people who do business with spammers ( ) Dishonesty on the part of spammers themselves ( ) Bandwidth costs that are unaffected by client filtering ( ) Outlook and the following philosophical objections may also apply: ( ) Ideas similar to yours are easy to come up with, yet none have ever been shown practical ( ) Any scheme based on opt-out is unacceptable ( ) SMTP headers should not be the subject of legislation ( ) Blacklists suck ( ) Whitelists suck ( ) We should be able to talk about Viagra without being censored ( ) Countermeasures should not involve wire fraud or credit card fraud ( ) Countermeasures should not involve sabotage of public networks ( ) Countermeasures must work if phased in gradually ( ) Sending email should be free ( ) Why should we have to trust you and your servers? ( ) Incompatiblity with open source or open source licenses ( ) Feel-good measures do nothing to solve the problem ( ) Temporary/one-time email addresses are cumbersome ( ) I don't want the government reading my email ( ) Killing them that way is not slow and painful enough Furthermore, this is what I think about you: ( ) Sorry dude, but I don't think it would work. ( ) This is a stupid idea, and you're a stupid person for suggesting it. ( ) Nice try, assh0le! I'm going to find out where you live and burn your house down!