3 ms·

A $10 one time not-an-asshole fee is totally reasonable. History also shows you can take a $10 fee and maintain quality on SomethingAwful for quite some time.

by bonesss 7mo ago

hinkley 7mo ago
I wonder how much that functions as an age gate since kids usually don't have credit cards?
pndy 7mo ago
Didn't that fee allowed to change account names of other users or something like that?
- deleted 7mo ago
  [deleted]
- yakattak 7mo ago
  You could pay another $10 (or maybe $15?) to change someone else's avatar.
ryandrake 7mo ago
I would probably not pay $10 to post on HN, but many spammers who expect some kind of tangible return would pay that, so the fee just makes the problem worse.
- munk-a 7mo ago
  The spammers wouldn't pay it once though - the idea is that it's a good way to scale moderation. Each time an admin needs to ban a user there is a 10$ subsidy supporting that action - and if the bots come back then they get to pay 10$ to be banned again. Assuming the money isn't wasted and is actually used to fund moderation 10$ is probably comfortably above the cost to detect and ban most malicious users.
  - jnettome 7mo ago
    That’s basically what Valve does on cheaters with premier accounts on cs:go/cs2. And the revenue still growing up.
  - Bender 7mo ago
    The spammers wouldn't pay it once though There are large swaths of spammers that indeed would not pay it. There are on the other hand plenty of NGO's that would pay it without a second thought to promote specific topics and dogpile on others. Those are the movements I would expect AI to take over if not already. AI does not sleep, humans do. AI won't miss the comments that groups believe need to be amplified or squelched.
- AngryData 7mo ago
  Yeah, I love HN, but I wouldn't pay and I know many if not the majority of other people wouldn't. It would increase quality for awhile for sure, but what happens a year or two down the road? It would kill the user count and reduce comments and become less valuable over time.

A $10 one time not-an-asshole fee is totally reasonable. History also shows you can take a $10 fee and maintain quality on SomethingAwful for quite some time.

by bonesss 7mo ago

A $10 one time not-an-asshole fee is totally reasonable. History also shows you can take a $10 fee and maintain quality on SomethingAwful for quite some time.

hinkley 7mo ago

I wonder how much that functions as an age gate since kids usually don't have credit cards?

pndy 7mo ago

Didn't that fee allowed to change account names of other users or something like that?

deleted 7mo ago
[deleted]
yakattak 7mo ago
You could pay another $10 (or maybe $15?) to change someone else's avatar.

ryandrake 7mo ago

I would probably not pay $10 to post on HN, but many spammers who expect some kind of tangible return would pay that, so the fee just makes the problem worse.

munk-a 7mo ago
The spammers wouldn't pay it once though - the idea is that it's a good way to scale moderation. Each time an admin needs to ban a user there is a 10$ subsidy supporting that action - and if the bots come back then they get to pay 10$ to be banned again. Assuming the money isn't wasted and is actually used to fund moderation 10$ is probably comfortably above the cost to detect and ban most malicious users.
- jnettome 7mo ago
  That’s basically what Valve does on cheaters with premier accounts on cs:go/cs2. And the revenue still growing up.
- Bender 7mo ago
  The spammers wouldn't pay it once though There are large swaths of spammers that indeed would not pay it. There are on the other hand plenty of NGO's that would pay it without a second thought to promote specific topics and dogpile on others. Those are the movements I would expect AI to take over if not already. AI does not sleep, humans do. AI won't miss the comments that groups believe need to be amplified or squelched.
AngryData 7mo ago
Yeah, I love HN, but I wouldn't pay and I know many if not the majority of other people wouldn't. It would increase quality for awhile for sure, but what happens a year or two down the road? It would kill the user count and reduce comments and become less valuable over time.