Anyway, all of luck to them. I'd like to know what might develop from this.
Though they really should have asked for two cents instead of ten. I mean, come on: how could you miss this?
I think people like to write things that others will read. How else to explain why people post so much on e.g. Facebook that is not informational or helpful to others but merely something they want others to read? Introspectively, I recognize that I enjoy commenting on Hacker News and am not exactly doing it wholly out of the goodness of my heart for the benefit of all of you.
"Shitposting" in it's strictest sense is very much an example of the latter, because it's a repeated pattern of stupid behavior which doesn't even qualify as joking, and which is repeated regardless of whether people pay attention to it or not. It's like drawing swastikas on bathroom stalls.
We're very focused on creating money-earning opportunities for our users. Every time you pay you should either get some thing out of it or have an opportunity to earn money.
For creators, if you write something worth paying, you can easily generate more than the 10¢ it costs to post. If you charge 10¢, you only need one payment to earn your money back :)
Based on perceived value, I think that the fee for posting should be negative (it costs to post), but with a small amount recouped based on use (some combination of number of views, number of comments, etc.). Beyond a certain threshold of viewers, the posting would have a net positive cost (you get paid for popular posts).
I have not given much thought to how that could be gamed.
> Though they really should have asked for two cents instead of ten.
I absolutely agree.