Hacker News Reader

Comment by Freak_NL | Hacker News Reader

Even if you beat the network effect and become the next Facebook/Twitter/Whatever, charging $1 per post will inevitably lead to silencing poor, or even comparatively poor people — which is most of the world.

With a pay-to-post model like this you would effectively place a filter on who can join in, and just get another niche social media website, and many people will still want to check Facebook/Twitter/Whatever because all their friends and relatives are still there and can't see why moving to a service where they would have to pay would benefit them.

> By the way, we're looking for embassadors, […]

Well that's ambarrassing.

View on HN

The charge could scale with audience size. For audiences of < 10K (or 100K), the fee could be zero to keep community groups from being charged. In some sense, this could be a proxy for compensating wasted aggregate human time -- or a tax on social media for (social) environmental damage remediation.

(Of course, it's not "your" social media account causing damage...)

My suspicion is that a long cool-down timer (e.g. every post takes XX minutes to launch) may be better. Something would probably have to be carved out for following breaking news (e.g. perhaps you get to punt the timer for 12 hours once a month).

Seems their plan is for public posts to be $1/post but "Posts among friends will always be free."

I imagine if they become successful they can look into lowering the public post price depending on a person's region. Let's leave aside how they'll go about determining that, VPNs, and such; that's something for the future.

> charging $1 per post will inevitably lead to silencing poor

On social media. (One of them.) Is that objectively worse than the current tax on the time and attention of the poor that is modern advertising?

The difference is that one is opt-out and the other is opt-in (with a charge associated).

Anyone can choose to opt-out, however by charging for opt-in you're putting up barriers for those that don't have the same disposable income.

So to answer your question, yes, it is objectively worse.

(These are harsh points of view and not necessarily ones I hold. I'd like them to be savagely attacked for the sake of discussion.)

- If you are poor, maybe you should be searching for work or other betterment of your situation rather than posting on social media? Maybe it should be free to view posts tagged and verified as "Help Wanted"?

- Why are poor people entitled to use a social network just due to their economic status, especially since it seems to be a given that because a social network is a private company, it can deplatform users and remove posts as it sees fit?

- Why does the existence of ad-supported platforms where users are really transacting watching ads for using a service always lead to certain groups of people thinking that they are entitled to that company's services for free? No, you didn't have to pay $1/post to use Facebook but you are paying through data surveillance and ads. The poor person is going to get exploited either way.

- If someone doesn't see value in paying to post on social media, maybe I would like to have a space separate from them.

- What is the real difference between charging companies for allowing you to post ads on their platform and charging users to post content that isn't categorized as ads? Isn't all social media posts in a sense advertisement?

If you insist: There's a difference between destitute and poor. Someone working as a janitor with a unimpressive but acceptable salary, who has to pinch pennies to make ends meet, can still be a good poster. (Anecdotally, a lot of good Twitter posters seem to have lots of problems with student debt and the like.)

Obviously, it's not literally illegal. But it seems like you're not going to filter just for people who can afford to pay $1/month, but for people who are dumb enough to actually do it. Some rich people have interesting things to say; few (no?) rich people dumb enough to purchase money JPEG avatars do.

But if you're selling stuff to rich dumb people, you will pay to play in the same space too.

But then the community will leave and form a new island.

> Someone working as a janitor with a unimpressive but acceptable salary, who has to pinch pennies to make ends meet, can still be a good poster

I might be able to be a good race car driver, but does that entitle me to a free race car? Am I being oppressed because the race track won't buy me a race car?

It's not about being entitled to post. Rather, it's about creating a network with content created by people from a diverse set of backgrounds.

Consider Hacker News, specifically this submission [0] on "My Story as a Homeless Developer." If HN had a paywall to post, the readers wouldn't be able to learn from the story. Even if the person paid to post, the comment section might also not have included as many offers to support the writer from formerly homeless developers, as these people may not have been on the platform due to a retained habit of frugality.

The comparison to race car driving also isn't equivalent. It comparatively costs a near-negligible amount to allow one more user to create content on a platform, versus providing someone with a race car. Perhaps a comparison to a relatively low-cost sport (swimming, marathon running) would be more apt, though still flawed (for content creation isn't equivalent to a competitive sport).

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17936860

I really don't mean to sound cruel here, but humor me: If funds can help homeless software engineers, they can pay for their social media posts too.

> content creation isn't equivalent to a competitive sport

Why are scores (likes) kept and displayed then? Why do various platforms let vote count drive their algorithm?

>I really don't mean to sound cruel here, but humor me: If funds can help homeless software engineers, they can pay for their social media posts too.

Most would rather have funding for essentials or educational opportunities.

>Why are scores (likes) kept and displayed then? Why do various platforms let vote count drive their algorithm?

There can be competitive elements, but that doesn't contradict the observation that social media posting isn't exactly like swimming or running.

This seems beside the point. Whether or not poor people morally deserve friends, free time, and a social media presence, the reality right now is they have those things and they're not going away, so people are likely to stay on free-to-post sites, whether or not they can also afford paid sites, just to be able to consume the additional content.

This isn't at all a problem unique to social media. Look at HBO. I don't think anyone at all questions they had higher quality content than Netflix. Nonetheless, they got purchased by a media megaconglomerate with a mandate to produce more content, even at the cost of quality, because that is what it takes to compete with Netflix, because consumers largely prefer quantity over quality, especially when quantity comes at a lower cost.

It isn't that there is no market at all for higher-quality, heavily curated, paid, niche content. It's just a small market. Maybe this site can have a happy existence and provide a good experience for whoever ends up there. But it can't solve the problem of social media polluting the global information landscape because it can't put Facebook out of business.

Some people are poor because the country they live in doesn’t have a Silicon Valley or oil industry to prop up artificially high wages.

No one rich or poor is entitled to anything.

Why would people want to pay to post when no one is listening? Why would someone respond when it costs money.

Rich people stay rich by not wasting their money. What are people getting for paying to post? Why is the audience listening?

>Why are poor people entitled to use a social network

probably because anyone should be entitled to participate in the digital commons and have a social and public life rather than considering that some sort of luxury. Unless we want to go back to the 19th century when we stuffed the peasants into workhouses and treat them like stunted peons with no need for a cultural life.

And that criticism does apply to deplatforming and censorship as well. The privatization of the public sphere is a disaster for any country that considers itself a Republic consisting of active, democratic citizens.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com