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Comment by esotericimpl | Hacker News Reader

Charge them $10 to create an account (anonymous, real, parody whatever), then if they break a rule give them a warning, 2 rule breaks, a 24 hour posting suspension, 3 strikes and permanently ban the account.

Let them reregister for $10.

Congrats, i just solved spam, bots, assholes and permanent line steppers.

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This is how the SomethingAwful forums operated when they started charging for accounts. Unfortunately it probably wouldn't be useful as a test case because it was/is, at it's core, a shitposting site.

I think metafilter still does this ?

And twitter isn't?

Unless you generate more than $10 from the account. For example in presidential election years in the US billions is spent in advertising the elections. A few PACs would gladly throw cash at astroturf movements on social media even at the risk of being banned.

Sounds good to me. That would mean that your energy in moderation would directly result in income. If superpacs are willing to pay $3.33 a message, that's a money-spinner.

This was the strategy at the SomethingAwful forums. They seemed pretty well moderated, but definitely never hit the scale of Reddit or Twitter.

Having posted there in its heyday, it made for an interesting self-moderation dynamic for sure. Before I posted something totally offbase that I knew I'd be punished for, I had to think "is saying this stupid shit really worth $10 to me?". Many times that was enough to get me to pause (but sometimes you also can't help yourself and it's well worth the price).

You solved bots, but destroyed the product.

I mean, who here remembers app.net? Love the Garry Tan endorsement! https://web.archive.org/web/20120903182620/https://join.app....

EDIT: Lol Dalton's PART of YC now. Hey dude, why not pitch it then

I don't even know if it solved bots. Rich countries, rich organizations, rich people could do a lot. $100M would buy you 10M bots.

I think the idea is that it shifts the incentives. Sure, a rich nation state could buy tons of bot accounts at $10 a pop. But is that still the most rational path to their goal? Probably not, because there are lots of other things you can do for $100M.

The problem is the meaning of those rules. Any rule looks reasonable when it is written down. And after some time it becomes a weapon.

For instance, the three deletions (forget the exact term) rule in wikipedia. It is now a tool used by “the first to write”…

This kind of thing worked for a few forums that tried it before FB/Twitter came around.

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