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Comment by haroldp | Hacker News Reader

> maybe an unintentional experiment in unintended consequences

Just charging $2 might be a huge improvement over reddit because it makes sock puppets cost too much to scale.

Paying out for upvotes, I fear will incentivize lowest-common-denominator content. If you go to a quality tech subreddit and sort by "Top" comments, they will mostly be memes. They won't be from an expert solving your very specific problem. And more generally, I worry it will reward that twitter-style, shrill political dunking, binary thinking, maximalism and in-group point scoring. This may be a recipe for an even more toxic r/politics.

Very interesting trying to puzzle out how a given incentive structure will play out in practice.

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I wonder though whether people will upvote differently knowing that there's real money involved.

Maybe for the better. I think personally I’d be more inclined to upvote posts/content that I enjoy if I knew it directly supported them.

Same reason I buy albums that I love despite me already having Spotify—to give back to the creators.

I was thinking this too. I'd be even less inclined to upvote low-effort posts, knowing that I'd also be paying them for that low effort. And more inclined to upvote high effort, less visible posts - both because I think they deserve my money more, and because being more upvoted = being more seen = getting paid more by others as well.

I'd also give out upvotes more sparingly overall, since upvoting a post reduces the amount my previously upvoted posts will get paid.

I keep thinking there should be two upvotes. One that is just internet points and one that is a paying-upvote.

That way you can interact with the site and upvote shitty memes as you normally would, but when it is time to be serious you'll using the paying-upvote instead.

Reddit kinda landes on a similar formula with Reddit gold.

I remember back in the Slashdot days their moderation system didn’t give out Karma points for “+1 Funny” moderations so you could make fun of a hysterical or simply wrong comment by upvoting. Also you could stack negative mods with funny mods to really nail their karma.

If I pay to upvote I’m not pushing meme for sure. Only content that I actually read and that I enjoy.

You don't pay to upvote, you pay to use the site and then upvoting changes where your money goes. It doesn't affect you are much you are paying.

> If you go to a quality tech subreddit and sort by "Top" comments, they will mostly be memes. They won't be from an expert solving your very specific problem.

Wouldn't it be highly coincidental if the Top posts contain a solution to your specific problem.

Do you actually think sock puppets will be too expensive? The value of the bot only has to be more than $2 to justify paying it for the bot operator, and if there is monetary incentive to get upvotes/attention seems like it could pencil out (if N bots can generate some multiplier of attention)

Actually, yes. many trolls do it simply because it's easy to do. adding even a $1 barrier to entry would cull a lot.

Ofc there are determined and financuially comfortable trolls out there that would still make a few dozen, but those few are easier to stamp out without the noise of low effort trolls.

>if there is monetary incentive to get upvotes/attention seems like it could pencil out

worst case, it helps pay for the server. But yes, this is the equivalent of a KS campaign being partially self-funded to make it seem like others are interested. There are likely dozens of other tricks that such a community would reveal.

> financuially comfortable trolls out there that would still make a few dozen

No, tens of thousands.

Nation state actors have troll armies, and $2 extra per astro turfing account would be coffee money compared to the salaries they already pay their trolls.

Websearch for 50 cent army

This doesn't work well. How do you pay the $2? With a credit card? Tens of thousands of accounts all with the same one? Tens of thousands of credit cards?

In a 50 army, one individual can be paid a third world wage to register free accounts all day long to post comments. The cost of $2 per comment would massively outweigh their wages.

China is not a third world country any longer. It's competing with the US and Xi is doing fine.

Tens of thousands of credit cards or phone numbers or whatever - why not, do you think that would be a problem for such a nation state actor

> China is not a third world country any longer.

You miss the point. A 50 cent army is feasible when you are paying third world wages. If Chinese wage increases price them out of the market, then you can just hire people from somewhere else. But it's the low wages that make such an attack possible. Low wages vs high wages don't matter much when you are spending $200/hr per soldier on Reddit account fees.

If China wants to launch a state-level attack on Reddit they are probably better off pressuring Tencent to pressure Reddit to just do what they want.

$200/h per person, you guessed.

I don't think it's a good guess,

nevertheless, for 10 000 people, it's nothing, it's coffee money for the CCP.

Interesting anyway to have heard your thoughts. Have a nice day (probably won't reply any more)

Sounds like I prime example of Moral Hazard where people would justify shitty behavior because they pay for it. It's also more difficult to ban people in one way or another because they are paying customers now.

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