X starts experimenting with a $1 per year fee for new users | Hacker News Reader

X starts experimenting with a $1 per year fee for new users

techcrunch.com

19 pointsistotex20 comments

This isn't a new idea, and I've seen similar is some old/small forums.

Usually it gets refunded after a certain time if you weren't banned. The idea isn't to actually charge, but to make it unprofitable to spam. If your amortized profit is $0.01 per spam post, or less, then having to pay a dollar, or really any money is a big show-stopper.

I don't think the point is what they are charging, but the fact they are charging anything. Probably more interesting to them is the amount who don't create an account when presented with a payment screen.

This is just the "put your credit card details there for easy recurrent purchases pls" strategy

100% they will introduce paid likes/priority comments

if your trying to create the next payment app you need credit cards.

They already did. Twitter blue included a verified message queue and I'm pretty sure the were boosting verified users posts.

It's not about the $1, it's about getting payment information into Twitter. It reduces the friction for the next charge.

It seems like it would cost X more than $1 in fees to process such a small amount.

I operate a service a with an option that charges $1/month. We end up netting about 42 cents per subscription, but really the exercise is more about making the service available to people who might not otherwise be able to afford it than it is about a cash grab.

Are you accounting for the FTE overhead to make sure this works?

It's all pretty automated at that level. To be clear, it will likely never pay off the initial cost of implementation, but the volume is low and we can afford it. Also it pays off as a component of our funnel since about 20% of these users end up upgrading at some point.

>really the exercise is more about making the service available to people who might not otherwise be able to afford it than it is about a cash grab.

This is an idea I've been thinking about a while. Can we chat? Email on my profile.

From https://webmonetization.org/ :

> Web Monetization provides an open, native, efficient, and automatic way to compensate creators, pay for content, and support crucial web infrastructure.

> Why Now?: Until recently, there hasn't been an open, neutral and cost-efficient protocol for transferring money. Interledger provides a simple, interoperable, and currency-agnostic method for the transfer of small amounts of money.

> Web Monetization is being proposed as a W3C standard at the Web Platform Incubator Community Group.

W3C Interledger Protocol works with any type of ledger.

From "Anatomy of an ACH transaction" (2023) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36503888 :

> The WebMonetization spec [4] and docs [5] specifies the `monetization` <meta> tag for indicating where supporting browsers can send payments and micropayments:

  <meta
   name="monetization"
   content="$wallet.example.com/alice">

$1 a year is too low to be worried, but there may be an ulterior motive.

pay with X.

As someone who works in the antibot space for a FAANG, this type of solution can actually be very effective initially. Bad adversaries will adjust their TTP's (Tactics, techniques and procedures) accordingly - I wouldn't be surprised if ATO (account take overs) rise to compensate for paywalling on new accounts.

I really respect the dedication to removing the huge problem of bots in the social space and I feel the ripple effect could be tremendous if a big dent is made.

Hope we can use wallet-code and noscript/basic (x)html browsers.

Metafilter does something like this, where you have to pay a fee to sign up.

But Metafilter’s fee is only one time; not annual like X is proposing.

Ah, I missed that somehow. You are correct.

Can I mail cash? That would be ok.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com