> I have a small userbase, but zero issues with spam and abuse.
You have zero issues with spam and abuse because you have a small user base, not because of the fee.
Twitter has TONS of paid accounts for spam.
You have zero issues with spam and abuse because you have a small user base, not because of the fee.
Twitter has TONS of paid accounts for spam.
Second: scale. Twitter has millions of users, it is not profitable and is suing advertisers in a desperate attempt to justify its lack of revenue. Let's just say that a miracle happens and I get my dream number of paid accounts (10k at $29/year). The operation would be profitable enough to pay myself more than I ever made in any job and still contribute back to the downstream projects. I could literally close registrations on my service, or start a different vetting process.
On top of that, they are effectively paying per word to post through paying for tokens. This does not stop them.
Assuming the Fediverse was as popular as Twitter/FB, they could simply run their own instances, no need to pay for access through any specific server.
Anyway, my point is that charging for access to a network where access is already open is good enough for a filter to avoid spam originating from your node. Spammers are not going to be interested in paying $29/year to be able to send posts via Mastodon when they can just create a bunch of accounts on servers with open registrations or simply running their own botnet.
Hell, I don't even have to be a complete cynic to make the argument that basically any news piece today only gets to be written if it serves the economic interests of its publisher. That is valid from the NYT and Washington Post to an indie game developer talking about their project on Mastodon.
If everything is "spam", then there is no ham. If there is no ham, there is no way to build an classifier. If there is no way to build a classifier, then what is the problem we are trying to solve in the first place?
Bots spreading misinformation are bad and a problem on Twitter/Facebook/TikTok, sure. But the reason that an entrance fee does not solve this problem is because these networks are built on the idea of controlling what content people get to see. On the "open social web", people are in charge, there is no "algorithm" and manipulation becomes a lot harder.
No? That doesn't mean they aren't spam, though.
And then what? No one is going to navigate an instance that is just spam, and other instances will promptly block them.
There was a spam wave some months ago. The spammers were using Mastodon and Sharkey instances that had open registrations. They were not signing up to paid-only instances to become "legit".
The worst I see on Twitter when I peek in come from checkmarks. Cryptocurrency shills are some of the worst offenders and they seem to have taken over.
That looks to be retrofitted, not the origin of the term.