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Will charging for posts lead to higher social media content quality?

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Re: Will charging for posts lead to higher social media content quality?

#21
post #14

What's wrong with charging for an account and enforcing a clear ban-hammer for posts which violate a set of rules? That was SomethingAwful's model and it seemed to work well. Especially combined with their "Leper's Colony" where you could see what each person was temp/perm banned for. That seemed to scale well over time since you have a fixed cost to make an account as long as you aren't getting out of line. Charging…

The problem that comes to mind is that the site is required to grow in accounts in order to continue functioning. In the long term, you'd need to add additional sources of revenue.

Also why would the first users join? The site would be dead.

Re: Will charging for posts lead to higher social media content quality?

#22
post #2

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 beca…

(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 econom…

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?

Re: Will charging for posts lead to higher social media content quality?

#23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem that comes to mind is that the site is required to grow in accounts in order to continue functioning. In the long term, you'd need to add additional sources of revenue.

Also why would the first users join? The site would be dead.

Naturally the site owner would have a few hundred sock puppets they talk to themselves with, in order to bootstrap the social network. Growth hacking 101.

Re: Will charging for posts lead to higher social media content quality?

#26
Well for one it's not a given that rich people idea are inherently better than those of poor people.

Having gated access will not really slow down the wealthy kid,they won't even register the cost, being dwarfed by club prices and expensive lattes whatnot. So who is really the ones being left out from a paid social service?

People might naively think it'll filter low quality content. I just think online Rotary 2.0

Re: Will charging for posts lead to higher social media content quality?

#27

Well for one it's not a given that rich people idea are inherently better than those of poor people. Having gated access will not really slow down the wealthy kid,they won't even register the cost, being dwarfed by club prices and expensive lattes whatnot. So who is really the ones being left out from a paid social service? People might naively think it'll filter low quality content. I just think online Rotary 2.0

[deleted]

Re: Will charging for posts lead to higher social media content quality?

#28
post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

(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 econom…

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 c…

> 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?

Re: Will charging for posts lead to higher social media content quality?

#29
I guarantee this idea won’t work.

Despite the downsides, there’s not really anything better and more accessible than ads.

If you want to end ads, create a provably correct and robust system to know when a given person is looking at a given thing on a computer.

Once you do that, then the attention directly can be monetized without ads (of course it will be used for ads mainly as that’s the main use case)

Re: Will charging for posts lead to higher social media content quality?

#30

I guarantee this idea won’t work. Despite the downsides, there’s not really anything better and more accessible than ads. If you want to end ads, create a provably correct and robust system to know when a given person is looking at a given thing on a computer. Once you do that, then the attention directly can be monetized without ads (of course it will be used for ads mainly as that’s the main use case)

Not saying anything is better than charging for posts, dealing with adverts or most of social media content.

People need to get used to their content being worth what it’s really worth: nothing!

Content was only worth stuff when it was scarce.

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