X begins charging new users $1 a year in New Zealand, Philippines • Hacker News Board

Re: X begins charging new users $1 a year in New Zealand, Philippines

#91

Post by prepend » Wed, Oct 18, 2023, 6:56 PM UTC

SXX wrote: post #23

prepend wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s not the $1, it’s the identity linked to the charge. So now they can be blocked as well as traced back to the funding account. I once was in a charity sponsored therapy group and they had a $10 fee. I was annoyed as this was a pretty wealthy organization and the fee seemed discriminatory, or at least a hassle. I learned that it was just there to validate each participant. So I think this is just a filter to help…

If X or Twitter or whatever accept payments via Apple Pay or Google Pay then there is absolutely no way to track anything. It's those services simply dont provide any information back to ex-Twitter. Also there is number of services like privacy.com that allow to hide real card details. And even if person is using real card then payment process have absolutely no way of knowing anything except those few last numbers o…

Apple and Google absolutely have fraud capability and will cooperate with merchants and law enforcement.

Re: X begins charging new users $1 a year in New Zealand, Philippines

#92

Post by prepend » Wed, Oct 18, 2023, 7:00 PM UTC

SXX wrote: post #84

axelthegerman wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> payment process have absolutely no way of knowing anything except those few last numbers of the card This is just plain wrong. 1. Payment processors know everything because they process the payment 2. Application developers don't know anything besides the last 4 is closer to reality because they're probably not PCI compliant to access the remaining information. BUT some processors such as Adyen will try to provide…

> 1. Payment processors know everything because they process the payment They know all the information you given, but in practice they can't even verify "name on the card" that you entered in most of countries. In some countries they can check your billing address ZIP code, but that's all about it. And there absolutely no way for them to find out if you are unique user with one card or you just have 10 cards for the…

Apple and Google and Stripe do not allow the same card on multiple accounts.

Also, having a fraudulent Apple Pay account is pretty rare and requires an entire apple account. That can be shut down if shenanigans.

My original point is that having a credit card greatly reduces the anonymity of accounts and allows for greater ability to trace back to the user. Both for uniqueness (ie, does prepend front 500 twitter accounts?) and for legal reasons (eg, prepend just did a crime, let’s find out who prepend is).

This doesn’t mean people can’t get around it. It means most people can get around it.

Re: X begins charging new users $1 a year in New Zealand, Philippines

#93

Post by Ensorceled » Wed, Oct 18, 2023, 7:10 PM UTC

prepend wrote: post #89

Ensorceled wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are a ton of blue check bots right now and that is more that $1/year. It might eliminate some of the like bots and other noise, but might also make the blue check bot network cheaper to run.

It doesn’t need to eliminate all bots, just reduce the number. And I think there are far fewer blue check bots to regular, free bots.

In my personal experience, the bot problem is actually worse than it used to be.

Re: X begins charging new users $1 a year in New Zealand, Philippines

#94

Post by littlestymaar » Wed, Oct 18, 2023, 9:59 PM UTC

prepend wrote: post #16

hliyan wrote: post #4

I worry that this may paradoxically increase bots, because now the price of legitimacy is $1 per year. Bot farms and shills will do the math.

It’s not the $1, it’s the identity linked to the charge. So now they can be blocked as well as traced back to the funding account. I once was in a charity sponsored therapy group and they had a $10 fee. I was annoyed as this was a pretty wealthy organization and the fee seemed discriminatory, or at least a hassle. I learned that it was just there to validate each participant. So I think this is just a filter to help…

It only works if you ban them in the first place!

Given the current policy around blue tick (which is full of crypto bot and onlyfan sex workers, without any reaction from Musk whatsoever) I doubt it will have any effect.

Also, World of Warcraft servers are full of bots, despite needing to pay to create and keep an account, so again it doesn't bode well.

Re: X begins charging new users $1 a year in New Zealand, Philippines

#95

Post by aurareturn » Thu, Oct 19, 2023, 2:38 AM UTC

noirscape wrote: post #85

ffwszgf wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s not like there’s no precedent for this. Look at all the rules WeChat was able to ignore due to their size and influence. I assume Elon expected a similar treatment for Twitter.

WeChat is backed by the CCP, aka the government with a military and de facto legal control over Apples factories. If they don't comply with WeChats requests, the CCP can ban Apple from doing business in China, with force if they have to. Hence, Apple complies. That's where the precedent comes from - WeChat (as well as basically all major Chinese companies) carry state backing to force their way. Musk has afaict no ba…

You're overreaching. Can the Chinese government force WeChat to provide data to the government? Yes. But WeChat is a private product built by a private company. In addition, WeChat has a ton of competitors inside China as well. These competitors can overtake WeChat. The government isn't preventing competitors from competing directly with WeChat.

WeChat is literally just Tencent. I'm staying at a hotel next to Tencent office right now in Shenzen. There aren't any military people working here. Just engineers.

Read my post within this chain for why I think WeChat has a lot of power when it comes to getting Apple to create features it needs.