I do believe that charging for it is one way to create some friction, but it's not enough.
Twitter is full of blue checks that are just bots and automated reply guys.
I'm treating now all these bots as a stressor on our defense systems, and we will end up having to learn how to build a real Web of Trust, and really up our game on the PKI side. We also need some good Zero Knowledge proof of humanity that people can tie to their Keyoxide profile, so that we can just filter out any message that is not provably associated with a human.
Instead of building a Web of Trust, a better solution might be to find efficient ways of clustering people.
Look how civil and insightful this discussion is. Why? Because people have different "quality", even if it's not politically correct to talk about it, we all know it intuitively.
Imagine a forum, where all the HN-level people are gradually clustered together, all the rednecks with conspiracy theories, all the leftists dreaming of communism, all form their own independent echo-chambers.
Yes, echo-chambers are bad, but let's face it, you won't be able to change most people's opinions anyway. Don't agree with me? Go on reddit, try saying something "controversial", like "men can't get pregnant", see how many people you would be able to convince :)
> magine a forum, where all (...) form their own independent echo-chambers.
That would be a horrible nightmare. You are falling for the same identity politics trap of the ones you are implicitly criticizing. You being on HN makes you no better than the "others".
> you won't be able to change most people's opinions anyway.
Who cares about "changing most people's opinions"?
Twitter is full of blue checks that are just bots and automated reply guys.
I'm treating now all these bots as a stressor on our defense systems, and we will end up having to learn how to build a real Web of Trust, and really up our game on the PKI side. We also need some good Zero Knowledge proof of humanity that people can tie to their Keyoxide profile, so that we can just filter out any message that is not provably associated with a human.