Meta SN: Should we raise posting costs? \ stacker news ~bitcoin

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489 sats \ 28 comments \ @k00b 30 Sep 2022 bitcoin

Recent is getting pretty noisy and is a chore to wade through. By increasing posting costs we should be able to raise the bar on quality some. Rational actors would only post a story they think will allow them to recuperate their costs.

What say you?

1 sat (I like noise)10.3%

10 sats46.6%

100 sats25.9%

1000 sats8.6%

other (explain in reply)8.6%

58 votes \ poll ended

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1756 sats \ 3 replies \ @Wumbo 30 Sep 2022

Just a thought: How about a limited block size model? There is only so many post allow per a particular time frame. As the noise level rises so does the posting cost, like the mempool.

If sub pages get created they could have there on mempool separate from each other.

100 sats \ 0 replies \ @thrown 30 Sep 2022

Oh then we can adjust the block size dynamically based on the number of users! Oh wait, that would be monero news 😂

15 sats \ 1 reply \ @k00b OP 30 Sep 2022

Fun idea

181 sats \ 0 replies \ @notgeld 30 Sep 2022

Yes. I also think it should be rather dynamic.

517 sats \ 4 replies \ @DarthCoin 30 Sep 2022

I notice also that people post same news over and over, even if it was already posted, same source or different source, or a tweet and next to it the real link but the same news.

This is annoying and distract attention. People should get used to read a bit previous messages BEFORE posting, not just dropping whatever is there, just to be posted.

20 sats \ 1 reply \ @k00b OP 30 Sep 2022

People are lazy, but perhaps higher posting costs would make them think twice.

10 sats \ 0 replies \ @lunaticoin 1 Oct 2022

I vote for higher publishing costs. We need PoW here

0 sats \ 1 reply \ @nullcount 30 Sep 2022

Lol these are bots, my guy.

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @k00b OP 30 Sep 2022

I don't think they are bots, but they could be.

210 sats \ 1 reply \ @ln123 30 Sep 2022

What does it currently cost?

I just noticed that the POST button / process does not actually tell you this info - perhaps that would be a start (if you don't know it's costing you something, you might be more likely to hit send on your shitpost)

EDIT - it's there on hover. 1 sat.

To me it doesn't make sense that it would be cheaper to post, than to reply.. So I'm voting 10 sats (but would also support 100)

1 sat \ 0 replies \ @k00b OP 30 Sep 2022

It costs 1 sat.

210 sats \ 0 replies \ @nerd2ninja 30 Sep 2022

I don't know. It is a little bit noisy, but even with the noise, I can still keep up with all the posts (I don't have wild west mode turned on).

181 sats \ 0 replies \ @nout 30 Sep 2022

I'd say a valid approach is try one of those numbers for couple days and see what happens. Another approach is splitting users into 2 groups and one pays X and the other one pays Y and then measuring the effect (i.e. if raising the prices actually reduces spam and how much SN earns from spam). Here you can apply all new proper H0 & experiment design skills.

Just trying to brainstorm through the context from the other side of the problem (and I'm going to be making stupid math assumptions, so don't read too much into it):

How much time do users spend consuming posts and how many sats on average they spend?

The user side of the pairing is that they have let's say ~1hr per day to consume the best posts that match their needs and interests.
The users are willing to pay at least [average sats] for this.
Let's say that users want at least 80% of good content vs bad to make it worth it.
Users can spend 20% of their time on curating the bad content without getting annoyed and leaving the site forever. So this would mean 10 minutes per day can be spent on curation.
With 2k users this would give 333 hrs of "free" curation work per day (but likely way less)
333/[average time to recognize spam]/[people needed for spam consensus] = number of spam posts the SN can handle per day

100 sats \ 0 replies \ @0322ee777777 30 Sep 2022

I am guilty of making a dumb post within the last week because it was free, even 10 sats should be a good boost in noise, could always do more later if needed.

289 sats \ 0 replies \ @pi 30 Sep 2022

Start with an initial price p. Increase the price exponentially after every x posts. Reset the counter every y hours.

I suggest p = 100, x = 2, y = 24.

155 sats \ 2 replies \ @random_ 30 Sep 2022

There is already a mechanism for reducing noise (flagging).

You said yourself, 98% of users are lurkers. A price increase would make this figure worse.

I don't think this would be a good idea.

100 sats \ 1 reply \ @ek 1 Oct 2022

I think they don't even know how much it currently costs to post something.

I see lurkers as visitors who aren't registered so they can't post anything, anyway.

5 sats \ 0 replies \ @k00b OP 1 Oct 2022

True, lurkers are not signed in. And we'd only be increasing posting costs, not commenting cost.

35 sats \ 3 replies \ @Lux 1 Oct 2022

suggestion: when a post was already shared make the price of copy 10x

482 sats \ 2 replies \ @cointastical 1 Oct 2022

The problem I think this would solve is where a second person wants to post a link for a news article that was already posted. This could be due to any of:

ignores the "dup" warning as can still earn sats regardless
ignores the "dup" warning as trying to promote the article itself (e.g., by the author of the article) or wants to spread the good word (e.g., for a bullish story to help pump the price)
ignores the "dup" warning as an earlier post didn't get enough upvotes for front-page visibility, and hopes a second attempt at the right time of day will do better
didn't see the "dup" warning (dup check takes a second or two, so could hit post button before even being shown the "dup" warning)

This wouldn't solve where there are two URLs for the same content. E.g., when there's a URL using Google AMP, and the same article is at a link without the AMP. Or like for a blog post that is available either medium.com/@username as well as username.medium.com, etc., etc.

This higher price for re-post also wouldn't prevent someone from doing a Discussion post and then putting the previously posted link in the discussion post.

And then there is the case that a high fee to re-post could result in some re-posts targeted innocently. For instance, there are some links that have new info but at the same URL. For example, the link announcing new Electrum releases is always at their /download link (without any unique page for each release). Or a website that was just a landing page when the site was announced (e.g., with a waiting list sign up) and then weeks later when the second post occurs, it is for the site when the service is ready / live launch.

That being said, I like your suggestion -- with some variation to accommodate the last use case (same link, but after some amount of time passed it could have new/different content).

25 sats \ 1 reply \ @Lux 2 Oct 2022

yes, what I was thinking, but didn't put the work to write ;) have a few sats sir makes me think, could there be a method to detect same title or same content regardless of different url? AI maybe? content indexing like search engines? dunno

275 sats \ 0 replies \ @cointastical 2 Oct 2022

The AMP duplicate issue is easy to fix. There's already Issue #138 in SN's Github repo for that. And for the case where there's a Description post with a link in it which was shared in a prior Link post was acknowledged as a possible problem, see Issue #150 on that. And there are some other issues on SN's Github related to improvements on dup detection (e.g., ignoring upper/lower case in URL, ignoring www. subdomain, ignoring m. subdomain (e.g, for youtube videos), etc.

could there be a method to detect same title or same content regardless of different url?

That could be done ... exact duplicate is easy. Simply store a hash of the response. If the hash for a new post matches the hash for a prior post, include the earlier as a potential dupe. That solves the case where there are two URLs that respond with identical content. That doesn't solve for something like where ZeroHedge reprints a Bitcoin Magazine article. In that instance they have a different hash but are essentially the same content.

There are anti-plagiarism services and duplicate content detection tools that could identify occurrences of that. But I don't think that a duplicate could be detected in real-time -- as SN doesn't know what prior post(s) should be looked at when there is a new post. Maybe doing the anti-plagiarism search against prior posts with similar words from the title would find duplicates but that would take longer than is reasonable to expect the user entering a post to wait.

Or simply there could be a mechanism for users to flag a post as being a duplicate, and some handling be done for that. Reddit does this, but their approach involves moderators who investigate -- something SN is designed to not need.

The duplicate posts is a minor inconvenience that I suspect bothers mostly only a small number of heavy users of SN. I can imagine there are other things to be done that are at a higher priority.

36 sats \ 0 replies \ @k00b OP 30 Sep 2022

Context

55% of posts get 10 sats or more 20% of posts get 100 sats or more 3% of posts get 1000 sats or more

Assuming rational actors (how Keynesian), with a 10 sat posting cost, we'd expect to see about 50% as many posts; with 100 sat posting cost, 20% the number of posts; and so on.

10 sats \ 0 replies \ @ken 30 Sep 2022

Pretty bold of you to assume I'm rational! (When it comes to currency, it shouldn't be national)

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @bitcointerest 16 Oct 2022

I think the cost should scale with the amount of posts a user makes per day. Or everyone csn start their day with 5 posts each costing 1 sat and after that each post will cost 10 sats.

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @DanielAngelovBG 1 Oct 2022

I would say if smth has already been posted (I think currently you are notified that it is already posted but it still costs 1 sat, correct me if I am wrong), increasing this to be 1000 sats would solve it.

Another idea I can think of is the time limit to be increased. Currently if I post a link it costs be 1 sat and 10 sats for the next 10 mins IIRC. Maybe you can increase it to be 50, but the time can be increased as well to lets say 30 mins or 1 hour, why not.

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @faithandcredit 1 Oct 2022

posting should be free :) or maybe there should be a subsription model, it cost x amount per month to be able to post freely

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @F 1 Oct 2022

It should start at 10 sats with each successive post within 30 minutes of the first adds +100, then +1000, then +10,000 etc. With big warnings in red saying how much it costs and why. "you are posting too much too frequently, so this post costs 10x as much as your last one."

something like this might work well and stop a lot of the link spam on the front page... or not. they might just make different accounts and post on those to circumvent.