Comment by programjames
8 hours ago
I think anonymity is important for some kind of coordination problems (e.g. against an authoritarian government). A better solution is to have a nominal fee, maybe $10/yr to be platformed, that way it's expensive to bot.
this is solid but if I am China what is $400,000,000 to spend on 40,000,000 bots that now we think are real people…
That's about as much as United States Presidents spend on their campaigns, so it's actually quite a lot. Especially if it gets noticed and shut down.
Yeah I think anonymity is important to have available. But I wish not every single social media platform was trivial to bot.
(GP and I disagree on whether every platform should require it)
Well, the issue with coordination is you need everyone already there to coordinate. If people are only using the network for illegitimate uses, then it will get shut down (think 4chan, Silk Road). Really, it's in the authoritarian government's best interest (not the people's) to make multiple platforms. Most people will choose the free one, so it's 10–100x cheaper to either bot the pay-for-anonymity platform or shut it down when they notice it formenting unrest.