# Public discourse in the age of AI: Do we need to charge people for the ability to post?

**URL:** <https://meta.discourse.org/t/public-discourse-in-the-age-of-ai-do-we-need-to-charge-people-for-the-ability-to-post/265044>\
**Category:** Community Building\
**Created:** [May 15, 2023, 11:22am UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/public-discourse-in-the-age-of-ai-do-we-need-to-charge-people-for-the-ability-to-post/265044 "2023-05-15T11:22:11Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 1\
**Showing post:** 2

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**Author:** ![Mevo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/meta/user_avatar/meta.discourse.org/mevo/32/187732_2.png) [@Mevo](https://meta.discourse.org/u/Mevo)\
**Post date:** [May 18, 2023, 4:24pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/public-discourse-in-the-age-of-ai-do-we-need-to-charge-people-for-the-ability-to-post/265044/2 "2023-05-18T16:24:23Z")

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> [@spirobel](#):
>
> Would be glad to hear your thoughts on this!

Well, this is a nice post and an interesting idea.

To start by stating the obvious, **a forum needs participation**. Ideally quite a lot of it. There might also be a point where there is too much. Starting a forum and making it get traction isn’t necessarily easy. The problem here is you might make finding participants more difficult. And getting the forum rolling initially far more difficult.

On the other hand, your idea may be beneficial for the “quality” of the participation. Although this isn’t a given either. You may very well end up with some people who don’t care about the money and consider they are now entitled to behave however (badly) they want. Some weird psychological effect of money on most people might favor the former rather than the latter.

I like this quote very much:

> _ **There are no solutions. There are only trade-offs.** _ --Thomas Sowell

The real question is one of **offer and demand**. Why would people pay to post? You answered that, admittedly, but for a news portal where the content is created by the site and people pay to comment under it. If there isn’t any comment, or just a few, that’s perfectly fine. I even see more and more news sites simply not having a comment section anymore. If you would be willing to remove it entirely, going a paid route seems easy. For a forum, not so much.

Currently, most paying models in community sites are optional and often launched afterwards, when there is already a wide user base. It’s often a “premium” model.

What is really the incentive of paying to have the privilege of being the one creating the content too? 😆  
Only being among other paying members and the overall effect it has on the atmosphere in that community may be an incentive. I’m not sure, but maybe that could work well.

One step further, which would be very suited with cryptocurrencies, could be to **redistribute part or total of the proceeds to the “good content” creators**. How do you judge about that is one question. The other big question is about the negative side effects such a model might have.

There is an argument people are already paying on many sites by being served ads. As often said “if something is free, YOU are the product”. Redistribution also occurs on many sites, but is usually also the proceeds from ads. Not money directly from other members, and not according to likes or such judgments, if you were to use that to determine what content is more deserving.

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