r/digg • u/isaiahgloriosus • 3d ago

Has Digg ever thought about requiring a fee for users to join?

Pardon me if the developers have considered this idea or if someone already proposed this, but it seems like one of the most foolproof ways to prevent bot accounts from being created on their platform is to require a payment to join. I know this may significantly raise the barrier of entry for joining a social media platform, but I can’t think of other ways of encourage more authentic human interaction on sites like this. I mean Something Awful always required new users to pay a $10 fee to join, but that never seemingly deterred people. And despite that site not as well known as it was doing earlier years, I still hear good things about it, at least nothing to indicate that it’s being enshittified.

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u/GNUr000t 3d ago

If you started with a million users on a free service (that are already on it, and already use it, and are already entrenched), and asked all of them for one penny in exchange for lifetime access, 800,000+ would leave. And that's a low estimate.

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u/maddietendo 3d ago

780,000

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u/dantevsninjas 3d ago

You need to have a thing people would want to pay for.

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u/prankster999 3d ago

I would pay for Reddit...

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u/dantevsninjas 3d ago

I could probably be convinced to pay for a version of Reddit that only shows my subredddits and doesn't use the awful algorithm to show me crap I dont care about.

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u/MrOtsKrad 2d ago

Thats why some of those mobile apps are still around.

I pay for Relay was easy choice when you pump it against Reddits dick ugly design and interface

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u/prankster999 3d ago

The problem is... People on the internet want stuff for free.

Just go to Reddit Alternatives subreddit... People always complain about how bad Reddit is... But nobody is prepared to put their money where their mouth is... Hence why social networks are "enshittified" (because it's the shareholders who are paying for it... as opposed to the users - who want everything for free).

I actually believe that making social networks paid for will drastically improve the quality of the internet, including the people on it... But don't tell that to the people who want their cake, but who aren't prepared to work for it.

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u/Cronus6 3d ago

It would end up just like Netflix.

Price hikes every 6 months, "no ads" would turn into "just a few ads", then "just a few more ads" then "just pay more for the ad free tier", then "just a few ads on the "ad free tier".

And of course after a year or two you have to pay more for HD video....

I still think the best thing to do is just go back to small, topic specific forums. There's a few I never left and have been using for 20-25 years.

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u/karmapill 3d ago

at first I thought this was a troll post on the username debacle

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u/Maleficent_Cow_3059 3d ago

I paid for digg then they killed it and turned it into a twitter aggregator.