I have seen many a democratic initiative ruined by trolls, bot accounts, duplicate accounts, and assholes. The best way to ensure that democracy doesn’t spiral into Haiti is to allow only financial contributors of $5 or more to vote (once the boss man has his contributions system up and running). You want to help build this community? OK, then put your money where your mouth is. To be clear, it should still be one vote per person, whether you donate $5 or $500.

  • @sorrybookbrokeEnglish
    1•1 year ago

    Ha, you think that’s a novel, try this on for size.

    To respond to your first point, I’d agree this would likely stop some trolls but those with such a low standard wouldn’t likely be that much of a concern once banned once or twice. The power trolls are the real concern, the ones who will do lasting damage, and the ones more than willing to “find” $100. Power trolls are more common than you think, kiwi farms has alot of people using it even after their anti-DDOS service got taken away. Look at 4chan too, they can be absurdly dedicated and have quite a few participants when they do a troll campaign.

    For your second though, a ban is against one account. With $100 over a good amount of time, that’s 20 accounts. You won’t get them all, it’s impossible to sort between alts and people who simply agree. Also, to reiterate but more clearly, that $100 doesn’t have to be theirs. You can buy credit cards, visa cards, and crypto wallets for cheap and they’re not exactly hard to find, or to steal yourself. 5 people, $25, can swing the vote easily. Especially with a smaller voting pool.

    to go off on a tangent:

    To prime my next point more so than to respond directly, Alot of damage can be done too while keeping it, mostly, clean. “Games journalism is in the gutter”, “look at IGN scores, they’re meaningless”, “You can’t trust anyone at major publications for their opinions if they’re all paid by these companies” to name some reasonable takes, primes the discussion for: “and look, this ‘woman’ had sex with a reviewer to get a better score”. (a fiction) “This girl is attempting to kill the game industry”, “(((they))) are using race to destroy your favorite games, the addition of blacks into this series is woke culture gone mad. Look at this girl, she has connections to blizzard. Look and this black character. Coincidence?” All real examples, directed at real people, but the point of the rest was to prime for their target. In those examples, small indie game devs who happened to be women, gay, or black were harmed.

    There are 15 unique "aye"s in this group, it’ll take 16 accounts to change the tides permanently. What happens when the question is “should we allow gamer-gate content” or another, more sinister group. Nazism is getting more and more frequent. What happens when the accounts are just for the voting, not the spread of hate? Will they get banned? not likely.

    All that is still a problem under other, non monetized systems but I’d like to re-iterate another point.

    This makes power five dollars. My concern is that this filters out most of the common users and allows in only the most power hungry. People online are extremely unlikely to pay 5 dollars for a service they love to use. We’re talking 5% of active users being an amazing turnover. What’s it going to look like when we sort out from the 17 accounts who voted today those willing to send money? I will not not be one of them. This doesn’t mean that only the most dedicated users get in, this simply means that those willing to spend money for power will have said power. This selects for the power hungry, and does nothing to stop the dedicated trolls who will slowly erode what they can towards their goal.

    The other methods will help with these trolls, even the more dedicated, but selecting for willingness to pay does, in my opionion, nothing to stop the real damage. It would stop the most blatant but as I’ve stated those are the most likely to get banned and stop. Our current system does nothing too but I would like to see this improve. As you’ve stated, direct demovracy without guard rails fails. We’ve tried democracy for only those willing to pay before too, and we see similarly terrible outcomes. As for my comment on

    True democracy. Only land owners paying members tm can vote

    even with a perfect outcome, no trolls come in due to the pay gate, the people voting will be selected for the most power hungry. I do think this should be off the table. I cannot see the people willing to pay for power being a good selection of the population to decide how it’s run.

    Luckily, lemmy allows users to decide their moseration. If we see this come into being, I will leave this instance, and lose very little. Our feet have a lot more power here my friend.

    • @Cracks_InTheWallsEnglish
      2•1 year ago

      So, it’s a novel fight you’re after eh!? (Just kidding, this will probably be much shorter. Edit: Narrator: It wasn’t)

      These are all very good points, and for the record it’s with our discussion in mind I cast my vote for nay with some reservations.

      At the end of the day, what I’m after is some proof of investment in the community for voting rights. I agree that a paywall alone for enfranchisement is, at best, insufficient, and at worst can create a scenario like you describe here. Perhaps I very much am underestimating the capabilities of power trolls (particularly as things grow in scope).

      Donation in tandem with other markers, though, can signal enhanced commitment to the instance. I’m going to be donating (@TheDude - even more if you can make a ‘sh.it.head’ t-shirt via CafePress or something happen!), though all that really says is I want to toss the instance admins a couple of bucks, admittedly nothing about my intentions or character. But doing that, and buying the tshirt, and posting often, and having conversations like the one we’re having now, I hope would signal that I am indeed commited to this little experiment.

      Re: dismal conversion rates for digital products/services with a ‘free’ option - you’re not wrong. But there’s another angle to this which I’ll mention not because it’s directly relevant to this discussion here but a broader consideration: if we’re really going to embrace decentralized, user-focused and enthusiast-supported platforms, at a certain level people are going to need to move away from this “I want it to be free as in beer” mentality. This will be, to understate it, difficult. Internet users have been inculcated to expect free-as-in-beer services in exchange for their personal information being bartered for so long that it’s now the standard MO of most popular services. But that’s not what is happening here. Electricity and costs for server upkeep exist, and while sh.itjust.works seems well positioned from a resource perspective it’s all currently based on these not being a burden to TheDude. At some stage, if you want nice stuff to still be there, you gotta chip in. If you can’t, you can still participate, but someone’s gotta foot the bill, and we can’t rely on that being TheDude (or any admin) forever.

      Giving some perks to encourage donation, including it being a factor re: rights to enfranchisement, could help keep the corporate shitheads away. “Naw, we the users are keeping it afloat, we don’t need your enshitification payout”. Edit: But, in keeping with my ‘Nay’ vote, let’s try some other stuff first re: ability to vote, particularly while overhead isn’t a pressing concern.

      • @sorrybookbrokeEnglish
        1•1 year ago

        Edit: I think I may have reported your comment? I saw the "report submitted dialog twice while writting, I hope that was a client side error. I made no such report.

        I can agree with the fact that we need money to continue this platform, and as long as voting remains free and I can do so without tying anything to my account or my person I will be donating (anonymously) too. My problem is with the quality of those willing to pay for power in this community. I see cosmetics in exchange for money as a better solution. I’m a developer, and will start to contribute to the project soon. If this is wanted, I can start to do the work needed to allow for cosmetic purchases. I’ve done similar work for other services before though never FOSS projects. Say, coloured names, gif banners, user flairs, or icons. Power in a community should not be a perk available to pay for. Money for power will not be beneficial to the long term survival of a platform.

        I understand your position is to not dismiss money being involved, but not to try this yet. I do disagree but I’m glad someones making the argument. It looks like the only “aye” was me, which was of course entirely serious. Descent is needed.

        For now there doesn’t seem to be much issue. If, and when, more restrictions are needed my personal preference would be for those voting to be selected, or to apply. This will, of course, be less open.

        My point is that money being a factor limits the amount of dedicated people involved, selects more towards the people willing to exchange money for power, and doesn’t stop the more dangerous bad actors.

        • @Cracks_InTheWallsEnglish
          3•1 year ago

          No worries, hopefully it’s just a bug and if not, I imagine it will be seen as the mistake it was.

          I think we’ll need to agree to disagree on the donation component, and that’s totally fine (though I think we do meet in the middle in that it should not be the deciding factor, and I’m happy to discard donation as a factor at all for at least the time being). Agreed that dissenting opinions are part of a healthy debate.

          Good discussion!

          Edit to add: If you’re taking requests I’d like flair that says ‘sh.it.head’ with old-school HTML ‘blink’ tag behaviour, please :) (j/k - unless?)