EDIT: I know many people have a knee-jerk aversion to anything crypto, but this is not a scheme to make money. I would be happy to see this done with fiat as well, but IMO this is much easier to do with smart contracts.
I am very excited about the possibility of the Fediverse, and the potential for many experiments in instance governance. A problem that all instances must content with is trolling and spam. It seems very difficult to impose a cost on these bad actors without harming honest users as well. Either instances have minimal signup friction and are vulnerable to being overwhelmed with bad actors & defederated (see the recent defederation decision from Beehaw), or they present frustrating barriers such as manual approval or waitlists for folks who just want to have fun
A possible solution comes from the blockchain space, which has been dealing with anonymous bad actors since its inception. Many blockchains and blockchain apps require users to stake some asset in order to gain certain privileges (basically a deposit). If the user is determined to be a bad actor, they lose some or all of their stake.
An instance could be integrated with a smart contract to manage membership could be very effective at dissuading trolls and spammers. A user could stake a small amount of money (say $10) in order to create an account on the instance. This could be done very quickly and would require no manual approval from admins. If the admins determine they are acting poorly, they could ban the user and slash their funds. If an honest user decides they don’t want to stay on the instance, they could delete their account and recover their deposit.
(EDIT: An important part of this is that the funds are destroyed when slashed, not given to the admins or mods. This prevents a profit incentive to ban)
I’ve got a prototype smart contract for this. Would be interested in working with someone on this if there’s anyone with experience with the instance management
10$ is what my mom spends on food for my family right now doing surveys on QMee until my dad is finally able to get a job. I know I’m a rare breed in this respect. But if joining an instance cost money or crypto or whatever, that would be a HUGE barrier for entry for me right now because we’d have to decide between eating tonight or going on social media (I think you which choice I’d make.) I’d rather just wait to be vetted by a mod. I just did that, waited a few hours and joined Fostodon no problem.
I know 10 dollars doesn’t seem like a lot, and I have no intention to go all woe is me. But if Lemmy cost money, I’d just tough it out on Reddit or any number of centralized social media sites where at least it’s free.
I think it has merit but unfortunately I would NEVER want to be a part of that just because how tight things are right now.
And to put my money which I desperately need for other things just to have it stolen by a powermod because they’re looking for some extra cash would be demoralizing.
The beauty of Lemmy is that some instances could try this without affecting others. I am by no means asking for all Lemmy instances to be put behind a paywall
I’m sorry to hear about your family’s financial troubles. I hope things go work out :)