Ask HN: Would you pay for a verified-only social network?

Remember when Musk said he was buying Twitter to solve the problem of Authenticating the World? This may have been what he was talking about.

I think the widespread reluctance to talk much about the concept stems from the power given to the Authentication Authority, whoever they wind up being. They become the arbiter of who or what can participate in society almost instantly. We don't have anyone we trust that much.

It is not a bad idea, but the problem with this is that social media is not a requirement in my life. Some people enjoy it, so you will probably find a market, but many people simply have lost interest in the entire concept of social media, and I am in that group.

You are on track to be asking about the interest level is in this, and I'd be sure to ask this question to a wide variety of demographics to understand exactly how much market potential really exists.

(At least from where I come from), we can only speak the truth when our identities are fake.

And the answer is no. You aren't putting the decentralized genie back in the bottle for anybody that still cares about social media.

With 100,000 tweets and a few tens of thousands of followers, I was terminally online for many years. I'm now much happier that I don't use it. Echo chambers are crap, and for anyone I want to talk to, I do.

I personally wouldn’t use it, because I have two kinds of persistent online circles: one for close friends and family. We talk via encrypted messaging, video calls, etc. Another is online study groups, language/framework forums, interest groups. Don't see the need of verification here. We meet face to face or over video call/chat. In such places, every active member knows other active members.

I just am disgusted by Facebook, LinkedIn, etc. I am there only because local bakeries, butchers, and laundries are there. Some acquaintances with whom I don't like to share my number are there, and I can reach them via messaging.

If you add a payment barrier, most people won't be there. And so local bakeries, butchers, and laundries won't be there. Why would I use it?

If you already have achieved something like FB (who am I kidding?), and I can't ignore your service, sure, I will pay for it.

And, if a GPT-4 bot is talking sense, I will chat with it in the public. Others can learn from it, or I can learn something from it- factual things.

And if I don't like a bot's line of talking- I will just block (or kick out) and move on.

That will absolutely NOT stop bots.

You probably mean the following?

> All users who are allowed to write/post are ID verified - All users who are allowed to write/post pay a monthly (1$ or so) fee"

In general I tend to want to warn you: ID verification is probably not a cheap thing to do (time-consuming, very difficult to provide an absolute "guarantee", refer to checks done to open a bank account).

Free + ads is a great business model. It works. There’s a reason all major consumer platforms work that way. The world, in general, is not ideologically hungup about ads like HN is. Also notice that most of HN‘s rhetoric doesn’t match their actions, most are using popular social media anyway.

AI dang? AI automoderating away calling someone names. AI weighing in on factual correctness? AI tagging? All things that might add value to an online forum. A lot of forums are post based, but I imagine that altering content ranking based on reputation might be interesting.

I'm not sure you have the right approach and until you have a network of users you have no value, so I'm not sure why anyone would pay.

I don't think you've thought about your very real bootstapping problem enough. I think your bootstrapping problem is big enough that it dominates all other considerations. What's going to make people come to your site? After you have an answer to that, you are probably going to pivot away from what you think you're building right now anyway.

What's the business model if there is no advertisement and only 1$ subscription?