[rglullis]

Please be specific: how do you think it would be viable for spammers to create bots on Twitter (or any other social network) if it costs (at least) 1 dollar to set an account and if you still keep systems in place that can detect/report/suspend accounts that show bot behavior?

[jrflowers]

I agree with this. What many people do not realize with the ease with which anyone can spin up thousands of bots that absolutely sound human nowadays, spamming has never been more difficult or less rewarding.

All Twitter would have to do is invent and maintain software that reliably detects ai-generated text with zero false positives. Done and done.

Should they do that and the spammers still seem motivated, they would have to do something outlandish like employ large amounts of humans to replace the bots, which isn’t something that has ever been feasible for spammers.

People really underestimate quite a few things, like Twitter’s ability to simply invent bot-fighting software of heretofore unseen power and complexity, the difficulty spammers have accessing dollars and other resources, and how unmotivated and prone to giving up spammers tend to be.

[rglullis]

Sarcasm aside (did you use chatGPT to try to make a point here?), the argument is not that charging makes spam impossible but that it makes economically inviable.

Just assume that it costs one dollar to sign up. The "spam-detecting" algorithm doesn't need to be foolproof. It just needs to find the spammer by the 10th message to effectively make each message cost $0.10 to be sent. What type of scam/spam has such a high ROI that can justify this operation for long?

[jrflowers]

I agree. It makes spamming economically unviable because spammers do not have the resources or motivation to game the system. A scenario in which spammers adapt instantaneously and still find a way to profit is patently unthinkable.

Someone less adept might suggest something like “spammers could pivot to higher profit-per-target activities to make up for the cost by (for example) pushing crypto rug pulls even harder or just straight up phishing and theft schemes, or one of many many other examples of that sort of thing”.

However you and I know the truth: No they won’t.

[rglullis]

- Whatever is there that has a higher profit-per-target is already being done.

- Reducing the type of crimes that are economically feasible has value in itself: some criminals will move on, it makes it easier to investigate the ones that remain and reduces the load on policing.

[jrflowers]

> Whatever is there that has a higher profit-per-target is already being done.

This is a good point. The sort of activity that could easily afford to pay to continue to access Twitter on day one of a policy change is presently underway. A large chunk of spammers would simply have to spend a small fraction of their current profits to maintain their profitable business without having to make much meaningful change to their business models.

For this reason, charging for Twitter will shut them down. The high profits and relatively low cost will cause them to pack up shop and go legitimate.

[rglullis]

I don't know if you misunderstanding the argument is cynicism or stupidity.

> A large chunk of spammers would simply have to spend a small fraction of their current profits to maintain their profitable business

It is only "profitable" because they are playing a lottery game where each ticket is essentially worthless but with an actual zero cost. The expected value of this radically changes if the cost of rolling the dice is anything nonzero.

Phone scams is a 10 billion dollar industry in India, because it costs virtually nothing to call anyone in the US. Do you think that type of scam would be possible in the world 25 years ago when international calls where $0.10/minute and the scammers need to have an account at the phone company to enable them to make tens of thousands of minute-calls per day?

Also please do us both a favor: stop with the smart-ass responses and stop creating strawmen. It makes you look like an a pathetic juvenile loser who just refuses to argue in good faith.