[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.