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On the surface I like this idea, but this makes it harder for participants from poorer countries from, well, participating. For some countries this is more than
by joeldo 4y ago
On the surface I like this idea, but this makes it harder for participants from poorer countries from, well, participating. For some countries this is more than a week of the average wage!
- andsoitis 4y agoPrice can vary by market. Many companies already do this both for products and services, as well as subscriptions.
- midoridensha 4y agoI guess you haven't heard of a VPN?
- fragmede 4y agoI guess you haven't considered making a list of IPs VPNs use as an intern project to setup over the winter
- andsoitis 4y agoYou can require address as part of credit card validation.
- midoridensha 4y agoSo only people with credit cards are allowed to use the forum? That shuts out a lot of people, especially in places where credit cards aren't used.
- andsoitis 4y agoYou’re right that credit cards are not a universal MOP (method of payment). Other options include debit cards, or systems like iDEAL, PayPal, etc.
- midoridensha 4y agoRight, and those completely vary from country to country. Trying to get one website to support the common authenticated payment systems worldwide is basically impossible unless that website is Google.com.
- ayewo 4y agoBut once you throw a VPN into the mix, it's not so simple [1] [2]. It then becomes a game of whack-a-mole where you have to obscure how pricing parity is done [3]. 1: https://twitter.com/levelsio/status/1600232199243984897 https://twitter.com/levelsio/status/1600232199243984897 2: https://twitter.com/levelsio/status/1600246753348882432 https://twitter.com/levelsio/status/1600246753348882432 3: https://twitter.com/dannypostmaa/status/1600372062958538752 https://twitter.com/dannypostmaa/status/1600372062958538752
- Archipelagia 4y agoI think the goal here is not money, but making it enough of a hassle that spammers wouldn't bother. So if someone from US actually wants to go through the trouble to save $3, well, at least they're unlikely to be a bot.
- ahmedtatum 4y ago
- dang 4y agoPlease don't post like this to HN. It's not what this site is for, and destroys what it is for. If you wouldn't mind reviewing https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and using HN as intended, we'd be grateful.
- noirscape 4y agoIt's difficult to balance; unfortunately from experience in moderating, the poorer countries with a large anglo internet presence also tend to be the biggest sources of spam (not so much low-effort trolling, Americans do that wayyy more). You could to some extent make an argument that gatekeeping poorer economies is one way to prevent those bots from signing up. It's not one I necessarily agree with, but it is one way to mitigate the spam. My solution would probably be to permit users from poorer countries to request a signup from someone else at a discount appropriate to their economy using an invite chain. That way you can still offer a fair way for users from poor economies to engage, whilst allowing for easy banning of spambots simply by treebanning the original inviter if you get the spam issue.
- rglullis 4y agoIf someone is living on $40/month, I'm pretty sure they will have other things to sort out before worrying about their inability to participate in discussions online.