Happily Bitter

Commenting must COST us something.

There could be some sort of network of entities, pay-pal-ish, where you load up some money, and each site you visit will contract with one or some or all of those entities, and you have to pay a penny, or a nickel, or dime, or quarter, or whatever to leave a comment (I’m talking about the major sites, not personal little blogs on wordpress for ex.). Or each site could have has it’s own system, or a combination of an internal charging system and the larger network as well. Having central entities would mean that a person wouldn’t have to sign up at each individual site and buy “credits” from that site. – i.e. Why load 5 bucks onto HuffPo if you only want to post 2 cents worth of comments? You could load a 20 onto an account and be able to comment at any and all sites that contract with the entity where you have your account.

Something like this would have to be somewhat coordinated throughout the industry- I don’t imagine it will be a popular idea, I can already imagine the “it’s against free speech” accusations from the peanut galleries… but really, we have to pay for a stamp to write the local paper, or pay to make a phone call or get on the internet in order to express our viewpoints – And who knows, I suppose sites could give free commenting to those who demonstrate consistant quality of communication.

I know that I would be absolutely willing to pay to comment at certain sites. If I was incensed enough, I’d pay to comment at sites I don’t particularly like (freerepublic, townhall, etc.) …

I think this would be a way to generate revenue as well as a way to weed out abusive and pointless comments. Spam, opposition “infiltrations”, these sorts of posts would go way down, and remaining would be those of us who, literally, are willing to put our money where our mouths are, no matter whether we are liberal or conservative.

Any thoughts on my idea? I want a modest percentage of the profits when this takes off

- Philosimphy

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