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Re:StumbleUpon closing after 16 years, accounts can be migra... by tacostakohashi on Thursday May 24, 2018 @12:49PM (#17145862)
Oh, right, another radical thought of mine - something that users would pay for. Even if it were just $1/month, one account per credit card only, it would serve as another little barrier to all the right people, and prevent throwaways and constant account deletion.

Obviously for a commercial, advertiser-funded operation, it is all about more and more users and traffic and the quality of the content isn't a priority, but this eventually destroys everything. I'm imagining something much smaller, but potentially higher quality and self-sustaining. I guess I'm pretty much describing The Well, but hopefully cheaper and with more users, but not free and as many users as possible.

Re:StumbleUpon closing after 16 years, accounts can be migra... by brownbat on Thursday May 24, 2018 @03:32PM (#17147453)
There used to be a mashup of random YouTube comments on one side, and random metafilter comments on the other testing, really validating, this theory.

The difference was pretty stark. I could only find breadcrumbs:

https://metatalk.metafilter.com/16003/Metafilter-comments-vs...

An example might be archived somewhere...

Re:StumbleUpon closing after 16 years, accounts can be migra... by eli on Thursday May 24, 2018 @02:21PM (#17146808)
That's half of what makes the Metafilter discussions so good (the other half is aggressive behind-the-scenes moderation)