I write this as a veteran of this community, having gone from Bitcoin talk forums to reddit to Twitter and now here. The altcoiners appeared in each place and ruined the respective places. How do we prevent that? Do we want to prevent it, even?
I ask because there are clearly some Monero fanbois here and it's starting to suck.
make ‘login with lightning’ the only login method
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I'm the "Monero fanboi" he's mad at, and I already use (and only use) "Login with Lightning" .shrug
SN is already an absolutely amazing place for open discourse that prevents spam and trolls almost 100% through the use of Lightning/sats. It's working well, and the "altcoiner" discussions have been even, fair, and nuanced while being mostly critical of Monero.
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I love this
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That's what we do on Plebeian Market, BTW.
The only way to log in is with a Lightning wallet.
The only way to bid is using a Lightning wallet.
Would actually be interesting for SN if a Lightning wallet would be required to post as well. So the sats to post would have to come from a Lightning wallet.
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The fact that it’s an option is says a lot. And it would be such a baller move.
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hey everyone, my first post here
OP is clearly uninterested in discussions about altcoins, which is fine, just thought i’d present an alternative viewpoint
as someone who cares about bitcoin’s future a lot, i think conversations about what altcoins are doing differently are important in order to strengthen bitcoin.
and yes, there needs to be some discretion, since obviously much/most of what happens in altcoin-land is flat out scams, but that’s not everything. some experiments are honest and can inform future development in bitcoin and i think monero is a prime example of that
even if what monero teaches us is “we shouldn’t do what monero did”, that’s also useful
banning any discussion about anything altcoin-related will limit our ability to learn and have productive discussions about bitcoin
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I can't wait for Stacker News to implement subs, then this kind of drivel we don't have to see in the Bitcoin feeds.
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Welcome to SN!
I agree, and think the idea of banning or downvoting discussions is a slippery slope, and a bad idea.
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How can we get rid of Udi on stacker.news ? Need to take some decisions or place is doomed.
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Why would we need to get rid of udi? Because you find him annoying? Wat?
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Just irony guys come on !
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There are people that question things to learn, then there are people that simply get a buzz from being a contrarian douche...
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Obviously you're referring to me, but I'm most certainly not going anywhere and have contributed quite a lot to discussion already here. I use Lightning, login with Lightning, and appreciate the open and honest discussion that exists here.
You trying to turn it into another echo chamber will only be harmful. If users are willing to use Lightning and pay sats to use stacker.news I don't see the harm in discussions that aren't Bitcoin-only.
The Monero discussions specifically have been mostly critical of Monero and have had great back and forth where each "side" learns from the other -- there are not many places like that, and I love that stacker.news is like that. People are critical, nuanced, and open to engaging discussions.
Let's keep that going.
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Simple: (Up)vote with your sats ⚡️
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Why prevention instead of education?People with bitcoin on lightning network already show their interests.. Altcoin attracts a lot of people into cryptospace, stacker.news is great place to do the conversion for them.
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The best ideas I have for overcoming this long term
  1. allow users to mute users they don’t like
  2. allow users to flag posts and allow other users to set how sensitive they want to be to flagging (e.g. hide posts if 2 users flag it as altcoinery)
  3. allow users to have their own trust graphs which influences which posts and comments they see
  4. raise costs to post
I’m open to other ideas. Moderation doesn’t scale IMO, so I think the path forward is giving users more control over what they see, who can interact with them, and what it costs to get their attention.
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I think you have the opportunity to play with community moderation. Hacker News uses upvoting and downvoting to do this, but you can only downvote after a certain amount of reputation. You can use sats earned as some quasi-reputation score and use that to give such people some power to downvote for some sats. Personally, I think downvotes should be way more costly than upvotes. It's a serious accusation to be making and most people don't do it unless it's serious. You also don't want it to be abused. Thus, making it more expensive will make people think twice about it.
The idea of staking to post is good as well. It has the nice side-effect of preventing spam. So posting might cost 10 sats, but also 10000 sats in a stake. If you try to flood the place, you're going to lose 10,000 sats per post. It can really become a market based moderation system. Bad posts simply go down. Obviously, this is not going to be easy to balance, but you have way more tools than Hacker News or Reddit does. Also, if you figure this out, it will monetarily incentivize good comments even more than they are now.
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I really like the incentives around staking and I want to experiment with it at some point. My main concern is it might be hard to communicate, but there are probably solutions to that.
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Simple MVP: downvoting costs 5x the upvoting.
Slightly more difficult: each post costs a "deposit" of 10,000 sats which will be refunded if you have a non-negative score within 24 hours. If you have a negative score, you give up your deposit and it goes to the distribution pool for the next day.
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I dig it. Downvotes will make it clear whether your stake should be returned.
Downvoting seems to have the unintended consequence of encouraging trolls though. It gives them feedback (rather than crickets) which probably motivates them - but if they also lose money perhaps it doesn’t make it worth it.
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It sucks if I post something Bitcoin related, then an army of shitcoiners comes in to downvote my post. If no moderation is done, I will effectively loose my deposit for no reason. Although they loose their sats, it affects me as well.
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In that case, they're literally paying for the attention. And given it goes to the community pool, there's some interesting economics at play here. Would people tolerate trolls if they're getting paid for it? I'm actually curious how much trolls are willing to pay and at what limits they stop.
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I think we would probably converge on something like 20 trolls pay for 80 users.
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So we're back to advertisers?
I think its also important to figure out how to communicate the rules to the members, especially the new comers. Getting banned is one way to learn but there might be better ways.
Btw, I think we are currently treating (or we could/should be) SN as one Bitcoin maxi community. That's IMHO the best way to get things started, but there is potential for SN to grow into a platform with many communities.
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SN has a great thing going for it with value-for-value. I feel like it should try to solve these problems without creating algorithmic echo chambers, whether user defined or not.
Assigning cost to online behavior is the innovation here. Let's see what it's capable of!
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This is not a risk imo. The risk is rather getting dragged down into an unbearable circlejerk echochamber.
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You mention a risk and he mentions a risk. They are both risks.
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2087 sats \ 1 reply \ @Risky 1 Aug 2022
I agree here. A great example is the monero thread available on top for today. I found some good gauge in there about the potential risks of using monero and if that type of discussion wasn’t allowed or phased out intentionally i wouldn’t have. So I tipped a wonderful explanation some sats and went on my day! I agree on don’t encourage echo chamber.
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username checks out haha
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I think with the lightning integration, this problem mostly solves itself.
I tried sharing this site on an an-cap Discord group. Half a dozen users started shitting on me because it was Bitcoin/lightning based. They commented how BCH is the true Bitcoin, how various alt-coins have their own "better" social-news websites, and how they will never use Bitcoin or lightning.
Part of me feels sorry for them. I wish we have more dedicated an-caps in the Bitcoin maxi community. But some people just have too much fun staying poor.
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116 sats \ 0 replies \ @om 1 Aug 2022
I wish we have more dedicated an-caps in the Bitcoin maxi community.
We do. But they would never use shit like Discord, which is why you haven't met them there.
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Exactly, and the few who are willing to come and try , at least they Will try
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Listen, Jim I'm going out on a limb But the chance of shitcoins winning is slim
Monero is crap I'm done with my rap I'll see you all tomorrow, My rhymes on the map
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Combat bad ideas with better ones (but in a decent-human-being kinda way), and upvote good educational comments.
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In theory this works in the traditional physical public square- unfortunately everyone in media and social media is now employing the Stephen A Smith playbook of being contrarian and click-baity which only gets amplified by algorithmically driven echo chambers.
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Need to make it irrational to post spam/troll.
Single digit sats isn't expensive enough.
💡 Posting should require posting a bond. And then we all bet our sats on certain bins of unwanted behaviour. If we all bet on the same bin, those betters win the pool of all bets + the bond.
Then that user gets a little red X that says they lost # of bonds.
Then nothing else happens.
Nobody is censored.
Incentives are more aligned.
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101 sats \ 1 reply \ @om 1 Aug 2022
Love the bond idea.
But this:
And then we all bet our sats on certain bins of unwanted behaviour. If we all bet on the same bin, those betters win the pool of all bets + the bond.
is not resistant to Sybils who will all bet on the same bin.
Instead I propose that there's a button to punish the poster for X sats but it also costs X. So if you zap the poster for 10 sats then the SN pool receives 20: 10 from you and 10 from the poster's bond.
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Ah, good point re: sybil.
Albeit the suggestion to "zap" is a bit of a lose-lose.
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Bond is returned after some arbitrary period of time.
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How many altcoiners are going to buy sats for a ln wallet just to talk about their shitcoin?
I think SN is for bitcoiners wanting to earn and reward others with bitcoin. The filter against shitcoiners is built-in.
We should be careful classifying people who are on the maxi road as toxic shitcoiners. Bitcoin speaks for itself, once you open your mind to it everything else eventually falls away.
Monero, zcash, other privacy coins do still have a role to play today, but their life is limited. Eventually bitcoin engulfs everything, it is not a stagnant technology, lightning and taproot are proof of that.
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Lightning apps like Strike are making that barrier so low that shitcoiners will easily find themselves using lightning. I don't think they can log in with strike though. Removing non-lightning logins should be on the table and will probably happen eventually. There will be a time to just stop accepting inferior money.
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With software everything is always on the table. Strike may not support lnauth now, but there's no reason they wouldn't eventually add it. The fact that strike is easy and convenient still doesen't explain why a shitcoiner would go out of their way to peddle their shit to a bunch of maxis on a platform that requires bitcoin. If your argument is that eventually shitcoiners will be forced to use bitcoin because everyone will require it, then what are you worried about? Wouldn't you look forward to a shitcoiner post at that point just to have a good laugh?
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The presence of different perspectives shouldn't ruin a space. It's the ones who act in bad faith, or overtly try to promote their project or spread false statements.
You can argue that discussion is promotion. But if you're able to bring strong arguments, I believe you can actually affect change in people's beliefs after repeated and long-form explainations.
Some people get tired of arguing after years in the space and their time is better spent building their echo chambers and selling their books. Twitter is great for that.
But it's nice to have a free space where those of us with more patience can see what bad ideas are circulating and deconstruct them in public.
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You wouldn't go to a knitting forum and pay to advertise your erectile dysfunction pills, not unless you wanted to waste your money and time. Shilling shitcoins among maxis is equally nonproductive. It's true there should be some way of suppressing these kinds of posts, but the same applies to any other sub-teen spammer wanting to harass or post porn.
The fact that porn isn't spread far and wide on SN is a testament to the effectiveness of requiring payment to post.
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Let them come, let them try
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Let them come.
  1. They need sats post
  2. They are exposed to the LN
  3. I will never upvote pro shitcoin content.
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as an r/bitcoin mod, toxic moderation is necessary. unfortunately.
walled gardens die by neglect.
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Toxicity. :)
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Just a novel idea - some of us hold mostly bitcoin, use lightning, and also like Monero.
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Many adamant altcoiners are seasoned and/or technical, and have no legitimate reason to continue to fail to understand what bitcoin fixes. They are bitcoin-hostile, which makes them trolls. Their lack of understanding is due to a vested interest (maybe as simple as a belief in centralized planning and control), making them spammers.
Deal with alt-coiners for what they are: spammers and trolls.
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Thats a really good question @k00b any suggestions def have enough pleb minds in here to come to a good solution...Toxicity yes i'd also agree...maybe can make this whole site LN URL only? Then in order for them to be here they'd have to obtain n use??Would be some sort of entry to barrier...however would preserve the integrity of the site.
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Debating with shitcoiners is wasting time. There's no debate: anything else that is not Bitcoin is a shitcoin.
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Jeez Jimmy. It's Stacker News. People sign in and tip in sats. You're really worried that altcoiners are going to... what, take over the dialogue? There are more important things to worry about. Your purity tests are ridiculous.
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Those Monero fanbois will be withdrawing their sats, which possibly will be their first exposure to using LN. For bitcoin, that's a WIN!!!
Some of those will be wanting to convert those sats they've earned to XMR. Probably on a KYC-Free P2P trading platform. That gives liquidity for other XMR sellers looking to buy bitcoin. Again, for bitcoin, that's a WIN!!!
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Maybe a sub stack? This could be a good chance to try? I dont like the idea of exclusion altogether. I was once an altcoiner but the information on this sub has helped me understand bitcoin immensly
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I believe in free speech, allowing altcoiners say whatever they want. In the end, the best ideas will win.
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The problem is the newbs that are led astray and scammed by shitcoin FUD and lies. At a point it crosses the line into spamming and trolling, and I think the idea is to prevent it getting to that point. But it's not a valid concern now as there are no newbs here to "protect." I would like to see where this experiment in financial micro-incentives leads with a hard limit on interference from the "traditional" arsenal of social controls.
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Requiring sats to post/comment helps. Filtering for alt coins in post and then raising the sats cost to post/comment could work (though is a bit of a vat/mouse game). LN wallet as the ONLY loving method would help too.
All of those would discourage alt coin spam and keep any alt coin talk contextual to Bitcoin (as much as it could).
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Just don't tip their content, if there is no financial incentive and no traffic incentive why would they want to continue to post here?
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we need categories I think. If we could also choose which ones to see and which specifically we do not wat to see, that would solve most problems.
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its not that easy as you say,
and the true fact about why there is still no mass bitcoin adoption is this attitude some so called veteran bitcoiners.
and how long are you planning to repel them away.
satoshi intended this tech for billions out there, who are you limit this great tech?
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congratulations @jimmysong for coming up with the only shitpost i found on SN till now,
down voting should be a must feature to add here.
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We're already starting to see a little bit of Altcoin "spam", but from what I'm seeing, we don't upvote it and it falls into the void.
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Well, at least shitcoiners are using LN by coming to SN.
Not bad.
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Just don’t upvote anyone who shills shitcoins. AT ALL. Use your sats HEAVILY where it counts. Such as this comment, hint hint.
Peace out
Maxi for lyfe
Ps. There should be an option to DOWNVOTE using sats he he ⚡️
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  • Patiently explaining good and well thought out arguments. Maybe it would be good to create a well built "response" wiki that can be easily linked.
  • Upvoting and paying more sats to users that provide good content.
  • Also realizing that when you are replying to a troll, the troll is not the person you are talking to - instead you are talking to the people also reading the comments. There's way more people reading your comment than just the one troll... why would you want to win "over" just one troll?
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At all costs we must avoid censorhip, or any kind of ban/shadown ban against people we disagree. If we engage in censorship or propaganda this place is done and will inevitably tend to a shithole.
Add an option to mute users, or make a category for altcoiners so they don't pollute main page why not ... And best is force the Lightning Login yeah @ean_lockhart good idea. This is a LN place so if you want to participate use the tools.
So in the end, WE DO NOT want to prevent stacker news for altcoiners.
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It might be too early to tell. SN does of course have a different incentive structure to Reddit, Twitter, etc. where upvoting content has a cost, so things might not play out in the same way.
I guess you could introduce the equivalent of a downvote button. I pay 100 sats to deduct 100 sats from a post I dislike, and the sum of that is redistributed via the community pool.
Raising costs to post and introducing staking seem like interesting ideas too. I can see that being useful for spam prevention.
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subreddits
(but also If you want to be "machiavellian", coming here to post and comment about altcoins costs BTC so they will need to maintain a BTC/Lightning wallet no matter what so by all means go ahead?)
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им нужны сатоши что б тут писать... так что все норм. их тут не будет
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  • Introduce tags
  • Make "altcoin" tag mandatory for altcoin-centered discussions
  • Add an option to hide specific tags
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No way
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shame them.
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maxis hate free markets hahaha go fuck yourself jimmy https://t.me/MaxiDerangementSyndrome/353
Create subforums?
You don't, and you support Bitcoin's principles instead.
Eternal September never ends