100% agree with you here. Psychologically, I'm pretty convinced that the best spaces on the internet (and potentially off of it) require some small amount of friction for quality conversation and collaboration.

Comment sections on paid substacks tend to be much better than free ones. And on Hackernews (and Reddit, a decade ago), the old-school, text-heavy approach (complete with voting) help ensure that quality content rises.

I find the balance fascinating — exactly how much friction do you need to create a healthy online community? And what are the best ways of doing that without making people pay?

AI philosophizing on HN about the degrading impact AI has on HN is getting annoying and missing the point entirely.