
Ask HN: Why Doesn't Twitter Charge Donald Trump to Tweet? - labrador
Twitter needs to figure out how to make money to stay in business. No one seems to want to buy it. People with 100&#x27;s of thousands or millions of followers must be getting something out of it and would likely be willing to pay for it. Where should the charge point be? 10,000 followers?
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Mz
Yes, Twitter needs to make money. But they need to do so in a way that doesn't
kill the goose that lays the golden egg. Soak the rich policies tend to
backfire. The rich and powerful have the most latitude for just going
elsewhere. The result is almost always that other groups who have less power
and money are hurt while the rich just make other choices because they aren't
interested in being soaked and they aren't sheeple.

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labrador
I'm not talking about a large fee. People spend $100 a month on coffee, or $10
a month on NetFlix. Twitter could have a non-profit rate. Anyone with over
10,000 followers is probably getting something out of it that would be worth
paying a small charge, sliding scale. I don't think it's that easy to go to
another service and keep your followers.

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Mz
Hey, I am all for finding a way to make sure Twitter makes enough money to
stay alive. I just don't think this is it.

And I also don't think you have seriously researched it, thought it through or
compared the idea with potential alternatives. I also also don't think tossing
it out as an idea on HN is likely to cause Twitter to do anything with the
idea. So, hey, I don't actually need to argue with you to put a stop to it. So
me replying is solely out of a positive impetus to engage people in a
meaningful way. I really have zero fear that you tossing this out there will
cause Twitter to hit the brakes and do a hard left and jump on this.

If you want to propose a brainstorming session and some means to float
suggestions past Twitter, cool. But one off suggestions like this tend to be
the modern equivalent of _armchair politicians_ of the past who had a raft
load of _brilliant ideas_ for solving every imaginable problem on the planet,
if only the world would listen to them.

I mean, it is cool for making chitchat around the water cooler. But that's
about it, more than 99% of the time.

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labrador
I'm sure Twitter has already written this on the whiteboard at some point. I
was hoping someone in the know would tell me why they rejected it. HN is full
of people in the know. And of course I don't mind you calling me an armchair
foolosopher with loads of brilliant ideas, because who isn't on HN?, at least
privately.

As an alternative, I suggest Twitter talk to Facebook about their artificially
intelligent driven advertisement engine, because it's very impressive. I've
trained it with the like button and group sign-ups to the point where
sometimes the ads that come out of left field really grab my attention. They
are telling me about things I didn't know I'd like. Curiously, I've been on
Google longer, always signed in to gmail and YouTube, but their ads to me are
total junk.

I think Twitter is a unique cultural phenomenon that performs very valuable
service. It's almost like a necessary public utility at this point. I'd hate
to see it go away. HN is very valuable to me as well - I'd pay for it. Reddit
added the "gilding" feature to give someone gold and pay for server time.
Twitter needs to get creative. I'm rooting for them.

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venomsnake
Unless you want to spark a flame war - change the question title to celbrities
instead of the newly minted president elect.

I think the obvious answer is that not everyone with lots of followers have or
makes a lot of money. It will strangle the social justice movement (not that i
will be too sad, but still that is not the right way of defeating an ideology)

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labrador
Please no one start a flame war over my title. That's not my intention. It's
just that he is the most famous Tweeter at the moment who is getting an
international publishing platform for no charge.

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joeclark77
They should be paying him, frankly. Twitter has been circling the drain and
their best hope for a revival is that Trump has found Twitter to be a good way
to bypass the media filter and speak directly to his supporters.

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qbrass
It just encourages people with the most influence to get their followers to
abandon Twitter for some Twitter clone that doesn't charge them money.

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wsmith
I don't see a Twitter clone getting enough users any time soon.

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kahrkunne
Make twitter great again and make Donald Trump pay for it

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sceew
The media virtually allows him to tweet to all of America. Would be
interesting to see a 'tweet to all active twitter users' button implemented
for celebrities. I wonder how much they would pay for this? 50,000k?

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wayclever
Trump should not pay anything, nor should any other non-commercial endeavor.
Commercial use ought to pay based upon revenue.

