Soon-To-Be-Popular Opinion: Stop Charging A Dollar, Minds
IMPORTANT UPDATE
Please read the addendum at the end.
Something has recently been brought to my attention regarding international users and the Minds' Token system. They charge them a dollar to be eligible now...
How do they always fuck this up? We had a good thing going. We had a surge of new members from all around the world, following the Vietnamese invasion at the end of June, through all of July.
So What does Minds do? They decide to charge people to use their Token system...
Now, I almost called this “Fuck Your Token System, Too” but I honestly like the stupid new Token system. It rewards more for interactions than just upvote bombing, of which is still cool BTW, but makes comments and reminds so much more lucrative and incentivized.
Why? Why do this now? What are these “expensive fees”? Are they really that expensive? Do you need to borrow my phone?
So many questions for a new $1 fee to participate on something that used to be free… I haven’t been this upset since my bank added a daily overdraft fee, right after I overdrafted.
Freedom isn’t free, it cost $1 for the first month, then $5 a month after.
Sure, you can cancel and only ever be charged a dollar for the privilege of sending me your hard-earned Tokens, and I do appreciate the 5 cent discount they give, instead of the “Freedom costs a buck-o-five” but you shouldn’t have ever been made to pay that dollar to use the stupid Token system.
The whole SMS text system was already an intrusive cost to shitpost cat pictures.
I don’t really care, only because my phone number is already fucked. Weird numbers from around the world call me all the time because I’m just that popular.
And because of how fucked my phone is, it’s important for me to use that SMS text system. It’s made for dumbasses like me who have had my information stolen probably about 3 dozen times now.
Others, howeverly, don’t want to give out their phone number, let alone a fucking credit card. See, a lot of people have been harassed, doxxed, attacked, and even killed simply because a crazy fucking public couldn’t handle what they said.
It’s a simple problem, that crazy public part, but it’s one that have made some leery of giving out any sort of personal information.
And those are usually the people we need to hear the most from; The ones who have been threatened simply for speaking their minds. And a social medium called Minds.com can do better than charging them money.
“But Garbage Man”, they’ll tell me, “anyone can still participate, they just won’t get Tokens.”
Well, Billiam, the rebuttal is that Tokens are a form of speech. By limiting access to a tool that spreads a person’s voice and rewards them for positive interaction to their message, you are, in both effect and affect, silencing them.
If Minds was to have done this to me when I first started, I would have made like a tree and not make a Minds channel.
Now I don’t want to be all hell and brimstone on you, Minds, I really don’t. I want to know what we can do other than charge our international friends to use your stupid Token system.
Do you need a kickstarter? A lemonade stand/car wash? A new cell phone carrier?
It’s a bummer. A momentum killer. A God-damn shame. Once again, you almost had it, Minds, and once again, you fucked it up. You can still fix this, but after the last time, I doubt you will.
UPDATE 08/07/18: They have taken out this cost. There is now no fee to enter the Minds' Token System
Thank you Minds for your swift response, and thank you everyone for reading and reminding!