Ask HN: Can HN ban new accounts? or charge money?

Part of the magic of HN is that it's open to everyone, and everyone is treated equally. I'm not aware of anywhere else on the internet where a farmer from a poor country, a college student, and a CEO of a billion-dollar company can have a meaningful conversation, and I think that it would be a real shame to lose that.

I agree that the bot accounts are annoying and getting worse, but I don't think that making it more difficult to create an account is a good solution here.

So punish real users who just discovered HN, or old lurkers who finally decide to join?

Great idea.

Instead of banning and charging,HN could double down on trust signal,like device reputation,posting velocity limits,and stronger weighting of upvotes from long standing accounts.

Personally, I think new accounts should cost $300. It’s not a perfect solution, clearly. But it should hopefully reduce the floodgates.

it should be better bot detection system - especially because of ai generated comments - and that's all