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Most of the people I wish to read or interact with on social networks will never use a system that requires an up front payment.

To me (and, I assume, most people) it is most assuredly a bug.

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That may change though. Say we brought in UBI to solve the problems I described above. At the same time twitter is over run by bots making engaging there even more exhausting than it is now. Maybe your peer group have been banned because of one thing or another. Would you consider it then?

Once a Member instance is big enough to be attractive for spamming/phishing/otherwise-exploiting the bot herders will arrive anyway, using compromised Member clients, just as current spammers don't generally pay for the data volumes they generate. Perhaps the entry barrier of charging will keep Member small enough to delay this.

"Delay" is the key word. Not prevent. Any service big enough too attract more than "fringe" users will start seeing spammers eventually.

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