Agreed. It seems inevitable to me that the only valid social networks (social media or forum) will be some sort of semi-locked/curated kingdoms. As bot traffic and engagement increases on the Web the appeal surely starts to decline? Especially as users become better as spotting the less sophisticated bots seem to increasingly dominate a lot of activity.
Is the Internet still fun/addictive if you're not actually engaging with people anymore?
Yeah, there's a bit of brilliance in the $10 fee for SA. It's not really enough to "exclude" anyone; virtually anyone can afford to pay a one-time fee, but if they keep getting banned and having to buy accounts, then it becomes untenable to create spam. The genius is that this didn't require teams of PhDs coming up with an elaborate Machine Learning system, it exploited the most basic of human instincts: loss aversion.
SA is just about perfect for me, since it has enough users to avoid the "dead mall" vibe, but it's still a relatively small community.
Is the Internet still fun/addictive if you're not actually engaging with people anymore?