That’s a good point. There are other solutions though that are less destructive. We could have timed verification, “karma” limits, lock it behind an application, only select participants, or only community mods which would lower the amount of false voters. Non of these are perfect, but neither is the donation gate.

To echo myself in another comment:

There are countless ways to trick that system and the trolls will be more dedicated than the average user. If someone really wants it a hundred bucks isn’t that hard to get, or to “find”. Especially if crypto is an option. If it’s 5 bucks to vote permanently, then that’s 5 bucks per vote, permanently. A person with more money and more accounts will have outsized power in this community.

[this] selects a specific type of person too. As a dev, I understand how rare it is for a person to move into a paying role on a site.

This minority of the instances population on an already small group will be those who most want power, not the most invested. That’s what 5 dollars gets you. Power. This is a poor idea.

I understand your concern, but I disagree with the direction you’d take it. Only allowing paid users to vote creates a power inbalance and makes the more power hungry much more powerful, without really stopping them from making more accounts. Sure, it costs them more, but there will be much less competition to overcome.