Hear me out.
SomethingAwful forums are notoriously “human,” because they charge $10 for a user account. They don’t have problems with spam/scam/shenanigans that exist on platforms where accounts are free.
Fediverse instances are not currently monetizable - and they should stay that way. But there are still costs to operating one, especially if it’s very popular.
Instance admins charging a minimal fee to register a user account would address both of those concerns, especially the former, especially in light of how the Nicole thing has taken a horribly dark turn.
But it will add a completely new problem: absence of users.
Quality over quantity.
Payment is not a guarantee of quality.
From a feasibility standpoint it wouldn’t work unless the popular ones bought into the idea and defederated from any free instances. The whole idea is terrible for federation.
When quantity = 0, then quality = 0
Quantity transforms into quality eventually. 3 humans(even 7) won’t create “quality” no matter how hard they will try.
There’s a ton of technical tools that can be added to platforms that can mitigate problems with spam, poor-quality users and abuse.