The Iranian protests also draw into sharp relief the assumption of quality on the part of information gathering by 'real' news sources.<p>How long was it until American news even <i>acknowledged</i> the protests existed?  And how much are they truly vetting their facts, when they run transparent propaganda (government dismissal of the actions of a 'few hundred' when nearly a dozen independent sources contributed pictures of <i>at least</i> tens of thousands) and trivially photoshop 'counter-demonstrations'?<p>Citizen-journalism has its flaws, but it's very similar to the case of Wikipedia (for lack of a more succinct explanation): Any one person could easily post lies, but lies tend to get exposed and corrected.  And in the aggregate, it's more accurate than any individual 'expert' or 'authoritative' source.<p>Fark is the stand-by example of preferential comment treatment. TotalFark subscribers are kicking in $5/mo for early access to a veritable cess pit of dupes and spam, in exchange for getting first crack at discussion and token member features.<p>I also have personal experience with several small discussion boards that went for-pay specifically to squash spam and cover the moderator costs of abusive behavior.<p>It's pretty easy to see where making people give you $5 before they can post shifts the economics of spamming, flaming, harassing, etc.