I know that in reality, it would be a really, really hard knock on the poorer part of the population and yet another way to suppress their voices (and that the end of Net Neutrality eventually basically does that to what is available to read and watch in the first place), but now I'm kind of wondering how such a system would affect internet trolling and jerkassery as a whole.
Trolling and spam (comments) get redistributed from sites (comment sections, fora etc.) that already have
some authority (AUP, moderation) to remove it from the data they output. The big players usually don't do very much to that effect, though. Translation: Unless buying yourself fast connections raises the bandwidth cost
a lot, the cost-to-benefit ratio of moderation is IMHO unlikely to tip in favor of upping it.
As for e-mail spam ... hm. So far, all attempts at introducing "postage" to pay for sending e-mails have failed, but manipulation of the cost and availability of the very network connections might be sufficiently "far down under the hood" to make it impossible to ignore or work around. But OTOH, if there's "bulletproof servers" where money can buy you immunity from legal and technical attempts at having your spam cannon shut down, I guess that having to buy "faster-than-bullets network" just adds another line to the bill.
