i concede it may be wasteful and I think private communities will be a useful feature. as for the usecase one that comes to mind is a ‘board within a board’ where there is a layered conversation. you could have the encrypted messages only downloaded by those signaling or with the decryption key. it would essentially allow for conversation(s) alongside the primary conversation in a more layered and private way. Small social networks could discuss public information in a parallel or "in-thread group private message." i can see plenty of practical use in this. in short, a conversation alongside a conversation which i consider an innovative way of communicating - it's like private messages viewable by intended recipients across the plebnet. as far as value alone of communication I see that as a underdeveloped yet high potential use case. another use case is information markets aka an information exchange. a sub owner might run a board as an information exchange. no one will use his information market if the owner gets full access to all encrypted information. in this use case, the post might contain a message and an encrypted message that is conditionally decrypted (through trusted reputation or via smart contract or another mechanism) when x condition is met (i.e. an individual purchases the decryption key or a group of individuals crowdfund the release of the information or a certain real world event takes place as registered by an oracle). (Ill have to figure more thought to this, I suppose this could also be done without building it into the protocol, or a fusion one and two, your patreon example but across all subs and across the plebnet). p.s. i would pause to call it spam, tho i suppose it could be if unwelcomed by protocol design or community. if it's encrypted and can't be decrypted without the key, and these messages are at least hidden without the key, then moderation isn't really necessary, is it?