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zoug

@molly0xfff thank you for this, loved it.

I do disagree with what you write about paywalls: my current employer uses those, and without subscription income, we'd have to run ads and lean into attention farming, clickbaits etc, stuff that you also call out in your piece. The sad truth is that independent journalism without revenue is impossible, and I think paywalls are the lesser evil here.

Otherwise, great article.

1 May at 21:39 | Wall-to-wall | Open on infosec.exchange
6 comments
Molly White

@zoug while i think there is room on the web for a diversity of funding models, i am very concerned about the trend of information becoming less and less available to those who can't afford (often very high) subscription prices

1 May at 22:01 | Open on hachyderm.io
Dmitri ☕️

@molly0xfff @zoug I think a good compromise could be pricing exceptions. The best example I can remember is Fetch, which was free for students (verified via .edu emails). I lived on that app for over a decade.

1 May at 22:41 | Open on mas.to
PaulDavisTheFirst

@analog_cafe @molly0xfff @zoug over at ardour.org, where we charge for ready-to-run versions of our multiplatform DAW, we set the default price to our best guess at the cost of mid-range meal out for two without alcohol, in the country indicated by the request's IP origin. This currently varies from US$7 to US$56.

The (potential) customer is free to change the price to as low as US$1 if they wish.

2 May at 3:17 | Open on fosstodon.org
Pax Ahimsa Gethen

@molly0xfff @zoug

I hear you, but I personally would rather prioritize people getting free access to food, housing, and medical care than free subscriptions to publications.

1 May at 22:48 | Open on me.dm
badsynthesis

@molly0xfff @zoug I thought about this a couple of years back and began subscribing to a few newspapers.

Someone needs to pay their salaries and I'd rather it's me than the journalists being forced to pander to advertisers or the whim of some sociopathic billionaire.

One tricky part is, there's interesting articles in so many newspapers that I only read once a month or once per quarter.

I haven't considered the relative inflation adjusted cost of a subscription, have they risen a lot? My thought has so far been that in the era of paper newspapers people subscribed to one newspaper and that was it. Now if I wanted to pay for all I want to read it'd be...a lot. Of course, reading all I wanted to read isn't a right.

@molly0xfff @zoug I thought about this a couple of years back and began subscribing to a few newspapers.

Someone needs to pay their salaries and I'd rather it's me than the journalists being forced to pander to advertisers or the whim of some sociopathic billionaire.

One tricky part is, there's interesting articles in so many newspapers that I only read once a month or once per quarter.

2 May at 5:46 | Open on infosec.exchange
Pax Ahimsa Gethen

@zoug @molly0xfff

Agreed, though I always share paywall-free links to my own stories. I wrote my opinion about paywalls and ad blockers a few months back:

funcrunch.medium.com/on-ad-blo

(Click the link, not the image preview, to bypass the paywall on this story)

1 May at 22:44 | Open on me.dm
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