Molly WhiteMany yearn for the "good old days" of the web. We could have those good old days back — or something even better — and if anything, it would be easier now than it ever was.
https://www.citationneeded.news/we-can-have-a-different-web/
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.
@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
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.
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.
Pax Ahimsa GethenI hear you, but I personally would rather prioritize people getting free access to food, housing, and medical care than free subscriptions to publications.
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.
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:
(Click the link, not the image preview, to bypass the paywall on this story)
Grant_H@zoug @molly0xfff Have a look at the model of https://dailymaveric.Co.Za
They have subscribers, and no pay wall. And are growing.
May not work everywhere, but it works there.
They have subscribers, and no pay wall. And are growing.
May not work everywhere, but it works there.