Comment on It’s the End of the Web as We Know It
interolivary@beehaw.org 6 months agono one ever tactfully includes ads
This is pretty patently hyperbole; I’ve run into many sites, including news, with non-intrusive ads.
Whether it’s class-based gatekeeping is another matter entirely. For-profit media employees have to eat too, and in the current economic system most can’t just give people access to content for free without any sort of monetization mechanism and with a voluntary subscription, because that’ll very often lead to income dropping off a cliff. Unfortunately people are very loath to pay for online services except for some more niche cases like the Fediverse where instances run on voluntary donations – although I’ve seen a couple of moderately popular instances struggling with upkeep being higher than what people are willing to donate (and it’s not just services either; open source developers face similar issues.) In some countries we at least have public broadcasting companies, although eg. here in Finland the current extremist right-wing government is looking to reduce its funding by quite a bit and possibly even entirely dismantle it if they get their way.
While I definitely agree that news should be available for free, railing against a for-profit publisher’s paywall is, frankly, myopic; like it or not, in the current system even content producers have to make a living. None of us really has a choice in whether we want to live in this system or not
astraeus@programming.dev 6 months ago
Advertising, by design, is intrusive. It’s fighting for space in your mind whether you want it to be there or not. We can shelve that topic because it’s a side item here.
The difference between making a big deal of nothing and being completely on-topic is that the article itself goes into the responsibilities of publishers and platforms, how they have a responsibility to make the internet a better connected, more human-friendly place. You don’t see massive sources of misinformation locking down their content, but you will definitely see potentially credible sources of information doing that. It’s counter to the premise of the article entirely.
I don’t believe it’s myopic at all to point out that it’s backwards to expect the internet to thrive when quality information isn’t readily available. Sure you can use a different search engine, seek out free content and resources, all of which require an in-depth dive to find anything worthwhile.
The topic of this post is why the internet is dying, and while I recognize people need to make money to eat I think these news media sites are more than capable of providing for their employees with or without a paywall. Megacorps like Google, Meta, and Microsoft having control over what gets the most clicks is definitely contributing to rapid enshittification. Especially when they’re sending most traffic to articles that either have a paywall or a steady feed of bullshit.
acastcandream@beehaw.org 6 months ago
The question is how do you expect quality information to be produced if it isn’t paid for? I think it’s terrible we have to think in those terms but as the other person said, that is reality.
astraeus@programming.dev 6 months ago
Linux is a prime example of quality that isn’t paid for. No one forces you to pay for Linux, you can of course support the maintainers and donate, but it’s not a for-profit endeavor.
acastcandream@beehaw.org 6 months ago
Linux is the result of a massive number of people working at their own paces with no deadlines and no expenses other than time and the computer they already own. Quality, relevant journalism is an entirely different beast that has hard costs associated with it. What you are suggesting would mean that only those who don’t need an income can participate in the endeavor. It just inverts the problem.
davehtaylor@beehaw.org 5 months ago
interolivary@beehaw.org 6 months ago
How do you propose these “open source journalists” make a living? Corporate grants or straight-up corporate jobs just like a huge chunk of Linux development, landing us right back at square one, if not even somewhat behind it. At least independent media exists nowadays, but if the assumption is that all news has to be freely available, like acastcandream said that’d just lead to journalism being very effectively locked out as a career path for anyone who’s not independently wealthy or somehow able to make people actually donate or pay for a subscription despite the content being available for free – and that hasn’t worked out too well for most publishers so far.