Submitted 6 months ago by BuckenBerry@lemmy.world to [deleted]
Like a non-profit, with tax breaks and the ability to earn enough to operate, but little more than that or the taxes come back with a vengeance.
Everything needs money to run but when there’s the option to shovel out whatever bait it takes to chase the dragon of uncapped earnings, they’re not in it to keep us informed, just to keep us spending.
What I’d love to see is the government funding and running a way to do microtransactions over HTTPS.
Basically, one of the government’s jobs is to facilitate commerce, which it has done by issuing and regulating currency for centuries, and collecting sales tax. But we’ve moved beyond paper and metal currency. I can’t pay for an article on USA Today with a quarter. So the government should run a system, funded by automatically charged sales tax, that lets me do exactly that. Let me hook up my bank account to it, and say yes or no when a website wants to charge me 25¢ for an article (or however much).
It would be great to have a way that I can pay without a stupid subscription and without giving the website my credit card information. If I read 3 articles a month, I don’t want to pay a $14.99 subscription. But not charging that means news sites can’t survive. Wouldn’t it be great if we could pay for our media easily and news sites could charge for it in a non-exploitative way?
Could be easily done with crypto and browser wallets.
No need for the government to come in and offer its “solutions”.
But no thank you on the micro transactions
You use microtransactions all the time when you pay for things with cash. I’m using the term to refer to payments for one thing in a small amount. As opposed to subscription fees or buying a year’s worth of articles at once. And no, that’s not easy to do with crypto and browser wallets. We don’t need old people having their life savings irrevocably stolen, thanks.
None of that was backed by the government.
If I’ve learned anything from GTA… just drive the news van around and hit pedestrians until you make budget.
Are business not funded that way now? May explain why the boss asks me more stuff about the company vehicle than any other driver. I thought I was just a top earner.
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“You can pay 2 € to read this article”
Me: you do realise that’s the price of a full, printed, newspaper, right?
And my credit card is going to love the per-transaction fees!
we should have the journalists harvest every single tuna in the ocean and sell it at a high cost to consumers. the money generated from this will go directly to the news industry. this way, we can enjoy delicious tuna while we read the news without any concern about tunas in the ocean anymore. the only catch (no pun intended) is the news related might be a little biased and some people might not like tuna. both don’t sound like a huge concern when you get high quality journalism.
Realistically? The way newspapers were, you have a profit driven business where the client is the reader. Buy the paper, read the articles.
The reality is that that is never gonna happen again; the free alternatives are exactly as shit as the paid ones, so why would I waste my money?
Journalism had devolved into sensationalism made to drive sales to foster ad buys already well before social media and the web made this exponentially worse, at this point, follow the scant few journalists who don’t suck and go from there.
Best thing about this is that everyone will think I’m talking about any amount of pundits depending on their and my political alignment, and that makes it funnier to me.
What’s with all the asklemmy questions on here today?
BlameThePeacock@lemmy.ca 6 months ago
By taxpayers, at arms length from government control.
The moment there’s a profit motive in news, it will skew what gets shown to people and not for their benefit.
BertramDitore@lemmy.world 6 months ago
This is the only answer I’m okay with. Keeping government away from it would be a challenge, but an easier challenge to handle than our current cesspool of for-profit media companies.
Same with elections, they should be fully funded by taxpayers, and not a single cent of private money should enter the equation. Depending on the office and the size of its constituency, every candidate gets the exact same amount. You accept a dollar from a corp? You’re automatically disqualified. Imagine how much harder candidates would have to work for their votes.
Delphia@lemmy.world 6 months ago
The problem with that (from a country that has a govt funded channel with news programs) is that if they start being overly critical of a political party when that party gets in they reduce funding.
BlameThePeacock@lemmy.ca 6 months ago
Yea, it should be a charter/constitution specified percentage of all government revenue. Then they can’t fuck with it easily.
skysurfer@lemmy.world 6 months ago
Would you invision that to be similar to something like PBS but fully funded from government sources?
BlameThePeacock@lemmy.ca 6 months ago
More like the way the CBC or BBC are funded, though I’d like a little bit more distance from the government in terms of who’s controlling it.