I started to notice some people posting NYT, Bloomberg or other websites with hard paywalls, that leads to people in the comments that are unable to read the article to discuess the headline without any analysis and some times spreading misinformation, which cannot be countered by the article, due to the paywall.
Which bring me to this: Why does no one thought about blocking hard paywalled articles for the sake of quality of discussion?
I see your opinion, I’m curious to hear how you think about the media’s role in society. Journalists work at newspapers and they need to pay rent. A stance “paywalls are paid for by the rich and the stupid” kinda means that one doesn’t want to pay journalists.
I am genuinely curious about your perspective on this. Would you prefer a world without newspapers? Or is it more of a question of money? When I was younger, I didn’t have the money to pay for newspapers. Nowadays, I’m happy to pay for newspapers that interest me.
As I said the rich and the stupid. If ur rich and u pay then it doesn’t effect u so why wouldn’t you.
I send $1 a year to independent journalist that i support (most of em are on yt so that’s more than they would ever get from me as ad revenue). The rest of the news comes from large news orgs owned by a few rich and powerful assholes who use it as a personal mouthpiece.
I will read their propaganda but I refuse to pay for that privilege. I also believe that gate keeping knowledge in a way that will disproportionately effects the poor is a recipe to ensure the poor stay stupid and thus stay poor.
I would argue the maga supporters with IQs of house bricks still seek knowledge just that they have never been exposed to enough of it to realise they are not been fed knowledge but propaganda. By making real news have a pay wall it makes the fake news easyer to find and consume. I fundamentally believe all people are equal just that some have more opportunity than others. A pay wall simply puts a roadblock in the path of opportunity for the poor and stupid.
Ya interesting, your theory of mind checks out for me. I’m not “rich” as in “I have significant capital”, but I’m certainly more “rich” than “poor”. So yes, I don’t notice it when I pay ~30EUR per month for a newspaper.
Are there any independent newspapers in your country? I Germany, there’s taz, a daily newspaper that is owned by a cooperative. They certainly don’t give a shit about the rich & powerful’s opinion - for example, they publicly pissed off the editor-in-chief of Germany’s biggest and most-powerful news corporation, Springer, just for the sake of free speech. Would you be willing to give money to that kind of newspaper?