Iāve been donating to the news site Vox for a while now, and all their content has so far been free. I felt kinda bad about blocking the ads on their site and fast-forwarding through all the ad breaks in their podcasts. So in the spirit of actually supporting something I like, I started chipping in a few bucks a month.
But recently, theyāve started putting some of their articles behind a paywall. Since I was already donating, I automatically have access. But for some reason, I feel like I donāt wanna pay anymore. Itās not like it costs me more, but thereās just something about dontating to a free site vs paying for exclusive content that doesnāt feel the same. Maybe cuz Iām not a fan of paywalls in general, so I donāt want to support companies that implement them.
Does that make sense? What would you do? And if youāre not a fan of Vox, maybe think of some other free service/content, like videos from a streamer or a software project or something.
I would stop. At that point itās not really a donation, but a payment. I donāt know how much of that donation to consider a āpaymentā.
Similarly I didnāt get the Tor Project stickers. I donāt know how much the stickers, envelope and postage cost them, thus I couldnāt determine the amount that is ādonationā. As such, I opted not to take them. Just the same with Fediverse Canvas 2024 stickers. Some amount of that has went for Canvas development, but how much I donāt know. Once again I opted for donation only.
Iād like them in both cases. Perhaps $3 (excl. shipping) per sticker is still OK to consider a purchase, but $25 for a few stickers, meh.
Anyway, my point is, if for the donation I am provided exclusive products or services and I either donāt know their cost (to subtract from donation amount) or donāt have the choice to opt out from being provided the services/products, I wonāt donate at all.
But even outside of that, it wouldnāt pass. For me, one requirement for donating is that whatever group I am donating to provides everyone the same service no matter if you pay them or not. Otherwise I canāt really consider it a donation, and I donāt have the money to pay.
