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?
Because it is the original data source which can be used to find non paywall archives using tools such as https://archive.ph/
I think it’s always good practice to link the original source.
If you block data sources because you fear misinformation, then you also can’t discuss the misinformation/propaganda you disprove of. If you don’t allow that information to be posted, it is still being read by many many people that now have less chances of being informed about it being misinformation.
I don’t think limiting information is ever a good solution
Also, I agree with your reply on beehaw.
You can post third party source that discuess the orginal article and that way you can gurantee accessibility and almost full info.
The ad-supported internet is awful, and paywalls are sort of the only sane alternative. It’s how news has worked for centuries and we need to go back.
Because journalism costs money, and journalists have bills to pay. If you don’t want to pay money for news, some billionaire will happily pay it for you: https://youtu.be/_fHfgU8oMSo
Thank you. It really bothers me that there are so many people who expect journalism to fall from trees, or even that they’re somehow owed it.
The situation for the last 20 years - the internet free-for-all with plunging ad revenues and spotty quality - is a historic anomaly. Before that it was normal to pay for journalism, and masses of people did. Seems we’re slowly moving back to that model and it’s not a moment too soon.
That said, there have always been free sources of non-billionaire-controlled news in the form of state broadcasters like PBS, BBC, CBC. In mainland Europe there are several that publish in English, including DW, France24, Der Spiegel. They have their biases, of course, but they employ professional journalists who take their jobs seriously. And there are more and more nonprofit publishers too: ProPublica and The Guardian spring to mind but there are a ton of specialist outlets too, financed by readers or philanthropic foundations.
To be fair, state controlled (or state financed) media has its own set of problems, depending on the country and historic period, and things can change fast with certain governments.
Sure. But apparently subtle differences are in fact important. For example, RAI, the Italian broadcaster, is traditionally kept on a tight leash by the government, and everyone in Italy understands that. The BBC by contrast is almost completely independent due to its unusual setup involving a charter. PBS is partly accountable to its audience directly because it begs them for donations. Russian state TV is obviously just the propaganda arm of the Kremlin. Where the money comes from is important but it doesn’t tell the whole story.
Time for “Journalism Dollars”? Similar to Democracy Dollars.
You get X amount of money that you can distribute to news sources however you choose, if you don’t do anything with it, it jist goes to PBS and NPR.
Why is that the problem of online discussion spaces? News sites can paywall their content, but that doesn’t mean anyone else has to allow paywalled links.
It doesn’t. Doesn’t mean anyone has to allow anything besides fox news either.
Just pointing out that journalism costs money and certain stories are very expensive to research and cover. As many things in life, you get what you pay for.
certain stories are very expensive to research and cover
Well a majority of the ones I see seem to rather be lazy garbage editorializing a single quote or study that would be more informative presented by itself.
As many things in life, you get what you pay for.
What I want is to talk about things with people who have also read the relevant context, news site paywall subscriptions prevent that even if you pay because everybody else will have only read the headline. Or they would, if they weren’t so easy to pirate.
Are you suggesting that Propublica and The Guardian for example to have a hard paywalls?
Paywalls literally exist to support billionaires and their media empires.
Paywalls literally exist to support billionaires and their media empires.
Seriously? You may want to consider widening your news source, maybe.
I follow more than 300 news sources by RSS (all without paywalls), how wide you want me to go?
That’s up to the specific community on that specific instance.
I had never seen a single community that apply that. There might be a one that I did not notice, but otherwise there is not a single community that has any rules about this.
FYI: Firefox has several plugins that can bypass paywalls. I haven’t encountered a link that hasn’t worked with the one I got (“Bypass Paywalls Clean”).
What can the people who use Chrome or Firefox from the Play Store do to get it? They can’t.
