Stop complaining about paywalls existing.

[kottke@mastodon.social]

Stop complaining about paywalls existing. “These paywalls are attempts to make this dying field viable. When you get personally offended by paywalls, you’re essentially saying we should work for free.” https://bsky.app/profile/laurajedeed.bsky.social/post/3mcdwspcms223

[mycotropic@beige.party]

@kottke

No, I think I'll go right on complaining, thanks. When every activity I participate in costs money or generates guilt for not paying then we're accepting, as a matter of fact, that capitalism is the only choice.
We need a better model not your damn guilt trip.

[jameswneal@mstdn.social]

@mycotropic @kottke is quoting what @laurajedeed.bsky.social said, though they should have made that clear. Laura's entire thread is interesting, particularly since in addition to explaining she doesn't make enough money with her #journalism to afford subscriptions, she goes on to offer a couple of ways around paywalls.

Me, my only paywall gripe is those posts that don't tell me before I click I'm gong to hit one.

[unabart@dobbs.town]

@kottke I’ll take bullshit ads 100/100x over a fkn paywall. I already pay to get online. Refuse to be squeezed for pennies every twist and turn. If that’s your business model, too bad. Circle the bowl with everyone else who thinks that’s a good business model. I don’t get mad, I just close the tab. Guaranteed that similar, if not identical, information exists elsewhere with menial search effort.

[mycotropic@beige.party]

@JamesWNeal @kottke

Thanks for that, I'll go back and reread!

[alfredo@indieweb.social]

@kottke I'm not offended by paywalls. I just don't access the media hidden by them. And in any case, don't presume to tell me not to complain. It's not my fault if your business model doesn't work.

[timhare@hachyderm.io]

@kottke re: paywalls, Dave Winer (@davew ) has proposed an "EZPass" system, similar to what we use to toll roads and turnpikes, which would pay per article with opt-in by the user at the time of the charge if I remember. I think it would be a good web thing to work that out

[davew@mastodon.social]

@TimHare @kottke

Right! 😀

http://scripting.com/2020/06/23/115824.html?title=anEzpassForNews

We don’t want them to work for free. We want to pay them more money.

[dgleich@mstdn.social]

@davew @TimHare @kottke has anyone tried to build this? (Someone must have?) What are the actual stumbling blocks? Content buy in?

[davew@mastodon.social]

@dgleich @TimHare @kottke

It only works if the publishers do it.

They don’t like being lead, I guess they have to think of it.

Who knows, it’s so sensible, leaving lots of money on the table.

[wjmaggos@liberal.city]

@dgleich @davew @TimHare @kottke

but your idea isn't an EZ pass. people can't choose not to pay once they get to this point in the road. it will charge you based on your license plate or if you stopped, traffic would be a mess.

on the web, you can get info that's good cause people are paying for it. or get bad info cause people are not. enough doing the latter makes society shit.

we need a system where everybody gets good info cause enough of us are paying what we can afford. #PublicPatron

[timhare@hachyderm.io]

@dgleich @davew @kottke I have not heard of any work on such a system. The news organizations would have to cooperate, which probably means sketching out the flow in some way where they can clearly see money in it.

My own suspicion is that part of this will have to happen at the HTTP level with the 402 'Payment required' response. So, does that mean implement EZPass in browsers and feed readers, rather than as a separare application?

[davew@mastodon.social]

@oscherler @TimHare

Yup. Makes you wonder why you’re even paying.