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For those of you advocating for a payment model over the ad model, I want you to consider two perspectives. First, consider the people who will be denied access
by ilovecaching 8y ago
For those of you advocating for a payment model over the ad model, I want you to consider two perspectives. First, consider the people who will be denied access to information on the basis of class. People who consider it a luxury to be online at all, let alone logging on to find a paywall for basic news. Now consider the editors at the Washington Post, who now have to cater the demographic who can pay their fees. Instead of reaching billions, the Washington Post can now only reach tens of millions. Instead of providing economic opportunity to small businesses that need to advertise online to compete with larger companies, the Washington Post now has to compete just to pay it's staff writers a fair wage.
Things are never as black and white as we think they are. Privacy should be respected, but we should also respect that the internet could be much less free without advertising. We might not have the many amazing websites and services that we take for granted everyday without ad funding. Many small businesses run by entrepreneurs might never grow their bushinesses without the equalizing opportunity of online ads.
- abdullahkhalids 8y ago> First, consider the people who will be denied access to information on the basis of class. People who consider it a luxury to be online at all, let alone logging on to find a paywall for basic news. I am confused. Haven't (good) newspapers been paid products for a long time? Whats different about the internet version of newspapers?
- kd5bjo 8y agoThere’s no secondhand market for digital newspapers. Physical newspapers were often given away for free by customers that had finished with them.
- berti 8y agoThat doesn't mean we should continue perpetuating such biases when it's avoidable. It annoys me greatly when politicians use this line of reasoning. If what we had before was working we wouldn't need to change it.
- abdullahkhalids 8y agoI don't think creating a surveillance dystopia that gives corporations and potentially evil governments enormous powers over the population is quite the right price to pay for free news. I believe that it would be great if free news is available to everyone, but there are alternate ways of achieving it. For instance, in a microtransaction system giving poor people a reasonable sum to spend every month.
- speedplane 8y ago> Whats different about the internet version of newspapers? High quality newspapers used to be the only way of getting information. Today, those same newspapers generally still serve high quality material, but they now compete against tons of low quality material. So in the past, if you were poor and didn't have access to high quality newspapers, you were simply ignorant. Now if you're poor, you have access to low quality news, which can lead ignorance, and much worse.
- TeMPOraL 8y agoUpvoted. As much as I'm against ads, this is a strong point. Hell, your "first perspective" is what I consider to be the only redeeming aspect of ad-driven models. And it's not just about people who can barely get on-line at all. It's also about kids, who would like to peruse the same content on the Internet as adults do, but have no means of paying for it. Still, this is a problem to be solved, not an unsurmountable obstacle. Ad-driven model, the way it looks today, is unacceptable.
- int_19h 8y agoWhy can't it be both? Amazon seems to be doing pretty well with their "special offers" / "no special offers" arrangement.
- bdcravens 8y agoAll the more interesting considering Jeff Bezos owns Washington Post.