7 ms·

It says "Why do paywalls exist", of course to elicit payment for content, that's obvious. But what is less obvious is that they exist because we're centralizing

It says "Why do paywalls exist", of course to elicit payment for content, that's obvious. But what is less obvious is that they exist because we're centralizing a lot of information in a few places, and these sites require a lot of funding to operate. In the age of dirt cheap cloud hosting we still depend on these huge sites for our content. I know it sounds like a massive simplification, and I don't claim to have the details on how to improve the situation, but I think we need more decentralized content creation. Often when I hit a paywall i will simply Google the topic and sure enough there is an independent blog with the same story. That blog costs a fraction to run compared to the big news site I first landed on. Let's spread the information out more.

bjord 3y ago
I honestly have a really hard time believing that the reason newspapers are so expensive to run these days is due to web hosting costs—I would imagine that most of their budget is spent on staffing (though I couldn't find a budget breakdown with a quick search, so I'm only guessing here). As a side question: what are you reading about that independent blogs consistently offer the same quality of reporting as major news organizations?
- culi 3y ago
  > I honestly have a really hard time believing that the reason newspapers are so expensive to run these days is due to web hosting costs All those metrics and analytics and anti-adblock services can really add up. The largest assets on an average, e.g., NYTimes article are 2mb+ scripts; not images
  - hulitu 3y ago
    > The largest assets on an average, e.g., NYTimes article are 2mb+ scripts; not images So, in the end, the actual information almost does not exist. /s
NoboruWataya 3y ago
Quality reporting isn't free (I know, I sound like a paywall myself, but it's true). It involves people traveling to warzones or disaster zones to get a view on the ground, or spending weeks chasing down and investigating leads, or getting interviews with important people or leaks from insiders. In a good news organisation, that is what the paywall is paying for (no doubt there are many bad news organisations that try to charge you for low-effort rubbish - nothing new there). A lot of significant news stories are broken by these reporters. If you get your news from independent blogs then I suspect either: * they are rehashing the content from the paid journalists (which is fine, but not really a sustainable model if everyone does it) * the news is not all that thoroughly researched * the person actually has put a lot of time and effort to deliver you in-depth news for free, in which case, you have to ask yourself why. To be clear, I use paywalls as well, but it's not as simple as saying the tech is cheaper now so there should be no reason to ever pay for news. If no one in society paid for news we'd all be worse off.
- gosub100 3y ago
  I have an idea: how about advertisers pay for ads placed on the websites of news outlets that have quality reporting? And furthermore, how about those ads dont pop up unexpectedly, don't auto play movies, dont have gruesome, edgy, salacious, or insulting graphics or images? Just make an offer and if I'm interested, I'll click. Any time I hear the debate about paywall vs content provider, they've never disambiguated whether it's greed for more money they are after (by participating in the ads arms-race) or whether they simply cannot be profitable by showing "normal" (aka late 1990's web) ads. I think that's telling.
  - supriyo-biswas 3y ago
    There are ad networks that serve simple, lightweight ads, and yet when people install an ad blocker their revealed preference equates to refusing all ads, even when they do not have any of the negative characteristics you mention.
    - RHSeeger 3y ago
rchaud 3y ago
> In the age of dirt cheap cloud hosting we still depend on these huge sites for our content. [...] but I think we need more decentralized content creation. We've had that for 20 years in commercial blogs. All they do is rehash the story published by the bigger sites, embed some tweets, and dump a bunch of their own links into their 250 word article. We always come back to the real news sites because there's a reason the blogs are un-gated.
0xbadcafebee 3y ago
We're talking about journalism, not website hosting. You pay a reporter to find out about a story, the journalist writes up a story and puts it in their company's paper. Some stories are wire stories that everyone is allowed to copy, some stories are not. You can report on a story that another news outlet covered, but you can't just copy+paste it into your blog, because Laws[1]. Doesn't matter how much money it cost or what your hosting provider is, there are things you can and can't do with "information". Moreover, depending on a search engine to find you news is a lot like going to a news stand near your house to find news. It's only going to show you the news that has paid enough to get its information out there front and center. SEO today pretty much guarantees that the one with the most money wins. [1] https://nytlicensing.com/republishing-reprints-and-newspaper-articles/ https://nytlicensing.com/republishing-reprints-and-newspaper...
carlosjobim 3y ago
It has nothing to do with the cost of hosting or the technology aspect. Making high quality content, and especially journalistic investigation, is a full time job. It takes a lot of time and effort, as well as some money to do it. That you can find repeats of the information with Google after somebody has made the time and effort to make it means nothing. The information wouldn't exist at all without the initial effort of somebody, and that person needs to get paid. > Let's spread the information out more. Okay, then volunteer your time to make important journalistic investigations.

bjord 3y ago

I honestly have a really hard time believing that the reason newspapers are so expensive to run these days is due to web hosting costs—I would imagine that most of their budget is spent on staffing (though I couldn't find a budget breakdown with a quick search, so I'm only guessing here). As a side question: what are you reading about that independent blogs consistently offer the same quality of reporting as major news organizations?

culi 3y ago
> I honestly have a really hard time believing that the reason newspapers are so expensive to run these days is due to web hosting costs All those metrics and analytics and anti-adblock services can really add up. The largest assets on an average, e.g., NYTimes article are 2mb+ scripts; not images
- hulitu 3y ago
  > The largest assets on an average, e.g., NYTimes article are 2mb+ scripts; not images So, in the end, the actual information almost does not exist. /s

NoboruWataya 3y ago

Quality reporting isn't free (I know, I sound like a paywall myself, but it's true). It involves people traveling to warzones or disaster zones to get a view on the ground, or spending weeks chasing down and investigating leads, or getting interviews with important people or leaks from insiders. In a good news organisation, that is what the paywall is paying for (no doubt there are many bad news organisations that try to charge you for low-effort rubbish - nothing new there). A lot of significant news stories are broken by these reporters. If you get your news from independent blogs then I suspect either: * they are rehashing the content from the paid journalists (which is fine, but not really a sustainable model if everyone does it) * the news is not all that thoroughly researched * the person actually has put a lot of time and effort to deliver you in-depth news for free, in which case, you have to ask yourself why. To be clear, I use paywalls as well, but it's not as simple as saying the tech is cheaper now so there should be no reason to ever pay for news. If no one in society paid for news we'd all be worse off.

gosub100 3y ago
I have an idea: how about advertisers pay for ads placed on the websites of news outlets that have quality reporting? And furthermore, how about those ads dont pop up unexpectedly, don't auto play movies, dont have gruesome, edgy, salacious, or insulting graphics or images? Just make an offer and if I'm interested, I'll click. Any time I hear the debate about paywall vs content provider, they've never disambiguated whether it's greed for more money they are after (by participating in the ads arms-race) or whether they simply cannot be profitable by showing "normal" (aka late 1990's web) ads. I think that's telling.
- supriyo-biswas 3y ago
  There are ad networks that serve simple, lightweight ads, and yet when people install an ad blocker their revealed preference equates to refusing all ads, even when they do not have any of the negative characteristics you mention.
  - RHSeeger 3y ago

rchaud 3y ago

> In the age of dirt cheap cloud hosting we still depend on these huge sites for our content. [...] but I think we need more decentralized content creation. We've had that for 20 years in commercial blogs. All they do is rehash the story published by the bigger sites, embed some tweets, and dump a bunch of their own links into their 250 word article. We always come back to the real news sites because there's a reason the blogs are un-gated.

0xbadcafebee 3y ago

We're talking about journalism, not website hosting. You pay a reporter to find out about a story, the journalist writes up a story and puts it in their company's paper. Some stories are wire stories that everyone is allowed to copy, some stories are not. You can report on a story that another news outlet covered, but you can't just copy+paste it into your blog, because Laws[1]. Doesn't matter how much money it cost or what your hosting provider is, there are things you can and can't do with "information". Moreover, depending on a search engine to find you news is a lot like going to a news stand near your house to find news. It's only going to show you the news that has paid enough to get its information out there front and center. SEO today pretty much guarantees that the one with the most money wins. [1] https://nytlicensing.com/republishing-reprints-and-newspaper-articles/ https://nytlicensing.com/republishing-reprints-and-newspaper...

carlosjobim 3y ago

It has nothing to do with the cost of hosting or the technology aspect. Making high quality content, and especially journalistic investigation, is a full time job. It takes a lot of time and effort, as well as some money to do it. That you can find repeats of the information with Google after somebody has made the time and effort to make it means nothing. The information wouldn't exist at all without the initial effort of somebody, and that person needs to get paid. > Let's spread the information out more. Okay, then volunteer your time to make important journalistic investigations.