As of 21 June 2023, there were 52,642 distinct sites submitted to the front page. Counting those with 100 or more appearances, that falls to 149. Doing a manu

As of 21 June 2023, there were 52,642 distinct sites submitted to the front page. Counting those with 100 or more appearances, that falls to 149. Doing a manual classification of news sites, there are 146. Even at a modest annual subscription rate of $50/year ($1/week per source), that's a $7,300 subscriptions budget just to be able to discuss what's appearing on Hacker News from mainstream news sources. Oh, and if you want per-article access at, say, $0.50 per article, that's $5,475 to read a year's worth of HN front-page submissions (10,950 articles/year), and that is just based on what is captured on the archive. In practice far more articles will appear, if only briefly, on the front page each day. Which is among the reasons I find the "just subscribe" argument untenable. Some sort of bundling payment arrangement is required. <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36832354 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36832354> My alternative suggestion is global access to content through a universal content syndication tax, or fee assessed through ISPs, on a progressive basis. See: "Why won't (some) people pay for the news?" (2022) <https://diaspora.glasswings.com/posts/867c94d0ba87013aca41448a5b29e257 https://diaspora.glasswings.com/posts/867c94d0ba87013aca4144...> Discussed 4 days ago on HN: <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41249571 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41249571>