It does feel like a rubicon has been crossed recently, where most things I like are going behind paywalls, and many smaller outfits are heavily pushing Patreon

It does feel like a rubicon has been crossed recently, where most things I like are going behind paywalls, and many smaller outfits are heavily pushing Patreon or the like. Anecdotally, I’m paying subscriptions for news sites (mainstream and niche) and podcasts I would not have had a few years ago. I subscribed to YouTube, which I thought I’d never do! I’m not sure what to make of this. Microtransactions and subscriptions powering creators has been a dream of many people for a long, long time - at least since the 90s. So maybe this is great? But even if it is, something has been lost too.