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Paywalled articles ate Internet
by qustrolabe 1y ago
Paywalled articles ate Internet
- johnnyanmac 1y agoIt was inevitable when ads were no longer enough to sustain websites, I suppose. It is a shame how critical news may be paywalled out from the public, though. Tragic, but fitting.
- joquarky 1y agoIt feels like a self-imposed trap though. Just loading the one article results in: 335 requests 7.9 MB transferred 23.6 MB resources Hosting would be less expensive if they didn't bloat up what could be a simple static document.
- progbits 1y agoI doubt their hosting costs matter compared to other expenses. Journalists still gotta get paid.
- johnnyanmac 1y agoThe hosting is terribly inefficient, but ultimately peanuts in cost. It's labor to worry about, as usual. That's exactly why this AI hype is a capitalists wet dream. Even if the overall cost doesn't go down, it's the potential to produce products without any uppity employees demanding raises, or pushing back on your clearly brilliant idea that you totally didn't need experts for. With workers who work 24/7 who will never threaten to leave, and no pesky labor laws to worry about.
- palmotea 1y ago> It was inevitable when ads were no longer enough to sustain websites, I suppose. It is a shame how critical news may be paywalled out from the public, though. Tragic, but fitting. Also when any public content started being gulped up by scrapers and resold as AI.
- johnnyanmac 1y agotrue, that defintiely accelerated things. But the paywalls were coming up a few years before AI really hit the scene.
- RitesofThing 1y agoIt's literally a dollar to sign up I think everyone whining can afford it.
- actinium226 1y agoIf I could just give them $1 and get the article and that's the whole transaction, that would be great. But they want me to subscribe and I don't read their articles enough for it to be worth it. I could subscribe and cancel but that's a lot of friction to just read one article.
- RitesofThing 1y agomakes sense