I dislike sharing personal ID & bank data MORE than paying. So, e.g. I have a number of Patreon subscriptions, but I very rarely will use an independent subscription, because that's one more potential data leak.
I.e. We can be cash friends, before we can be dox friends.
Pop-ups that interrupt accessing the site, before I've seen anything useful are a big turn-off. These are asking me to make a decision without having any basis for it.
Finally, of course: my total budget is very small. I can basically do about $50 on ALL subscriptions. I often wish I could afford more.
News & opinion usually don't make the cut.
Most of it goes to artists and software developers, with a strong focus on free culture producers.
@TerryHancock I share your feelings about all that. I pay for a lot of subscriptions and realize most people can’t afford to. I resent having to surrender personal data. (1/2)
But here’s a small paywalled site with no megacorporation involved: https://www.nybooks.com/. They pay me pretty well for my work. Registration is free but you have to give an email address. I wish they didn’t have the paywall. After some time, I make my own stuff available free anyway, because I can. I have no inside information about their business model, and I’d like them to survive. (2/2)
@JamesGleick Paywalls are weird. I use a VPN and the Librewolf browser to thwart surveillance capitalism, but inadvertently it has the effect of vaulting over most paywalls without me even knowing they exist.
Apart from that, I never pay for anything, and I also ensure that everything I create is freely licensed. I was a career public sector journalist for 28 years, also creating public domain information in that period.
It just seems to me that the whole business of "money for information" is a total disaster for humanity at the moment. Paying for it does more harm than good. Platforms, publishers, proprietors, propagandists and algorithms are too toxic.
Also, I get point of your reply, but I don't think it's right. If I advocate for food to be free because it's a human right, farmers will still have jobs.
If it's any consolation I bought "Chaos", it was excellent, thank you!
@AvonVilla I’m glad you liked my book—thanks. And I certainly don’t need consolation.
As for your food/farmers analogy: yes, I could imagine a system, based perhaps on public lending right, where governments supported authorship and people could have all the books free of charge. Also I’d love to see the establishment of universal basic income. (1/2)
But refusing to pay for “information,” scorning copyrights (not that you do that), assailing the villains who try to get money for the work they publish—none of that moves us in the direction of a system that enables authors to make a fair living, as far as I can see. (2/2)
@JamesGleick pay walls are elitist bullshit. The money doesn't go to the authors who put in the work. They just stop people who can't afford paying being able to read the content.
It annoys me so much that the Guardian now forces subscription, in a time when we need free and accessible better journalism to counter how much misinformation is being spread, making it difficult and expensive to access and share their articles pushes people towards worse and worse sources.
@aby That’s not entirely true. I write for a publication that has a paywall and pays its authors decently and always loses money. I’d like them to survive, and I’d like their content to be available free, but I don’t know how both of those things can happen.
I wish they didn’t have a paywall, but it’s their decision, not mine.
@darwinwoodka@JamesGleick If you're logged into a publication you have a subscription with, you have no idea whether the article you're sharing is paywalled or not.
@darwinwoodka Well I can answer that at least. Because the sharer thought that it was important or interesting for those who could use it, and it would do no harm to those who couldn’t.
@JamesGleick I don't think it is irrational at all. Paywalls favor the privileged and leave those without means more ignorant. It disinvites them from the discussion.
@darwinwoodka That’s true: as soon as there’s a paywall, people with more money are being favored over people with less money.
Other parts of our society have this same problem. Grocery stores, for example.
I’m not saying it’s good that we live in a world where people have to pay for the stuff they need. It’s bad. But journalists do need to be paid somehow.
@JamesGleick All of the above, depending on why I've clicked through.
I start by seeing if there's a simple way to bypass the paywall. If I succeed and I like the article then I consider subscribing.
If I fail then I reassess why I clicked through, and then either sigh and move on, but I have, on occasion, subscribed purely on the basis of the implied recommendation.
@JamesGleick I have been burnt by subscribing to publications before. "Sure, I like this content, and I have the funds, so I should subscribe and support the creators and publishers." But the cost of unused subscriptions, which keep renewing each month even if I haven't read the publication, and the intentional roadblocks to unsubscribing, make me realize that it's usually not worth it.
Also some publications see an added value in a paying subscriber - now rather than anonymous, they have name, addr and payment info, making you 10x more valuable to advertisers who can track you and cross-reference preferences from other sites. Thus you're hammered by targetted advertising and spam for the privilege of paying to the site.
@JamesGleick I should probably also say that my fallback scheme is to search for public media on the same topic. So if the headline is "<name of news event>" I will google for "<name of news event> cbc" and "<name of news event> npr". And if nothing comes up, I figure I can probably get along without knowing whatever the news event was about.
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