The fact that every mainstream news site is now locked behind a paywall is a real boon for the spread of misinformation, because very few right wing sites have paywalls — which means their disinfo and propaganda can spread much more easily. Paywalls are a slow motion disaster.
I access almost all paywalled material for free via PressReader using my public library.
If you live in a red state, Brooklyn Public Library offers services to victims of GOP book bans & other attacks on literate citizenship. Ditto Boston Public Library.
What other services can I look for at all my libraries? None of them have press reader so is there a similar service? I buy non-resident library cards. @Npars01@Green_Footballs
@Green_Footballs it would be a worthwhile story for an investigative journalist to uncover the overlap between billionaire owned mainstream media outlets vs the same billionaire/family funded free right wing nut job sites...
@Green_Footballs An option could be to get inspiration from Germany. There you can usually always pick between a free version with ads or a paid version without ads (and potential third-party tracking). The paid version is usually quite cheap as it is simply removing ads and tracking while still supporting the publisher. For extras, there's usually an addional premium option.
@Green_Footballs
If the major media corporations had of developed a payment system that they could share at the beginning of the internet age and sold their stories for a penny a view, our media landscape would be a lot different now.
@Green_Footballs
I disagree. Quality information comes at a price. It's not healthy for democracy either to pay with "available brain time" as a french television exec famously said.
I think we need a system connected to decentralized social media where we automatically distribute some amount user choose for themselves, to the creators of what we consume. maybe if everybody came together, we could fund the development.
@Green_Footballs@lisamelton the fact that as capitalists we don’t want to part away with money in order to have better information and learn valuable thoughts and facts is a slow-motion disaster.
@Green_Footballs I agree that accurate information needs to be available to counter dis- and misinformation.
But good accurate information costs money, much more, orders of magnitude more, money than fake information. And generative models ("AI") is super charging this unbalanced arms race. Right wing sites don't have paywalls because they don't do research, they're subsidized and anger drives more ads than calm reason.
Paywalls are problematic, but I'm not sure what the alternative is.
@Green_Footballs Remember when blogs like yours were a check on MSM narrative power? They could summarize an article (legally), giving most people a pretty good grasp of the content. Painfully Ironic that now, when we so need an end-run around paywalls, blogging is too moribund to fill that role.
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