AI stealing our work. The collapse of social networks. The need to pay journalists to produce impactful journalism. Here is why we are asking for your email address to read 404 Media.
This was a hard ‘no’ from me until I read the article. Let’s be honest with ourselves - either we foster these sort of closed gardens or we go play in the infinite shit-filled sandbox the rest of the Internet is becoming. This honestly just sounds like moving to an RSS-only model, which is something I could get behind.
In hopes they read this comment - the problem is your price. $100 a year is about what I pay for membership to The Guardian - a highly respected, award winning newspaper, that gives away ALL its content. Why would I pay the same for tech news that covers a fraction of all the news out there?
At $5 a year I would have signed up after reading one good article - at $10 maybe after a couple of good articles - but at $100? Never. Even if you were the only good tech news site - and you are not.
I got no problem with this. In the near term, I see no way to pay for journalism otherwise. Email addresses seem like a really short term solution to the AI problem, though.
Ask for donation, plus no ads in the first place. Maybe in the paying process they do need your contact info, but that's inevitable if you want to pay with your credit card. 100% better than lying about necessities of email.
The first time I went to their website, I left immediately because I got a big pop-up with 404. Tried again, same thing. Third time, I saw it was just a pop-up asking for then-optional registration.
Thankfully, they changed their pop-up design since then.
It’s one of those names, which I suspect seemed like a good idea in the pub at the time and which they should have jettisoned as soon as they sobered up.
I’m excited for the premium RSS feed. 404media has some of the best reporting in recent memory, and being able to read the full text of all their articles on my RSS reader, plus having access to an ad-free podcast RSS feed with bonus content makes the $100/year membership price entirely worth it.
Now if only aftermath.site had a full-text premium RSS feed, I’d be all set.
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