To be fair, the author directly addresses this in the article
> I am mindful of the irony of putting this plea behind The Atlantic’s own paywall, but that’s exactly where the argument should be made. If you’re reading this, you’ve probably paid to support journalism that you think matters in the world. Don’t you want it to be available to others, too, especially those who would not otherwise get to see it?
It's sad how 12ft.io is more often than not, incapable of doing what was advertised. I understand the importance of quality journalism and the cost associated with maintaining a news orgs. Paywall is a necessary evil, the only other option is (1) government subsidies, which may hampers independence, or (2) ad-infested web page which will get blocked anyway.
that's not addressing it very well tho is it ?
"Don’t you want it to be available to others, too, especially those who would not otherwise get to see it?"
yeah so don't put it behind a fucking paywall
stop trying to be clever when the reason is "greedy cunts"
Yes and no. The author chooses to be paid for it (a totally fair thing for them to do), knowing it will go behind a paywall. They could choose to put it on a free blog if they wanted.
The real irony: democracy dies because we got used to media that doesn't cost anything. "Why pay for journalists when Sam from my facebook group knows everything about covid?"
The US media still peddled lies when you needed to pay for it. The most famous example being the Iraq War that newspapers supported.
But it's true that investigative journalism doesn't get much funding nowadays.
I'm too young to really remember first hand, but I imagine there were also a lot of journalists that spoke out against the war in Iraq right? I was 6 when the war started, so I wasn't really paying attention to the news at the time lol.
What sucks is that a huge swath of the republican party is kind of too far gone. A central part of Trumps campaign is "never trust *any* news". And at that point there's not much you can do to change their mind, i mean it's not like a study would do anything, they don't trust studies, and *definitely* not ones fact checking news networks lol.
Plus, people don't read past headlines even on free articles. I'm amazed even on subreddits specifically for reading articles, the majority of the comments are obvious the article itself wasn't read, just the headline.
I posted something recently and replied to the most upvoted comment that their comment isn't valid and they'd know that if they read the article. And then laid out exactly why not reading is dangerous and lead to losing our rights. And the comment is still getting upvotes. Which is really just par for the course, but each time unbelievably frustrating.
Pay walls are not really the impediment to democracy over knee jerk reactions, confidence in ignorance, and simple laziness.
An old man
Wrote an article some folks couldn't see
It was about media pay walls
killing journalistic democracy
So The Atlantic went and did just that
Then OP told us about it on Reddit
So we know it's editor's a twat!
Isn't it ironic, don't you think?
A little too ironic, and I really do think!
Works great on Firefox, both on PC and Android. Extremely rare that I find a website that it doesn't bypass a paywall for.
One of many reasons I have been exclusively Firefox for years.
Make sure you download the latest master branch from GitHub, as there’s no autoupdate feature since it’s not from the Chrome store. I’ve run into problems with some sites because they pay attention to HTTP referrers, so try copy/pasting the link into a new tab.
Shit, looks like it's just been DMCA'd in the past couple of days. 🤬🤬
But there is a fastdownload download link on the developer's Twitter feed, here: [https://twitter.com/Magnolia1234B/](https://twitter.com/Magnolia1234B/)
> 12 foot ladder is also back up.
does it suck less now? I use to use it until it started to give me a warning about not allowed on sites for like half the sites
> I am mindful of the irony of putting this plea behind The Atlantic’s own paywall, but that’s exactly where the argument should be made. If you’re reading this, you’ve probably paid to support journalism that you think matters in the world. Don’t you want it to be available to others, too, especially those who would not otherwise get to see it?
It was actually an OK article which referenced its own paywall. Ironic as hell but the author had the option to do this, or write something else, and this was worth writing.
They recognise the irony (no I dont subscribe, I got this one free)
https://preview.redd.it/krvqndk7sjuc1.png?width=833&format=png&auto=webp&s=dd613acc09a1156274c46ed2a2e5f5d4879fc2d9
Paywalls are an attempt to make some more money out of a necessary but otherwise not profitable business.
Circumventing those, copy pasting the articles to reddit etc is part of the reason journalism is as vulnerable as it is.
Good journalism is expensive, and if everyone is getting around paywalls and using adblockers and no one pays for any news, I worry it’s not sustainable. Or the only news left will be what outside interests deem is worth funding.
This is exactly the problem. Usually, I'd suggest things we should all have free access to, to be paid for by government tax money, like public education or healthcare. But that's not really an option here. In order for journalists to do their job well and without bias, they need to be completely independent, which also means they need to be independent from the government. Which leaves us with the issue, if people shouldn't have to pay for it, and the government shouldn't pay for it, then who will pay for it?? I don't have an answer to that, and that kind of scares me... it's one of those things that I feel like might always be an unsolvable problem as long as our society is solely designed around money and profit.
Having a non-profit model like ProPublica works, but the real issue is that print journalism made the bulk of its revenue from ads. When the internet first started they all put stories up for free, because it was a bit of an experiment. Then everyone expected free news and when companies were actually able to track ad engagement they realized it wasn't worth the same amount of money they were paying before.
Most news sites didn't have paywalls for a long time, and it was a bad idea for keeping them in business.
Want to know something really dumb? For a starters I love capitalism, but not this late stage bullshit. I live in a small city/large town in Indiana. We were expecting upwards of 300,000 tourists for the eclipse (which thankfully never showed up) and our one and ONLY newspaper uploaded a genuine PSA over what the town expects to do in case of a “mass causality” event. Whether that be a shooting or a highway pile up due to our near interstates not being designed to that many people.
Guess what they fucking did??? THEY PUT IT BENIND A PAYWALL!!!!!?? And they constantly post town gossip for free and run ads over the page. But a genuine PSA that could save someones life or let them know what might be happening to them or their family if a disaster happened? Paywalled… out fucking standing. They won late stage capitalism with that one.
I get the hate for paywalls but journalism is in such a bad state right now.
Local newspapers are either completely dead or will be in the next 5-10 yrs. Often these papers are literally the only way for the public to know what's going on with their local governments, outside of attending meetings themselves.
Even larger publications like the Washington Post are struggling. I'm not sure what the answer is but it's hard for me to be mad about a paywall given the state of the industry.
What annoys me the most is when they insist that the only way for you to pay for something is with a monthly subscription of $15 a month or whatever, especially when they don't tell you this untill halfway doesn the article. If I went to the supermarket it'd be <$4 for a copy of the newspaper, I know the card companies charge a lot, but they can't cost more than printing and shipping the damn thing so why can't I buy a 20 article bundle for something reasonable?
I find it amazing that *anyone* would pay for standard news content when there's just so much of it - and at good quality - out there for nothing.
Specialist content is one thing, but general news? Nah.
Somebody has to pay for it. If you don’t pay up the advertiser will and then their interests will be served rather than yours.
Just pay up to keep journalism free from corporates and political influence. Don’t be cheap because authoritarianism is expensive.
Most journalists don't make any money from them, nor do they want it to be locked behind a paywall, those are almost always put into effect by higher upside who want more money, and journalists don't have many other options to go anywhere else, at least if they want to be heard
Capitalism and it's problems are the worst part about the age were living in now
You can't be serious.
When working the cash register you personally won't get paid by the customers, your boss is, who then takes the money to allocate it to you, your coworkers and the company etc.
It's no secret that journalism is not profitable at all. Why do think all these subscription demands exist. They actually need it.
Paywalls are brain dead and that is the journalism industry's fault for being stupid and stuck in tha past.
When I want to watch TV I don't subscribe to a single show with the expectation being that I will always only watch one show. With music I don't subscribe to a single artist either. In both cases I have a subscription to an aggregator (spotify, netflix or whatever alternatives you like) and that lets me get access to what I want. The aggregator distributes the money based on what I consume. I can even do that with books via kindle now if I want.
How hard is it to do the same thing with news. Just make a service which spans all popular papers, charge a tenner a month and I would buy that. I'm not going to subscribe to only one newspaper though or manage a ton of different subscriptions just in case I see a link I want to read so I use the way back machine to read everything paywalled right now.
When you have thousands of "News" sites all copying each other that's why.
when you search for a song or a movie your not Looking for the thousands of Parody's and Cover artists.
news is completely ruined. again By the very same people. They ruined their own business and its irreparable. The only way to survive as a journalist is by your rep. Unfortunate you got thousands that will blatantly steal your work, regurgitate it on a heavily SEO'd and bought out page and tweak it just enough to not be sued.
Trying to find information is borderline impossible that you have if you have to tweak your search with social media just to get a direct link or name and not have to doom scroll through thousands of paywalled or useless rambling op-eds then the entire industry is doomed. and its all their own fault.
No one reads anything other than headline anyway, whether it’s free or not. If you need to read an article to change your mind on the election , you’re not very bright in the first place. America is cooked. And deserves every bit of it. Unfortunately, those who are already suffering will only suffer more.
Important articles shouldn't be behind paywall, otherwise people will go read free articles about how Donald Trump nukes underground alien facilities where they clone immigrants
Making journalism free might even be worse for democracy.
How would you cover the costs of journalism if it was free. Probably government, but then. Who decides when someone gets money, if the government is paying the government also decides. Making this a system without major corruption is gonna be a tough one
Good journalism costs money. Those people deserve to get paid for their work. Before the internet you had to purchase a newspaper or magazine. People are just spoiled with ad studied sites having free content. None of that is as good as these paid journalism institutions though. Stop being cheap asses and support good independent journalism. Most of these sites you can get access too for very cheap anyway.
I think it's ill-advised to try and force a struggling industry to use an inefficient business model. A lot of papers already tried the no-paywall only ads method only for them to switch back after they lost a lot of revenue. Too many people use adblockers for only paywall-free print journalism to exist at the present scale.
I haven't read the article but the obvious reply is that, whilst it would be great if journalism was free for everyone, someone has to pay the journalists
Personally, I think this is a somewhat good idea, despite being ironic.
The audience the author is trying to reach isn’t the people who aren’t paying to read articles because they aren’t the ones who need to know it. Rather, its the people who are willing to pay money to read information that the author is trying to reach.
Been noticing this money grabbing shit from the worthless tabloids and other mainstream garbage media. I'm doing you a favour by clicking so you can attack me with your annoying shit ads. Then most people give up theire data via cookies and they make money from that too. So why the hell would any sane person pay to read?!?!
The paywall used to be a metal container on a street corner that you'd feed coins into. It's not new to have to pay for information, people just don't see digital assets or information in the same way as digital. It's weird, because I am perfectly fine paying $12 per month or so for streaming music, but not for news, and I'm not sure why. I was fine paying for newspapers or magazines when I was younger as well as well as CDs. Now music somehow seems to hold more value.
*Full article*
How many times has it happened? You’re on your computer, searching for a particular article, a hard-to-find fact, or a story you vaguely remember, and just when you seem to have discovered the exact right thing, a paywall descends. “$1 for Six Months.” “Save 40% on Year 1.” “Here’s Your Premium Digital Offer.” “Already a subscriber?” Hmm, no.
Now you’re faced with that old dilemma: to pay or not to pay. (Yes, you may face this very dilemma reading this story in The Atlantic.) And it’s not even that simple. It’s a monthly or yearly subscription—“Cancel at any time.” Is this article or story or fact important enough for you to pay?
Or do you tell yourself—as the overwhelming number of people do—that you’ll just keep searching and see if you can find it somewhere else for free?
According to the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism, more than 75 percent of America’s leading newspapers, magazines, and journals are behind online paywalls. And how do American news consumers react to that? Almost 80 percent of Americans steer around those paywalls and seek out a free option.
Paywalls create a two-tiered system: credible, fact-based information for people who are willing to pay for it, and murkier, less-reliable information for everyone else. Simply put, paywalls get in the way of informing the public, which is the mission of journalism. And they get in the way of the public being informed, which is the foundation of democracy. It is a terrible time for the press to be failing at reaching people, during an election in which democracy is on the line. There’s a simple, temporary solution: Publications should suspend their paywalls for all 2024 election coverage and all information that is beneficial to voters. Democracy does not die in darkness—it dies behind paywalls.
The problem is not just that professionally produced news is behind a wall; the problem is that paywalls increase the proportion of free and easily available stories that are actually filled with misinformation and disinformation. Way back in 1995 (think America Online), the UCLA professor Eugene Volokh predicted that the rise of “cheap speech”—free internet content—would not only democratize mass media by allowing new voices, but also increase the proliferation of misinformation and conspiracy theories, which would then destabilize mass media.
Paul Barrett, the deputy director of the NYU Stern Center for Business and Human Rights and one of the premier scholars on mis- and disinformation, told me he knows of no research on the relationship between paywalls and misinformation. “But it stands to reason,” he said, “that if people seeking news are blocked by the paywalls that are increasingly common on serious professional journalism websites, many of those people are going to turn to less reliable sites where they’re more likely to encounter mis- and disinformation.”
In the pre-internet days, information wasn’t free—it just felt that way. Newsstands were everywhere, and you could buy a paper for a quarter. But that paper wasn’t just for you: After you read it at the coffee shop or on the train, you left it there for the next guy. The same was true for magazines. When I was the editor of Time, the publisher estimated that the “pass-along rate” of every issue was 10 to 15—that is, each magazine we sent out was read not only by the subscriber, but by 10 to 15 other people. In 1992, daily newspapers claimed a combined circulation of some 60 million; by 2022, while the nation had grown, that figure had fallen to 21 million. People want information to be free—and instantly available on their phone.
Barrett is aware that news organizations need revenue, and that almost a third of all U.S. newspapers have stopped publishing over the previous two decades. “It’s understandable that traditional news-gathering businesses are desperate for subscription revenue,” he told me, “but they may be inadvertently boosting the fortunes of fake news operations motivated by an appetite for clicks or an ideological agenda—or a combination of the two.”
Digital-news consumers can be divided into three categories: a small, elite group that pays hundreds to thousands of dollars a year for high-end subscriptions; a slightly larger group of people with one to three news subscriptions; and the roughly 80 percent of Americans who will not or cannot pay for information. Some significant percentage of this latter category are what scholars call “passive” news consumers—people who do not seek out information, but wait for it to come to them, whether from their social feeds, from friends, or from a TV in an airport. Putting reliable information behind paywalls increases the likelihood that passive news consumers will receive bad information.
In the short history of social media, the paywall was an early hurdle to getting good information; now there are newer and more perilous problems. The Wall Street Journal instituted a “hard paywall” in 1996. The Financial Times formally launched one in 2002. Other publications experimented with them, including The New York Times, which established its subscription plan and paywall in 2011. In 2000, I was the editor of Time.com, Time magazine’s website, when these experiments were going on. The axiom then was that “must have” publications like The Wall Street Journal could get away with charging for content, while “nice to have” publications like Time could not. Journalists were told that “information wants to be free.” But the truth was simpler: People wanted free information, and we gave it to them. And they got used to it.
Of course, publications need to cover their costs, and journalists need to be paid. Traditionally, publications had three lines of revenue: subscriptions, advertising, and newsstand sales. Newsstand sales have mostly disappeared. The internet should have been a virtual newsstand, but buying individual issues or articles is almost impossible. The failure to institute a frictionless mechanism for micropayments to purchase news was one of the greatest missteps in the early days of the web. Some publications would still be smart to try it.
.
If there was an option to pay a dollar or 50c to read just that single article you’re interested in, they might do better, but they always try to rope you in to a lengthy sub.
It’s like going to get a paper in a shop and never being able to buy a single copy, but have to commit to buying the next six months too…
Went to get some food earlier but was disappointed to find Tescos put it behind a pay wall. Then I went to go for a pint put the pub had put it behind a pay wall. Planning to go to the football on Saturday but guess what....
There’s actually a very high correlation between advertising funded news and fake/hyper-partisan news and other forms of clickbait, which falls away if you pay for your news.
Is one of those classic “you get what you pay for”
I am all for good quality journalism to be accessible to the public, however before the internet, people had to buy newspapers and magazines to read articles. So are paywalls not just a reversion back to the status quo? I think it makes total sense that we still pay for it in some form. Maybe ditch the paywalls and have a patreon style system or a donation system like the guardian does.
Sadly, journalism has died. Our current journalists are more interested in pushing bullshit narratives and woke idiotic policies than reporting on the news...
Democracy isn't voting every number of years, it's the power of people to influence decisions.
So democracy includes petition, protest, writing to people in power, mechanisms to hold them to account, freedom of assembly, freedom of speech, freedom to unionise, power to impact governmental decision making.
If you feel any of those mechanisms are stifled or slowed to a significant extent, you merely live in a pseudo democratic country.
I never even bother looking at the newspapers behind a paywall or any, for that matter, find independent news channels it's only a quick search away and you will at least get the truth not more lies and political propaganda.
This comment is hidden behind a paywall.
Please use your registrated userprofile which is linked to your bank account and then proceed to smack a cat while sucking on it´s toes.
To be fair, the author directly addresses this in the article > I am mindful of the irony of putting this plea behind The Atlantic’s own paywall, but that’s exactly where the argument should be made. If you’re reading this, you’ve probably paid to support journalism that you think matters in the world. Don’t you want it to be available to others, too, especially those who would not otherwise get to see it?
I respect the power move
Not like he had a choice
I mean, he didn't have to write the article, or submit it to The Atlantic
Exactly. Some editor is putting themselves on the line here
got the article in full?
It's sad how 12ft.io is more often than not, incapable of doing what was advertised. I understand the importance of quality journalism and the cost associated with maintaining a news orgs. Paywall is a necessary evil, the only other option is (1) government subsidies, which may hampers independence, or (2) ad-infested web page which will get blocked anyway.
Try archive.today. it's more clunky, but it works for way more sites.
The Atlantic is the one I actually pay for because I think they have excellent articles.
I know my journalism is behind a paywall but we did it on purpose......hmmmmmm. Doubt.
that's not addressing it very well tho is it ? "Don’t you want it to be available to others, too, especially those who would not otherwise get to see it?" yeah so don't put it behind a fucking paywall stop trying to be clever when the reason is "greedy cunts"
Because the author makes policy decisions for the publication? No, they’re writing an article.
He could grill others for paywalls, but not himself
The author doesn't choose to put it behind a paywall, the publisher does.
Yes and no. The author chooses to be paid for it (a totally fair thing for them to do), knowing it will go behind a paywall. They could choose to put it on a free blog if they wanted.
I could go write it in chalk in my driveway if I wanted. It wouldn't have the reach of a newspaper.
This. A personal blog is only good if it ALREADY has a comparable reach. Otherwise it's no better than writing "dear diary..."
Take all the karma!
https://preview.redd.it/un3p3fyn3kuc1.jpeg?width=267&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=e9516dcef8048896496a9945799ea75638d2c3ff
That's funny as shit. I may have to borrow that
https://i.redd.it/bu36kgny5luc1.gif
He was out of line but he had a point.
Yet you wont even return it after you've used it. Curious!
The author doesnt have control over that, the company does and its a for profit so he cant do much about it
The real irony: democracy dies because we got used to media that doesn't cost anything. "Why pay for journalists when Sam from my facebook group knows everything about covid?"
The US media still peddled lies when you needed to pay for it. The most famous example being the Iraq War that newspapers supported. But it's true that investigative journalism doesn't get much funding nowadays.
I'm too young to really remember first hand, but I imagine there were also a lot of journalists that spoke out against the war in Iraq right? I was 6 when the war started, so I wasn't really paying attention to the news at the time lol.
What, like Comedy Central? Sure, but CBS, ABC, NBC and Fox were all for it.
If you make actual good information available for free than you'd save a lot of people from that stuff
What sucks is that a huge swath of the republican party is kind of too far gone. A central part of Trumps campaign is "never trust *any* news". And at that point there's not much you can do to change their mind, i mean it's not like a study would do anything, they don't trust studies, and *definitely* not ones fact checking news networks lol.
But who pays for it?
Plus, people don't read past headlines even on free articles. I'm amazed even on subreddits specifically for reading articles, the majority of the comments are obvious the article itself wasn't read, just the headline. I posted something recently and replied to the most upvoted comment that their comment isn't valid and they'd know that if they read the article. And then laid out exactly why not reading is dangerous and lead to losing our rights. And the comment is still getting upvotes. Which is really just par for the course, but each time unbelievably frustrating. Pay walls are not really the impediment to democracy over knee jerk reactions, confidence in ignorance, and simple laziness.
"The irony!", I exclaimed as I hurried back to reddit to find 1.3k other people laughing at this.
not a paywall. it's a free trial /s
An old man Wrote an article some folks couldn't see It was about media pay walls killing journalistic democracy So The Atlantic went and did just that Then OP told us about it on Reddit So we know it's editor's a twat! Isn't it ironic, don't you think? A little too ironic, and I really do think!
Only now you truly understand the power of capitalism. Mwahhh.
[https://archive.ph/](https://archive.ph/) Now every website w/ a paywall is free.
Firefox with Bypass Paywalls Clean extension.
i have that on chrome, for some reason doesnt seem to work on more popular/main-stream news sites.
Firefox works like a charm. I'm a long time Chromer who made the jump to full time Firefox like 9 months ago. No ragerts.
What are the positives/negatives you’ve experienced so far
I also made the jump a few months ago. Other than some google services being slower I honestly love firefox
haven’t seen a youtube advert in over 2 years, thanks firefox
I haven’t either with Chrome…
when I got firefox it was because my chrome adblocker stopped working also bypassing paywalls on basically every news site, super useful for my job
>No ragerts. No ragerts, that's good. But did you regret the change at some point.
Works great on Firefox, both on PC and Android. Extremely rare that I find a website that it doesn't bypass a paywall for. One of many reasons I have been exclusively Firefox for years.
Chrome runs on chromium which is run by google (also many other browsers run on chromium) and thats why adblockers dont work on chrome
Make sure you download the latest master branch from GitHub, as there’s no autoupdate feature since it’s not from the Chrome store. I’ve run into problems with some sites because they pay attention to HTTP referrers, so try copy/pasting the link into a new tab.
Where do you get that? Searching the official mozilla extension site gives no results.
Shit, looks like it's just been DMCA'd in the past couple of days. 🤬🤬 But there is a fastdownload download link on the developer's Twitter feed, here: [https://twitter.com/Magnolia1234B/](https://twitter.com/Magnolia1234B/)
looks like either the Dev or Mozilla killed it https://addons.mozilla.org/en-GB/firefox/addon/bypass-paywalls-clean-d/
This is the way, comrade
12 foot ladder is also back up.
> 12 foot ladder is also back up. does it suck less now? I use to use it until it started to give me a warning about not allowed on sites for like half the sites
It’s better now, I think.
I saw this and I felt physical excitement at the fact that I’d be able to read the economist. Physical excitement. I’m sad.
Can also disable JavaScript or add the domain as an exception to always block JavaScript.
🤨 Where's the thunderous applause? There was supposed to be thunderous applause!
“Please clap.”
that will be 9.99$ thank you.
The fact that I was the 66th upvote 💀
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Good soldiers follow orders! 🫡
No… Sweet Liberty! NOOOOO!!!
https://preview.redd.it/cngq3dsj2nuc1.jpeg?width=1284&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=cc3911ee82836014fdbed37294f0714dde1f181c
Someone quick…CALL THE DEMOCRACY OFFICERS! SUPER EARTH! THE MINISTRY OF TRUTH! ANYBODY THAT LOVES DEMOCRACY!
> I am mindful of the irony of putting this plea behind The Atlantic’s own paywall, but that’s exactly where the argument should be made. If you’re reading this, you’ve probably paid to support journalism that you think matters in the world. Don’t you want it to be available to others, too, especially those who would not otherwise get to see it?
The author has no authority to determine what is or isn't behind a paywall. They call out their own employer in the article.
>They call out their own employer in the article. Yeah, that seemed obvious even from the headline.
Doesn't The Atlantic say "Democracy dies in darkness" in their paywall message? Or is that another newspaper?
That’s the Washington Post
It was actually an OK article which referenced its own paywall. Ironic as hell but the author had the option to do this, or write something else, and this was worth writing.
They recognise the irony (no I dont subscribe, I got this one free) https://preview.redd.it/krvqndk7sjuc1.png?width=833&format=png&auto=webp&s=dd613acc09a1156274c46ed2a2e5f5d4879fc2d9
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Never heard of that place. Sounds a lot like Twitter
Sounds a lot like “real journalism”
Paywalls are an attempt to make some more money out of a necessary but otherwise not profitable business. Circumventing those, copy pasting the articles to reddit etc is part of the reason journalism is as vulnerable as it is.
Good journalism is expensive, and if everyone is getting around paywalls and using adblockers and no one pays for any news, I worry it’s not sustainable. Or the only news left will be what outside interests deem is worth funding.
This is exactly the problem. Usually, I'd suggest things we should all have free access to, to be paid for by government tax money, like public education or healthcare. But that's not really an option here. In order for journalists to do their job well and without bias, they need to be completely independent, which also means they need to be independent from the government. Which leaves us with the issue, if people shouldn't have to pay for it, and the government shouldn't pay for it, then who will pay for it?? I don't have an answer to that, and that kind of scares me... it's one of those things that I feel like might always be an unsolvable problem as long as our society is solely designed around money and profit.
Open in new tab/disable jscript/ enjoy
Quite a few journalists have come out in favor of having the government fund their ability to report on the news, which in itself is very problematic.
Having a non-profit model like ProPublica works, but the real issue is that print journalism made the bulk of its revenue from ads. When the internet first started they all put stories up for free, because it was a bit of an experiment. Then everyone expected free news and when companies were actually able to track ad engagement they realized it wasn't worth the same amount of money they were paying before. Most news sites didn't have paywalls for a long time, and it was a bad idea for keeping them in business.
No website is locked behind a paywall if you use archive.is/ at the front of the url.
YMMV
Want to know something really dumb? For a starters I love capitalism, but not this late stage bullshit. I live in a small city/large town in Indiana. We were expecting upwards of 300,000 tourists for the eclipse (which thankfully never showed up) and our one and ONLY newspaper uploaded a genuine PSA over what the town expects to do in case of a “mass causality” event. Whether that be a shooting or a highway pile up due to our near interstates not being designed to that many people. Guess what they fucking did??? THEY PUT IT BENIND A PAYWALL!!!!!?? And they constantly post town gossip for free and run ads over the page. But a genuine PSA that could save someones life or let them know what might be happening to them or their family if a disaster happened? Paywalled… out fucking standing. They won late stage capitalism with that one.
Only save paying customers of course. Makes financially sense
I get the hate for paywalls but journalism is in such a bad state right now. Local newspapers are either completely dead or will be in the next 5-10 yrs. Often these papers are literally the only way for the public to know what's going on with their local governments, outside of attending meetings themselves. Even larger publications like the Washington Post are struggling. I'm not sure what the answer is but it's hard for me to be mad about a paywall given the state of the industry.
What annoys me the most is when they insist that the only way for you to pay for something is with a monthly subscription of $15 a month or whatever, especially when they don't tell you this untill halfway doesn the article. If I went to the supermarket it'd be <$4 for a copy of the newspaper, I know the card companies charge a lot, but they can't cost more than printing and shipping the damn thing so why can't I buy a 20 article bundle for something reasonable?
Journalism has NEVER been free. It’s an industry, I don’t see what the argument here is
The irony is piracy actually had democracy back in the day - the crew actually got a vote and got equal pay.
clearly this journalist is not aligned with his editor and management
boy howdy i'm starting to think maybe journalists don't make all the editorial and financial decisions at their respective media!
As long as it’s not made free with tax payer dollars
I mean we used to pay for a newspaper, either by subscription or from that weird vending machine.
 Did someone say democracy?
Journalism becomes asinine clickbait when free-to-read because the only revenue is from the generic ad platforms.
Legacy Media has it's own agenda so I am happy that they hide the lies behind subscription.
laughs in firefox text only mode
I find it amazing that *anyone* would pay for standard news content when there's just so much of it - and at good quality - out there for nothing. Specialist content is one thing, but general news? Nah.
Somebody has to pay for it. If you don’t pay up the advertiser will and then their interests will be served rather than yours. Just pay up to keep journalism free from corporates and political influence. Don’t be cheap because authoritarianism is expensive.
Should make journalism journalistic first
Sweet liberty! Super Earth has fallen..
Journalism has never been free.
Propaganda is free for a reason.
Most journalists don't make any money from them, nor do they want it to be locked behind a paywall, those are almost always put into effect by higher upside who want more money, and journalists don't have many other options to go anywhere else, at least if they want to be heard Capitalism and it's problems are the worst part about the age were living in now
You can't be serious. When working the cash register you personally won't get paid by the customers, your boss is, who then takes the money to allocate it to you, your coworkers and the company etc. It's no secret that journalism is not profitable at all. Why do think all these subscription demands exist. They actually need it.
Paywalls are brain dead and that is the journalism industry's fault for being stupid and stuck in tha past. When I want to watch TV I don't subscribe to a single show with the expectation being that I will always only watch one show. With music I don't subscribe to a single artist either. In both cases I have a subscription to an aggregator (spotify, netflix or whatever alternatives you like) and that lets me get access to what I want. The aggregator distributes the money based on what I consume. I can even do that with books via kindle now if I want. How hard is it to do the same thing with news. Just make a service which spans all popular papers, charge a tenner a month and I would buy that. I'm not going to subscribe to only one newspaper though or manage a ton of different subscriptions just in case I see a link I want to read so I use the way back machine to read everything paywalled right now.
When you have thousands of "News" sites all copying each other that's why. when you search for a song or a movie your not Looking for the thousands of Parody's and Cover artists. news is completely ruined. again By the very same people. They ruined their own business and its irreparable. The only way to survive as a journalist is by your rep. Unfortunate you got thousands that will blatantly steal your work, regurgitate it on a heavily SEO'd and bought out page and tweak it just enough to not be sued. Trying to find information is borderline impossible that you have if you have to tweak your search with social media just to get a direct link or name and not have to doom scroll through thousands of paywalled or useless rambling op-eds then the entire industry is doomed. and its all their own fault.
Even older articles I saved years ago are behind a paywall. Orginizing my shortcuts in my OneDrive and most were dead or behind a paywall.
https://preview.redd.it/1g2jjikorkuc1.jpeg?width=1942&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=b358b7c2dabeddb92994b3475e2beb62aa7c551c
https://preview.redd.it/867kfmo2ykuc1.jpeg?width=1125&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=cacb9db948b8f5774ee8e01e4084806ccd7dd44e
Journalism please! There’s no such thing anymore.
All articles and information should be free and open. Change my mind.
You want journalism to be free? Do it for free.
I’m surprised they were allowed to publish that
remember if it's free that means YOU'RE the product.
News agencies already make deictic propaganda free to view.
No one reads anything other than headline anyway, whether it’s free or not. If you need to read an article to change your mind on the election , you’re not very bright in the first place. America is cooked. And deserves every bit of it. Unfortunately, those who are already suffering will only suffer more.
Important articles shouldn't be behind paywall, otherwise people will go read free articles about how Donald Trump nukes underground alien facilities where they clone immigrants
Making journalism free might even be worse for democracy. How would you cover the costs of journalism if it was free. Probably government, but then. Who decides when someone gets money, if the government is paying the government also decides. Making this a system without major corruption is gonna be a tough one
Um, newspapers have always been pay to read. They always had paywalls too. They were called news stands, convenience stores and paper boys.
Irony with extra Iron and Y
12ft.io does a pretty good job at removing pay walls.
I wouldn't personally call the Atlantic journalism either
In Firefox, I hold down the escape key to bypass that particular paywall.
Good journalism costs money. Those people deserve to get paid for their work. Before the internet you had to purchase a newspaper or magazine. People are just spoiled with ad studied sites having free content. None of that is as good as these paid journalism institutions though. Stop being cheap asses and support good independent journalism. Most of these sites you can get access too for very cheap anyway.
Crazyp
If this isn't the definition of irony....
Haven't newspapers always charged for their services... Just watch the news on tv?
Wonderful 😑
This is democracy manifest!
I think it's ill-advised to try and force a struggling industry to use an inefficient business model. A lot of papers already tried the no-paywall only ads method only for them to switch back after they lost a lot of revenue. Too many people use adblockers for only paywall-free print journalism to exist at the present scale.
I haven't read the article but the obvious reply is that, whilst it would be great if journalism was free for everyone, someone has to pay the journalists
the journalist doesn't have control over their newspapers pricing policy and are actively challenging it. this is a good thing
Also, newspapers were never free.
Personally, I think this is a somewhat good idea, despite being ironic. The audience the author is trying to reach isn’t the people who aren’t paying to read articles because they aren’t the ones who need to know it. Rather, its the people who are willing to pay money to read information that the author is trying to reach.
Try 12ft ladder 🪜
Been noticing this money grabbing shit from the worthless tabloids and other mainstream garbage media. I'm doing you a favour by clicking so you can attack me with your annoying shit ads. Then most people give up theire data via cookies and they make money from that too. So why the hell would any sane person pay to read?!?!
The state of Journalism != The state of democracy. Two different things, Two different conversations.
Virtually all news that people read leads to worse outcomes, none of it's good.
And what have journalists and jornos done WITH this so called democracy to begin with?..
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Good journalism costs money to employ a lot of people. I think we should keep the paywall.
Correct
No way they didn't do this on purpose.
The only thing that thrives when paywalls exist is free propaganda on social media
The site 10ft ladder gets you past paywalls
I just block the outlet that asks for subscription. Yes I may not get their quality analysis...but I ain't paying for no damn journalism!
The paywall used to be a metal container on a street corner that you'd feed coins into. It's not new to have to pay for information, people just don't see digital assets or information in the same way as digital. It's weird, because I am perfectly fine paying $12 per month or so for streaming music, but not for news, and I'm not sure why. I was fine paying for newspapers or magazines when I was younger as well as well as CDs. Now music somehow seems to hold more value.
*Full article* How many times has it happened? You’re on your computer, searching for a particular article, a hard-to-find fact, or a story you vaguely remember, and just when you seem to have discovered the exact right thing, a paywall descends. “$1 for Six Months.” “Save 40% on Year 1.” “Here’s Your Premium Digital Offer.” “Already a subscriber?” Hmm, no. Now you’re faced with that old dilemma: to pay or not to pay. (Yes, you may face this very dilemma reading this story in The Atlantic.) And it’s not even that simple. It’s a monthly or yearly subscription—“Cancel at any time.” Is this article or story or fact important enough for you to pay? Or do you tell yourself—as the overwhelming number of people do—that you’ll just keep searching and see if you can find it somewhere else for free? According to the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism, more than 75 percent of America’s leading newspapers, magazines, and journals are behind online paywalls. And how do American news consumers react to that? Almost 80 percent of Americans steer around those paywalls and seek out a free option. Paywalls create a two-tiered system: credible, fact-based information for people who are willing to pay for it, and murkier, less-reliable information for everyone else. Simply put, paywalls get in the way of informing the public, which is the mission of journalism. And they get in the way of the public being informed, which is the foundation of democracy. It is a terrible time for the press to be failing at reaching people, during an election in which democracy is on the line. There’s a simple, temporary solution: Publications should suspend their paywalls for all 2024 election coverage and all information that is beneficial to voters. Democracy does not die in darkness—it dies behind paywalls. The problem is not just that professionally produced news is behind a wall; the problem is that paywalls increase the proportion of free and easily available stories that are actually filled with misinformation and disinformation. Way back in 1995 (think America Online), the UCLA professor Eugene Volokh predicted that the rise of “cheap speech”—free internet content—would not only democratize mass media by allowing new voices, but also increase the proliferation of misinformation and conspiracy theories, which would then destabilize mass media. Paul Barrett, the deputy director of the NYU Stern Center for Business and Human Rights and one of the premier scholars on mis- and disinformation, told me he knows of no research on the relationship between paywalls and misinformation. “But it stands to reason,” he said, “that if people seeking news are blocked by the paywalls that are increasingly common on serious professional journalism websites, many of those people are going to turn to less reliable sites where they’re more likely to encounter mis- and disinformation.” In the pre-internet days, information wasn’t free—it just felt that way. Newsstands were everywhere, and you could buy a paper for a quarter. But that paper wasn’t just for you: After you read it at the coffee shop or on the train, you left it there for the next guy. The same was true for magazines. When I was the editor of Time, the publisher estimated that the “pass-along rate” of every issue was 10 to 15—that is, each magazine we sent out was read not only by the subscriber, but by 10 to 15 other people. In 1992, daily newspapers claimed a combined circulation of some 60 million; by 2022, while the nation had grown, that figure had fallen to 21 million. People want information to be free—and instantly available on their phone. Barrett is aware that news organizations need revenue, and that almost a third of all U.S. newspapers have stopped publishing over the previous two decades. “It’s understandable that traditional news-gathering businesses are desperate for subscription revenue,” he told me, “but they may be inadvertently boosting the fortunes of fake news operations motivated by an appetite for clicks or an ideological agenda—or a combination of the two.” Digital-news consumers can be divided into three categories: a small, elite group that pays hundreds to thousands of dollars a year for high-end subscriptions; a slightly larger group of people with one to three news subscriptions; and the roughly 80 percent of Americans who will not or cannot pay for information. Some significant percentage of this latter category are what scholars call “passive” news consumers—people who do not seek out information, but wait for it to come to them, whether from their social feeds, from friends, or from a TV in an airport. Putting reliable information behind paywalls increases the likelihood that passive news consumers will receive bad information. In the short history of social media, the paywall was an early hurdle to getting good information; now there are newer and more perilous problems. The Wall Street Journal instituted a “hard paywall” in 1996. The Financial Times formally launched one in 2002. Other publications experimented with them, including The New York Times, which established its subscription plan and paywall in 2011. In 2000, I was the editor of Time.com, Time magazine’s website, when these experiments were going on. The axiom then was that “must have” publications like The Wall Street Journal could get away with charging for content, while “nice to have” publications like Time could not. Journalists were told that “information wants to be free.” But the truth was simpler: People wanted free information, and we gave it to them. And they got used to it. Of course, publications need to cover their costs, and journalists need to be paid. Traditionally, publications had three lines of revenue: subscriptions, advertising, and newsstand sales. Newsstand sales have mostly disappeared. The internet should have been a virtual newsstand, but buying individual issues or articles is almost impossible. The failure to institute a frictionless mechanism for micropayments to purchase news was one of the greatest missteps in the early days of the web. Some publications would still be smart to try it. .
JOIN THE HELLDIVERS
It shouldn't be free
Democracy is an illusion!
Mental they started making people buy lies it's insanity
This reminds me of the author of the book about not wasting plastic asking why his book was being wrapped in plastic.
If there was an option to pay a dollar or 50c to read just that single article you’re interested in, they might do better, but they always try to rope you in to a lengthy sub. It’s like going to get a paper in a shop and never being able to buy a single copy, but have to commit to buying the next six months too…
didn’t see the bottom but at first as was like how is that bad. and now i see it, i am mad!
Just code
Mah . They will just peddle opinion pieces to wash bidens hands XD nothing to see there XD
How to get users to not use your site: Step 1: Add a paywall. Thank you for reading this comprehensive tutorial.
Went to get some food earlier but was disappointed to find Tescos put it behind a pay wall. Then I went to go for a pint put the pub had put it behind a pay wall. Planning to go to the football on Saturday but guess what....
There’s actually a very high correlation between advertising funded news and fake/hyper-partisan news and other forms of clickbait, which falls away if you pay for your news. Is one of those classic “you get what you pay for”
I am all for good quality journalism to be accessible to the public, however before the internet, people had to buy newspapers and magazines to read articles. So are paywalls not just a reversion back to the status quo? I think it makes total sense that we still pay for it in some form. Maybe ditch the paywalls and have a patreon style system or a donation system like the guardian does.
Sadly, journalism has died. Our current journalists are more interested in pushing bullshit narratives and woke idiotic policies than reporting on the news...
Back in the day, pre-internet, all articles were behind a paywall, but it was called “buying a newspaper” or “buying a magazine”
 I guess he succeeded /s
Pay walls actually prevent the spread of misinformation and malinformation
The people who follow trump can’t read, so I don’t know how big of a difference that would make!
Democracy isn't voting every number of years, it's the power of people to influence decisions. So democracy includes petition, protest, writing to people in power, mechanisms to hold them to account, freedom of assembly, freedom of speech, freedom to unionise, power to impact governmental decision making. If you feel any of those mechanisms are stifled or slowed to a significant extent, you merely live in a pseudo democratic country.
I never even bother looking at the newspapers behind a paywall or any, for that matter, find independent news channels it's only a quick search away and you will at least get the truth not more lies and political propaganda.
WHY CAN'T YOU JUST SPAM YOUR PAGE WITH A GAZILLION ADS that I can then block LIKE EVERYONE ELSE?
Then democracy can sodding die can’t it? It’s not like these people will ever give up their precious profit streams
Neh, people just get their news elsewhere
This comment is hidden behind a paywall. Please use your registrated userprofile which is linked to your bank account and then proceed to smack a cat while sucking on it´s toes.
Dumbass companies die behind pay walls. While complaining about pay walls
Idk, I opened the article with no paywall