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You've Read Your Last Free Article, Such Is the Nature of Mortality

mcsweeneys.net

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Re: You've Read Your Last Free Article, Such Is the Nature of Mortality

#61

Post by fragmede »

red_admiral wrote: post #16
itsoktocry wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean, yeah? This entirely misses the point of the article. In fact, it couldn't have been a worse shot. I don't know enough about the economics of this stuff, but I'm willing to pay for good online writing. I have a national paper subscription, two magazines and a handful of substacks I subscribe to. But this feel like a price point issue for me. Why is everything $9.99/month (close to $15/month CAD)? Where are all…

Blogger siderea has talked about this a lot in relation to patreon, and the challenges for any platform wanting to replace it. EDIT: https://siderea.dreamwidth.org/1824441.html and https://siderea.dreamwidth.org/1371510.html Apparently it comes down to how card processing fees work, as long as there's a constant fixed cost per payment (whether or not there is also a percentage fee), "microtransactions" become unecono…

> EDIT2: and yes, we've already tried blockchain for that too.

We've not already tried blockchain for this. The rails are there, just a small matter of implementation. Everyone's too busy building shovel factories and not enough people are mining for gold to make a web3 micropayments product.

I can, right now, buy $5 of solana on Coinbase, give you $0.05, with an inconsequential fee of $0.001 or so using Solana, and with enough $0.05 payments, you can cash it out via Coinbase. It works on web on desktop via a chrome extension, I'm still working out a solution for mobile.

I'd love to have an Internet reading budget for the month and have that automatically get disbursed to the writer if I read past a certain point in the article. The rails are all there, just a small matter of code and then getting adoption.

Re: You've Read Your Last Free Article, Such Is the Nature of Mortality

#63

Post by 7184 »

ajb wrote: post #13
thinkingkong wrote: post #8

Its so wild to me that the business models of newspapers and journalism in general just dont translate well to the web. Like I get that people expect content online to be free and the alternative sources of information are freely available but its just so tragic. There are so few journalists who do investigative journalism in countries that are smaller because the ad revenue just isnt there. For example, there are a…

The business model is journalism was advertising and it translated fine to the web. The problem is, it turned out that advertising didn't need journalism. Google ate the newspapers' lunch.

It was relevant, timely, legitimate geographically targeted advertising for most newspapers. The subscriptions fed the advertising, which fed the subscriptions, but subscription revenue was usually a tenth what advertising revenue was. Information for subscribers was collectively subsidized by businesses because they were in competition with each other and subscribers weren't.

Newspapers didn't understand that their own business model wasn't two separate modes of "journalism" and "advertising" until it was too late. They were always in the relevant information (both news and advertising) business, so Google SUPER ate their lunch. Many news organizations died and some limp along not knowing this, but the industry as a whole was fat and complacent. There was a lot of money in newspapers, especially before it was legal to own multiple news sources. Local newspapers being able to fly reporters to major national events type of money (in private jets for the larger ones).

I spent a few years at one of the larger surviving independent statewide papers in the US as part of a team specifically hired to "fix" the subscriber and advertiser losses. They told us the scope was business-wide, but in reality all leadership wanted was someone to tell them that they're smart, special people who just need to use manipulative tactics harder. Nonprofit and community focused papers are springing up, and doing well, but some old timers are holding out for something around the corner that will magically return them to 1000%+ profit margins instead of learning how to be a normal business since they missed their chance to be Google.

Re: You've Read Your Last Free Article, Such Is the Nature of Mortality

#64

Post by aldousd666 »

doubloon wrote: post #52
akira2501 wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Journalism does not cost money. Running a company that is attempting to profit off of publishing costs money. Or have you never read anything produced at no benefit to the author that has ever informed you? I think you're putting the cart before the horse, and advertising supported journalism has always existed, and these companies would rather collect CPM from google than do legitimate placement of ads in their own…

the difference between new york times and a independent creator journalism is that the NYT can fund a huge legal department to defend free speech inside the court system. Its why the major free speech cases like NYT v Sullivan have the NYT in the name. There is never, ever going to be an equivalent case with big tech ("Google V Sullivan") because Google does care what happens to youtube creators, and they are not lia…

If there was legal liability for user comments, this site right here couldn't host a comment section. And you'd have to use a publisher to complain about how hard it is to be a publisher

Re: You've Read Your Last Free Article, Such Is the Nature of Mortality

#65

Post by tiberious726 »

sunshowers wrote: post #51
WarOnPrivacy wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Browsers do the dumb thing I could use more browser dumb things like this. Like when the browser won't ever forget that you once visited an HSTS server at this domain and now+forever won't let you visit the http server (at the same domain).

There's a string you can type in blind that bypasses HSTS. Works on Chromium browsers. I don't want to make to too easy to find so I won't say it here but you can look for it.

Don't be ridiculous. The string is 'thisisunsafe' just type it when the hsts whining page has focus, no text box.

Re: You've Read Your Last Free Article, Such Is the Nature of Mortality

#66

Post by crooked-v »

You know, from the title I thought this was going to go for the funnier/darker angle of an automated system deciding the reader doesn't need any more free articles because the system has predicted they're going to die before the company gets any benefits from the ad impressions.

Re: You've Read Your Last Free Article, Such Is the Nature of Mortality

#67

Post by [deleted] »

aldousd666 wrote: post #64
doubloon wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

the difference between new york times and a independent creator journalism is that the NYT can fund a huge legal department to defend free speech inside the court system. Its why the major free speech cases like NYT v Sullivan have the NYT in the name. There is never, ever going to be an equivalent case with big tech ("Google V Sullivan") because Google does care what happens to youtube creators, and they are not lia…

If there was legal liability for user comments, this site right here couldn't host a comment section. And you'd have to use a publisher to complain about how hard it is to be a publisher

[deleted]

Re: You've Read Your Last Free Article, Such Is the Nature of Mortality

#68

Post by II2II »

thinkingkong wrote: post #8

Its so wild to me that the business models of newspapers and journalism in general just dont translate well to the web. Like I get that people expect content online to be free and the alternative sources of information are freely available but its just so tragic. There are so few journalists who do investigative journalism in countries that are smaller because the ad revenue just isnt there. For example, there are a…

> Like I get that people expect content online to be free and the alternative sources of information are freely available but its just so tragic.

There is more to it than wanting free stuff. At least for some of us.

I have never subscribed to newspapers. If I wanted one, I would go to the convenience store or find a newspaper box. Why? Newspapers sold subscriber lists. I realized early on that online news sites would do the same, only they would have far more valuable data: they would know what interested me from what I read. So instead of being the target of advertising, I would be the target of targeted advertising.

(It also doesn't make sense from a convenience perspective. Newspaper subscriptions offered convenience through home delivery. News sites offer the, admittedly minor, inconvenience of managing accounts.)

Re: You've Read Your Last Free Article, Such Is the Nature of Mortality

#69

Post by [deleted] »

red_admiral wrote: post #16
itsoktocry wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean, yeah? This entirely misses the point of the article. In fact, it couldn't have been a worse shot. I don't know enough about the economics of this stuff, but I'm willing to pay for good online writing. I have a national paper subscription, two magazines and a handful of substacks I subscribe to. But this feel like a price point issue for me. Why is everything $9.99/month (close to $15/month CAD)? Where are all…

Blogger siderea has talked about this a lot in relation to patreon, and the challenges for any platform wanting to replace it. EDIT: https://siderea.dreamwidth.org/1824441.html and https://siderea.dreamwidth.org/1371510.html Apparently it comes down to how card processing fees work, as long as there's a constant fixed cost per payment (whether or not there is also a percentage fee), "microtransactions" become unecono…

[deleted]

Re: You've Read Your Last Free Article, Such Is the Nature of Mortality

#70

Post by karlgkk »

yegle wrote: post #34

I was a happy user of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Contributor until it got shutdown. The pricing was surprisingly low, $5/month can eliminate ads on most of the websites that I view, while the owner will not have a reduced ads revenue.

Apple made this, Apple News. It works great. Google could totally pull something like this off
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