Oddbean new post about login | logout Mastodon is the only site where a user is guaranteed to gripe about a paywalled article every time. Folks, ads are dead. Subscriptions pay for the journalism and feed our families. A trial sub is cheap. I give away a lot of free links. You can read many with an email (regi-wall is not a paywall). It is easy to get around with research. You do you. Just don’t reply with a complaint or a paywall evasion. It’s kind of rude. I may block you. Move on. Read something else. It’s a big old internet.
@9046f8ea I post gift links as I have them but I’m paying for news (or Apple News +)
@9046f8ea I see complaints about paywalls on X/Twitter all the time. This is not a Mastodon specific thing.
@9046f8ea I think one of the problems is that the online news pricing model is often "subscribe or nothing". That makes sense for local or national news sources. I personally subscribe to the online editions of four newspapers plus several magazines. I am happy to pay for journalism. But it makes no sense for me to subscribe to, say, the Chicago Whatsit or the Omaha Whatever just to read the rare story someone posts a link to. There's no clear way for me to pay them for the value I'd get.