Post #2361984

2026-05-09 15:27 UTC

It looks like NBC is the latest major news network to paywall articles in recent weeks (and a substantial volume of them at that). I&#39;m willing to subscribe and pay for good journalism, but I can&#39;t pay for everything. So, I&#39;m increasingly forced to one of two options: 1. Subscribe to selected outlets, but with the result of being siloed. 2. Don&#39;t pay for news, but have access to an increasingly limited supply of free/poor quality journalism/articles.

Replies (2)

@paulknightly@mstdn.social 2026-05-09 15:30

The kicker is that I have *some* disposable income that I can put towards this, but many people don't. There have been warnings about this for several years now, but the risks of a tiered media ecosystem developing seems more and more likely. Do we want an information ecosystem that's defined by those who can afford to pay for the news (and consequently, who they are paying), and those who cannot afford to pay for their news and are fed whatever AI or misleading slop is produced 'for free'?

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@davew@mastodon.social 2026-05-16 14:00

@paulknightly@mstdn.social the answer is to have the paywall handled by a third party, and you pay per article read, not give all your money to one publication. yes this has problems too, but at least you can read the one piece per year from an out of town news org that touches on something you need/want to know about.

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