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You know what most people tend to do when they try to read something on a news site or blog, and then that news article or blog entry they were trying to read is hidden behind a paywall? Besides not immediately whipping out their wallet to pay for whatever was hidden, they also leave that site behind entirely and go to another site.
And here's the kicker. It hasn't quite reached this point yet, but... when it ever does reach the point where most or all of the good news/blog sites are locked away behind paywalls, you realize what will be left, right? The shitty, clickbait headline-spewing, fake news-infested, propaganda-infected, AI-written, worse-than-worthless slop sites, that is what will be left. And that's where most people will get their "news," then, because all of the actual news will have been safely protected from view behind paywalls that very few people care to deal with.
Not that there aren't any shitty sites that also do the dogshit paywall thing, but there are so very many more that don't. More than enough so that anyone who doesn't want to pay for the real thing will have their choice of poison to consume for "free."
(Today, aggravatingly, I had to click "Hide all stories from" on Rolling Stone in my Google News app, because when I tapped on one of their articles, like I've done many times in the past, this time, I was able to scroll down only maybe two paragraphs before the text quickly faded away into a paywall. To hell with that horseshit and any site that uses it.)
And here's the kicker. It hasn't quite reached this point yet, but... when it ever does reach the point where most or all of the good news/blog sites are locked away behind paywalls, you realize what will be left, right? The shitty, clickbait headline-spewing, fake news-infested, propaganda-infected, AI-written, worse-than-worthless slop sites, that is what will be left. And that's where most people will get their "news," then, because all of the actual news will have been safely protected from view behind paywalls that very few people care to deal with.
Not that there aren't any shitty sites that also do the dogshit paywall thing, but there are so very many more that don't. More than enough so that anyone who doesn't want to pay for the real thing will have their choice of poison to consume for "free."
(Today, aggravatingly, I had to click "Hide all stories from" on Rolling Stone in my Google News app, because when I tapped on one of their articles, like I've done many times in the past, this time, I was able to scroll down only maybe two paragraphs before the text quickly faded away into a paywall. To hell with that horseshit and any site that uses it.)
