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I absolutely hate paywalls on articles.
by Scott Alexander on March 26, 2021, 5:28 p.m.
source: https://slatestarcodex.com/2020/06/04/problems-with-paywalls/
time : June 4, 2020
Problems With Paywalls
There are some simple steps we can take to fix this.
468 thoughts on “Problems With Paywalls”
I hate paywalls on articles. Absolutely hate them.
A standard pro-business argument: businesses can either make your life better (by providing deals you like) or keep your life the same (by providing deals you don’t like, which you don’t take). They can’t really make your life worse. There are some exceptions, like if they outcompete and destroy another business you liked better, or if they have some kind of externalities, or if they lobby the government to do something bad. But in general, if you’re angry at a business, you need to explain how one of these unusual conditions applies. Otherwise they’re just “helping you less than you wish they did”, not hurting you.
And so the standard justification for paywalls. Journalists are providing you a deal: you may read their articles in exchange for money. You are not entitled to their product without paying them money. They need to earn a living just like everyone else. So you can either accept their deal – pay money for the articles – or refuse their deal – and so be left no worse off than if they didn’t exist.
But I notice feeling like this isn’t true. I think I would be happier in a world where major newspapers ceased to exist, compared to the world where they exist but their articles are paywalled. Take a second and check if you feel the same way. If so, what could be going on?
First, paywalled newspapers sometimes use a clickbait model, where they start by making you curious what’s in the article, then charge you to find out.
Here are some articles I’ve seen advertised recently (not all on paywalled sources): “Why Trump’s Fight With Obama Might Backfire”, “This Tech Guru Has Made A Shocking Prediction For 2020”, “Here’s Why Men are Pointing Loaded Guns At Their Dicks”.
I didn’t wake up this morning thinking “I wonder whether men are pointing loaded guns at their dicks, and, if so, why. I hope some enterprising journalist has investigated this question, and I will be happy to compensate her with money for satisfying this weird curiosity of mine.” No, instead, I was perfectly and innocently happy not knowing anything about this, right up until I read the name of that article at which point I became consumed with curiosity, ie a feeling that I will be unhappy until I know the answer. In this particular case it’s fine, because the offending website (VICE) is unpaywalled. I go there and after reading through nine paragraphs attacking “MAGA dolts”, in the tenth paragraph I get the one-sentence answer: there’s a meme in the gun community that any time someone posts a picture with their gun, amateurs will chime in with condescending advice about how they should be holding it more safely, so some people post pictures of them pointing loaded guns at their dicks in order to piss these people off. I feel completely unenlightened by knowing this. It has not brightened my day. It just removed the temporary itch of curiosity.
Some people critique capitalism by saying it creates new preferences that people have to spend money to satisfy. I haven’t noticed this being true in general – I only buy shoes when I need shoes, and I only buy Coke when I want Coke. But it seems absolutely on the mark regarding paywalled journalism. VICE created a new preference for me (the preference to know why some people point loaded guns at their dicks), then satisfied it. Overall I have neither gained nor lost utility. This seems different from providing me with a service.
They have an excuse, which is that this is how they make money. But what’s Marginal Revolution’s excuse? I saw this link in an MR links roundup. It was posted as “5. Why men are pointing loaded guns at their dicks.” So obviously I clicked on it, and here we are. But what is MR’s interest in making me click on a VICE article and read through nine paragraphs about “MAGA dolts”?
I can’t really blame them, because I did the same thing for years. I posted links posts, I framed the links in deliberately provocative ways, and then I felt good about myself when my stats page recorded that thousands of people had clicked on them. Sometimes I would write the whole thing out – “Here’s an article about men pointing loaded guns at their dicks – it’s because they want to criticize what they perceive as an excessive and condescending emphasis on trigger safety in gun culture” – and then nobody would click on it, and I would interpret that as a sign that I had failed in some way. I was an idiot, I apologize to all of you, and I have stopped doing that. I urge other bloggers to do the same – we gain no extra money, nor power, nor readership by being running-dogs for VICE’s weird ploy to trick people into reading its stupid articles. But as long as bloggers, Facebookers, tweeters, etc aren’t following good Internet hygiene, the very existence of paywalled sources will continue to be a net negative for the average Internet user.
This isn’t just about obvious clickbait like men pointing guns at their dicks. “Why Trump’s Fight With Obama Might Backfire” feels exactly the same to me. I don’t want to know more ephemeral garbage about Trump which may or may not affect his polls 0.5% for a week before they return to baseline. I don’t want to get more and more outraged until my ability to relate to my fellow human beings is shaped entirely by whether they’re a “MAGA dolt” or not. And yet I find myself curious what’s in the article!
(Trump’s fight with Obama might backfire because independents like Obama more than Trump, and the tech guru’s 2020 prediction was that Trump will lose. You’re welcome.)
Second, paywalled articles become part of the discourse.
Last week’s Wall Street Journal included an opinion column, Lockdowns Vs. The Vulnerable, arguing that statistics show the coronavirus lockdowns do not really prevent the coronavirus, but do disproportionately affect the most vulnerable people. It’s already gotten retweeted a few dozen times, including by some bluechecks with tens of thousands of followers.