6 ms·

And evading paywalls disproportionately impacts the journalists creating the stories you seem to value, though for some reason refuse to pay for.

selfishgene 7y ago
Information wants to be free. If you don't believe me, just head over to your favorite mirror of libgen and see what you can find there. I thank Aaron Swartz and his co-conspirators every time I download something from one of those sites. I could always walk over to a nearby university and use their public wifi to download much of this material through more "legitimate" channels ... but have to admit that it wouldn't provide the same thrill as just stealing it. It's also comforting to know that no girls (as young as 10-years of age) had to be sexually exploited by a monster like Jeffrey Epstein in order to cover my subscription to these materials (Epstein allegedly donated millions to universities like MIT ... much of which they deliberately tried to cover up until exposed by a courageous whistle-blower in the Media Lab). Ironic that this was the same squeaky clean institution that handed a "criminal trespasser" like Swartz over to the Feds so that they could spank his ass hard, ain't it?
baddox 7y ago
Do you think that people reading newspapers for free at the library negatively impacts journalists?
Red_Leaves_Flyy 7y ago
The average value I glean from an average article is less than if I had stared at a wall instead. I'll gladly pay a modest sum for a consistently high quality long form news service. However, everyone I've found is asking hundreds- thousands/yr which is neither modest nor affordable for most people, myself included. NYT, wapo, BBC, fox, CNN, etc all push out tonnes of clickbait garbage every day. If that's not making them enough money then maybe they should get back to investigative journalism. I want long, painstakingly neutral, well researched, and cited articles on topics that concern me. E.g. healthcare, economics, politics. I find more value from the participants in discussion boards I frequent than just about every article I read. Sure, there's a few that provide more value than the participants like the work out of the ICIJ, but they don't hide their work behind paywalls, have ads, or run clickbait, and yet somehow they remain solvent... Hmm...

selfishgene 7y ago

Information wants to be free. If you don't believe me, just head over to your favorite mirror of libgen and see what you can find there. I thank Aaron Swartz and his co-conspirators every time I download something from one of those sites. I could always walk over to a nearby university and use their public wifi to download much of this material through more "legitimate" channels ... but have to admit that it wouldn't provide the same thrill as just stealing it. It's also comforting to know that no girls (as young as 10-years of age) had to be sexually exploited by a monster like Jeffrey Epstein in order to cover my subscription to these materials (Epstein allegedly donated millions to universities like MIT ... much of which they deliberately tried to cover up until exposed by a courageous whistle-blower in the Media Lab). Ironic that this was the same squeaky clean institution that handed a "criminal trespasser" like Swartz over to the Feds so that they could spank his ass hard, ain't it?

baddox 7y ago

Do you think that people reading newspapers for free at the library negatively impacts journalists?

Red_Leaves_Flyy 7y ago

The average value I glean from an average article is less than if I had stared at a wall instead. I'll gladly pay a modest sum for a consistently high quality long form news service. However, everyone I've found is asking hundreds- thousands/yr which is neither modest nor affordable for most people, myself included. NYT, wapo, BBC, fox, CNN, etc all push out tonnes of clickbait garbage every day. If that's not making them enough money then maybe they should get back to investigative journalism. I want long, painstakingly neutral, well researched, and cited articles on topics that concern me. E.g. healthcare, economics, politics. I find more value from the participants in discussion boards I frequent than just about every article I read. Sure, there's a few that provide more value than the participants like the work out of the ICIJ, but they don't hide their work behind paywalls, have ads, or run clickbait, and yet somehow they remain solvent... Hmm...