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Welcome to the Golden Age of User Hostility
(www.theatlantic.com)
This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
Do you want ads or do you want to pay for quality media?
I want to read articles of interest to me easily. Subscriptions to print /text media sources often don't work out on a value analysis though. The best way to consume media is through specialty sources now. I want the Atlantic for tech articles, another source for fashion, another for sports, and an occasional glance at NYT or the post for key articles. I don't want to lock myself into a source for subscription. My intrest in this article is worth about 6 seconds of my time to access, about three or four non obnoxious ads, or about 7 cents as an instantaneous micropayment. Exceed any of those limits and I walk away never to return to it. I'm guessing a lot of readers fall somewhere in that range of tolerance. Until micropayments are a thing I think text media like this actually still make sense for ad. Support really. Will block it as much as I can, and I won't tolerate anything too obnoxious, but the model more or less makes sense. Fuck the paywall - Im surprised that model is sustainable, i walk away instantly with that.
Oh man, I wish we had that, paying a few pennies per article. Way prefer that to an ad
Yup, I'd pay if there was a nice micro payment option. I'd put $X into my browser each month and then websites can get a small payment based on what I read. Ask me the first time to authorize payments for a site in a certain range, and then ask again if you need more than the for some content.
That is much more preferable to ads or a subscription. Until that happens, my ad blocker is staying on and I'm avoiding paywalls.
Quality media does not exist.
Sure thing, Diogenes.