this post was submitted on 05 Oct 2024
133 points (99.3% liked)

Asklemmy

43894 readers
1416 users here now

A loosely moderated place to ask open-ended questions

Search asklemmy 🔍

If your post meets the following criteria, it's welcome here!

  1. Open-ended question
  2. Not offensive: at this point, we do not have the bandwidth to moderate overtly political discussions. Assume best intent and be excellent to each other.
  3. Not regarding using or support for Lemmy: context, see the list of support communities and tools for finding communities below
  4. Not ad nauseam inducing: please make sure it is a question that would be new to most members
  5. An actual topic of discussion

Looking for support?

Looking for a community?

~Icon~ ~by~ ~@Double_[email protected]~

founded 5 years ago
MODERATORS
[email protected]
[email protected]
[email protected]
[email protected]
133
Would you stop donating to a free service if it started putting up paywalls? (lemmy.blahaj.zone)
submitted 1 month ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
30 comments fedilink hide all child comments
 

I've been donating to the news site Vox for a while now, and all their content has so far been free. I felt kinda bad about blocking the ads on their site and fast-forwarding through all the ad breaks in their podcasts. So in the spirit of actually supporting something I like, I started chipping in a few bucks a month.

But recently, they've started putting some of their articles behind a paywall. Since I was already donating, I automatically have access. But for some reason, I feel like I don't wanna pay anymore. It's not like it costs me more, but there's just something about dontating to a free site vs paying for exclusive content that doesn't feel the same. Maybe cuz I'm not a fan of paywalls in general, so I don't want to support companies that implement them.

Does that make sense? What would you do? And if you're not a fan of Vox, maybe think of some other free service/content, like videos from a streamer or a software project or something.

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] [email protected] 26 points 1 month ago (1 children)

But recently, they’ve started putting some of their articles behind a paywall. Since I was already donating, I automatically have access.

In that case I don't see a problem. In a lot of ways your donation became a subscription, but then again, news cost money to make. This was true during the print days, and is no less true during the digital age.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Justifying prices is an oxymoron.

Either there’s a case for giving them money, or the basis of payment is the value being obtained in the article. Arguing for a price based on the costs behind it mixes the two frames and creates confusion.

It’s a law of demeter violation.

Once the paywall goes up, OP’s healthiest decision-making frame is “is consuming this content worth $X to me or not?”. If they wanted OP to worry about how much it costs to make news, they should have left it voluntary.

[–] [email protected] 14 points 1 month ago (1 children)

I see OPs point. I donate to Wikipedia, because I love what they do and want to support them. If they decided to put up pay walls, my personal feelings on their model would alter. Even if I got access as a doner.

I would no longer be inclined to donate, because I would no longer believe in what they do.