AI stealing our work. The collapse of social networks. The need to pay journalists to produce impactful journalism. Here is why we are asking for your email address to read 404 Media.
I got no problem with this. In the near term, I see no way to pay for journalism otherwise. Email addresses seem like a really short term solution to the AI problem, though.
This solution only works if other publications pick some other method to fight the AI theft problem. It’s trivial to set up random email addresses and bypass the popup but it’s very difficult to bypass bespoke anti theft mechanisms for every single website.
You want them, not need them. Also, I prefer The Guardian model.
which is?
Ask for donation, plus no ads in the first place. Maybe in the paying process they do need your contact info, but that’s inevitable if you want to pay with your credit card. 100% better than lying about necessities of email.
In hopes they read this comment - the problem is your price. $100 a year is about what I pay for membership to The Guardian - a highly respected, award winning newspaper, that gives away ALL its content. Why would I pay the same for tech news that covers a fraction of all the news out there?
At $5 a year I would have signed up after reading one good article - at $10 maybe after a couple of good articles - but at $100? Never. Even if you were the only good tech news site - and you are not.
This was a hard ‘no’ from me until I read the article. Let’s be honest with ourselves - either we foster these sort of closed gardens or we go play in the infinite shit-filled sandbox the rest of the Internet is becoming. This honestly just sounds like moving to an RSS-only model, which is something I could get behind.
