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Would you stop donating to a free service if it started putting up paywalls? (lemmy.blahaj.zone)

submitted 7 hours ago by lolola@lemmy.blahaj.zone to c/asklemmy@lemmy.ml

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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.

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[–] Carighan@lemmy.world 21 points 6 hours 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.

[–] intensely_human@lemm.ee 2 points 5 hours ago

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.