Unpopular Opinion

You can 100% eliminate those comments by indicating that what you are posting is paywalled.

It’s irritating to your readers to see a headline they want more info on, click, and get 2 sentences of it then get blocked. A “pay walled” comment is frustration, and frustration comes from unmet expectations.

Nobody is going to read the first half paragraph of something they found in All and then go “man I should subscribe so I can see what this is all about”.

Your call for a ban is certainly the part that makes it an unpopular opinion though. That’s an excellent way to drive away the small part of the user base that even bothers to comment, and would be counterproductive to the growth of Lemmy as a platform.

How about include the word "paywalled" in the post title? Then users can decide whether to click the link or not.

“Just post an archive link instead” I often hear.

That’s a terrible solution (and Lemmy UI’s worst feature), and here’s why:

Just scrolling through your feed: Is that headline from a reputable source or some trash tabloid, troll farm, or crazy person’s blog?

You can post the original link and then add the text or an archive link in the body or a comment and this is no longer an issue.

I guess the "paywalled" comments aren't very useful and I personally wouldn't leave them. I'll just downvote and move on. But banning someone over it seems like overkill.

With respect OP, blow it out your ass. Think twice before posting paywalled material or at least kindly run it through a cleaner (the source can be gleaned by including the original URL). Alternately you could spend a few moments pasting important sections in the post body.

If you're sharing news and want people to discuss, you should make it as accessible as possible.

Isn't that the whole point of lemmy?

Posting links from paywalled sites shouldn’t be allowed

......what??? You're over here making a long ass rant, that people should go out of their way, jump through hoops, to reach an article behind a paywall......when the vast vast vast majority of America doesn't even read the full headline.

I'd like to quote Bo Burnham here.

It's youtube, it's what this country's been needing, an entire generation who don't waste their time reading!

If America is too lazy to read, what makes you think you yelling at them to jump through hoops will combat the misinformation this country has a problem with?

The reason we have misinformation is because Bob doesn't read. Then he catches a glimpse of a building blowing up on the news. He's at the bar. He can't hear the story, but he thinks he knows that building.

So then he goes to work drunk, and tells Jim:

"Hey Jim!!! Did you hear??? Terrorists blew up the apartment buildings on 74th street!!!"

And now, Jim is on Facebook telling everybody that Muslims are not to be trusted, because they just blew up his apartment building.

Then Jim goes home, and finds his apartment perfectly intact. There never were terrorists on his street. What Bob saw was a short CGI enhanced clip of a new movie coming out, and that "building" is actually just a soundstage set mixed with CGI.

Jim doesn't take down his Facebook post. So now Janice replies how Muslims are ruining the neighborhood.

And now there's a whole hate group going, all based on misinformation. But at no time did any of them even attempt to clarify the story, use critical thinking, or question any of it. Everybody just piled on, and added, and created this ficticious story that they are now legitimately calling for hate speech over.

The fact is, everybody lives in their own self created echo chamber. A self realized personal reality if you will.

YOU may seek out the full stories, but thats just you creating your echo chamber. Listening to the stories YOU trust. Based on others reporting.

Someone else may only watch Fox News. Another person may only read The LizardMan times. A completely fictional news outlet that I just made up, which only reports conspiracies.

Then theres me. I intentionally DON'T read or watch any news. I don't read the articles. I read the comment sections. Because I find it a much clearer and broader set of agendas if I process the reactions, rather than the story itself. I don't care which news sources you allow in your bubble. Each and every one of them have a different agenda. There is NO unbiased news in the modern day. Argueably there never was.

But individuals don't have agendas. The problem with this though, is that THEIR sources do. So while individual people may not have an intentional agenda, they're influenced by those that do.

A somewhat decent remedy for this, years ago, is to take in conversations from both sides conversing. An exchange of ideas. But even that's falling apart these past 10 years. There is no such thing as "the right" anymore. Only the far right. People who are knowingly voting for a man who is pretty blatently intentionally causing harm to our country.

The left still exists, but it's also increasingly becoming the far left.

So rather than a calm disagreement and exchange of ideas, two conflicting sides instead now resorts to insults, personal attacks, hate speech, and even death threats. So it's just a whole bunch of insanity. Which really defeats the purpose of filtering out the agenda through people.

And now, you see how vastly different my view is it on yours, and hopefully you can see how others opinions would be vastly different to either one of ours. Opinions, and viewpoints are a spectrum. Expecting everybody to follow your spot on the spectrum is NEVER going to happen. No matter how rational or how insane your position is, theres always someone with an insane opposite end position on the spectrum.

I think a better way to combat misinformation would be to pass laws that news outlets can be held accountable in court if they knowingly and willingfully spread misinformation.

As for Bob, Jim, and Janice, there's always going to be idiots in the world. But if we hold them legally liable for hate speech, death threats, and racism, then they'll only do those things in private. Which reduces their visability, which leads to a lack of promotion of these ideas.

And hopefully all of this together should lead to the other side at least becoming reasonable again. Because I can converse with someone with different political beliefs, who is willing to discuss them. Sometimes you even learn something new, or see it from their side.

What I CANNOT engage with, is a person set in their ways. Unable to discuss. Unwilling to engage beyond a set of manufactured talking points presented to them by their news source of choice, with no wiggle room for new ideas.

The problem isn't access to news articles. The problem is stuborness and lack of critical thinking as our public education system has slowly but continuously been dismantled since the days of Nixon.