this post was submitted on 18 Aug 2024
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Paywall content for rss.ponder.cat (ponder.cat)
submitted 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago) by PhilipTheBucket@ponder.cat to c/fediverse@lemmy.world
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I've been seeing some complaints about paywalled content being posted in the rss.ponder.cat communities.

Here's my proposal:

  • Split the bot into two users: free@rss.ponder.cat and paywall@rss.ponder.cat.
  • Make a rule similar to some other communities, forbidding people from posting full text or links to archive.is on the paywalled communities.
  • If you like some of the paywalled content, subscribe to it. You can afford $5-10/month for one or two sources, and it'll help them a lot. Creating good content on the internet isn't free.
  • If you don't want the paywalled content, block the paywall bot and you won't have to see it in your feed.
  • If you don't want any of it, block both bots or the whole instance.

It's a real problem that Lemmy communities sometimes have paywalled content from 50 different sources, which makes it annoying to use and unreasonable to tell people to subscribe to content they want to read, because they would need 50 different subscriptions.

I think the RSS bot is a better solution than just ripping off content from all the high-quality online news sources and shrugging your shoulders if they go out of business and can't do it anymore a year from now. Everybody wins. High quality online news can still pay their bills, and you get a good way to stay up to date on it within Lemmy.

I'm posting this here instead of in the meta community because I have a feeling that most of the people who are saying they don't like the paywalled content are not subscribed, and I'd like to get feedback from the community as a whole.

What do people think?

Edit: I've implemented the proposal. There are now separate bots @free@rss.ponder.cat and @paywall@rss.ponder.cat.

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[–] southsamurai@sh.itjust.works 5 points 3 months ago (1 children)

Tbh, while the split you're proposing would be nice, I think the prevalence of various hard and soft paywalls is so high that the "free" version would be kinda useless. It isn't like lemmy as a whole isn't used to bypassing paywalls and/or using extensions that block popups.

I've had no issues with the bot as is. It's actually a really useful bot as-is.

But, if whoever is curating the bot wants to do the extra work, it would be broly as hell of them.

[–] PhilipTheBucket@ponder.cat 3 points 3 months ago (1 children)

Most of the most popular RSS communities are free. I like some of them that are paywalled and a little way down the list, like !thenewyorker@rss.ponder.cat and !theatlantic@rss.ponder.cat, but most of the top ones are free. One of the really nice things about one community per source is that you know which ones to subscribe to and which ones you'd have to pay for that you can block.

If you don't know the New York Times has a paywall, and you click on a link to them, that's a learning experience for you at this point. I think some of the griping about paywalls is just entitled. It's okay if people made content for you and they want to get paid. At the same time, I'm not trying to spam people who don't want paywall content. If I can make a quality-of-life improvement for people who don't want to get burned by paywalls on random links from places they've never heard of, then fine.

I also want to give shout-outs to some feeds that are way, way down and trying to charge money for very high quality stuff:

[–] monobot@lemmy.ml 0 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago)
[–] monobot@lemmy.ml 5 points 3 months ago (1 children)

I am conflicted. From one side, I agree with you sincevthis is a good idea.

I personally never go around paywalls, if someone doesn't want me to read their article I will not do it.

But... they do push their content to search engines and waste my time with something I can not access. My time also costs money.

Than there is problem with I don't trust media will write the truth anyway, so giving them few bucks will probably not change that. But it is important for us to know what other people know.

Now we came to sharing knowledge, like we would before when newspapers were printed on paper - I could give it or show it to a friend or neighbor. Or go to a library and read it.

While this is outside of our current discussion, they need to find better model.

If it is a daily newspaper, maybe paywal new articles and release after sone reasonable time (like a week, or month... or a year).

I like your idea of separating feeds, to keep paywalled content out of my feed.

[–] PhilipTheBucket@ponder.cat 0 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago)

Than there is problem with I don’t trust media will write the truth anyway, so giving them few bucks will probably not change that. But it is important for us to know what other people know.

Are there any media sources that I'm hosting feeds for which you feel that way about? I think the problem is much worse in a lot of free content, and I've been trying to bring in honest and high-quality sources when I'm adding news sources.

While this is outside of our current discussion, they need to find better model.

If it is a daily newspaper, maybe paywal new articles and release after sone reasonable time (like a week, or month… or a year).

I don't understand, can you explain more?

Edit: I understand now. That's outside the scope of my abilities... I would like to be able to offer a paid subscription with a deal that provides access to a wide variety of paywalled content, like a site license at a university, but I think that's also outside the scope of my abilities. You're right that they need a better model.

I like your idea of separating feeds, to keep paywalled content out of my feed.

It seems like a good compromise. I certainly understand that if someone's decided not to read paywalled content, putting a lot of it into their Lemmy feed in a way that's difficult to disable isn't a good thing to do. I think separating the paywalled content into a separate user so it's easy to block is probably a good pragmatic solution.