• Star Wars Enjoyer
    link
    fedilink
    8
    edit-2
    3 years ago

    This puts me in fear of a future where only the well-to-do have access to the outside world, if every major news outlet adopted a paywall, and the politicians are successful in ending net neutrality and censor non-western outlets, they could force a monopoly on public perceptions that would be magnitudes worse than it already is. That’s some 1984 shit.

    Possibly not gonna go down that way, paywalling their content could also just make them less popular with the masses, which could give independents and foreign outlets more access to the masses. Though, independents in the west usually just parrot the official narratives provided by the mainstream outlets, and I doubt they’d stop doing that - even if they have to pay to read articles.

    • Shit, yeah, up until 1938 a newspaper in the US cost 2 cents a copy, and then 3. You had daily editions and even twice-daily editions (the early and late paper). Today those 2 cents are worth 32 cents, hardly something a factory worker could not buy.

      At the same time you know if it’s to get imperialist propaganda…