In the last weeks I have been reading news about content media owned by corporations; services that we usually give for granted. I am starting to think that the media world panorama is changing.
Let me first list some articles that might be familiar to a tech audience:
- YouTube seems it's starting blocking browsers equipped with ad-blockers (JPG, 62kb)
- X/Twitter changed their privacy policy (PDF, 44kb) ("Under the new policy, X/Twitter might access your encrypted messages, job history, and the apps installed on your phone")
- Google new "attestation" of web clients (Web Environment Integrity APIs) (PDF, 93kb) ("The stated goal is for sites to be able to restrict access to human users instead of automated programs and 'allow web servers to evaluate the authenticity of the device [...]'")
Why do we give these services for granted? They exist, they've been existing for years, we assume they will exist forever (so to speak). In this article I challenge this assumption.
Let's recap first the typical (and well-known) lifecycle of a service that wants to take over the market space.
- AwesomeService is born. And it's free to facilitate faster market penetration (short-circuiting the rules about selling/buying services). People start using AwesomeService
- Fast forward in the future, AwesomeService becomes part of our daily life. To the point that we use neologisms to refer to them ("to google", "hey, let's facetime tomorrow", ...)
- AwesomeService now has a huge market penetration. AwesomeService executives, investors or shareholders start asking for actual revenues after they subsidized for years. AwesomeService start tightening the leash around its users. Some people complain but nothing happens
- AwesomeService tights the leash more. Users become vocals with their complaints. Some decide they had enough and migrate elsewhere. The majority stays because of the network effect inertia ("yeah but everyone is on AwesomeService, I'm going to miss out a lot")
- AwesomeService finally becomes an intolerable amount of stinking manure, people start panicking and migrate to others platforms.
- The final stage: decadence. Users still remaining on AwesomeService are either not bothered or even take advantage of the current state of the service (which says a lot about them).
§ Bargaining the grief
In this scenario what usually happens is that we work around the issue; hackers are always resourceful and play a cat and mouse game, so we get alternatives to circumvent restrictions imposed by corporations trying to monetize on a service people now expect to stay free:
- X/Twitter.com -> people use nitter as a lightweight alternate frontend that doesn't require login. Still fighting Twitter changing APIs
- YouTube.com -> People use invidious instances
- YouTube.com blocking adblockers -> People can set a workaround with uBlock origins (JPG, 25K)
- "free" newspapers riddled with ads and tracking -> People can use uBlock Origins, NoScript, etc.
- ... and so on
Do you see a pattern? This is just refusing to recognize the problem. Just like in the five stages of grief we are just bargaining. Let me clarify: we, the users are at fault here. There is no free meal. We have been just living in a delusional world where people think that "stuff (hands waving) on internet must be free".
This is also the reason why there is https://archive.is to access paywalled information. We stubbornly keep wanting quality for free. But we need to look further and accept that this model does not work at all, not anymore.
§ A new perspective
Let's focus for a moment on journalism. Some journalists are realizing that:
- There is a need for independent information, free from the logic of newspapers subjugated to a number of pressure groups (politicians, shareholders, lobbies, etc.)
- There is too much news but very little is really conveying critical thinking
- The relationship between reader and content creator is now almost personal
- Voluntary economic transactions in the media world (such as subscriptions or recurrent donations) are becoming more and more a form of explicit support, rather than buying a service
- Involuntary support (such as ads) are much more expensive than they look because they need huge quantities to be profitable. This translates into producing big amounts of low quality content. And now with the mirage of AIs vomiting credible nonsense for basically peanuts, quality will keep on spiraling down, leading inevitably to misinformation and strumentalization
There is an untapped market of critical content consumers that are willing to pay for quality. You know, just like it was not too long ago before this craze of fake "free content providers".
§ How does the future will look like
There have been discussions for years about how this business model is problematic, but until the situation does not become critical, nothing will bulge, nobody will move a finger.
But why wait for the situation to become critical? Be the one starting the change, today:
- Let's support good quality fact-based journalism and creators: subscribe to their newsletters, support them with a monthly donation
- Promote alternative platform for creators: Peertube, Pixelfed, etc.
- Support creators on said alternative platforms: they must receive a strong signal that these platforms can support their work. And that they can enjoy a greater freedom of creativity, without being scared of opaque algorithms deciding whether their work will make money or not.
Who to follow? Who deserves your $5/month? Up to you to discover. Try funding some creators and then adjust accordingly moving your money where you think it makes more sense.
§ Acknowledgments
These thoughts are regurgitated after reading Cory Doctorow's blog and other journalists, which deserve a lot of credit for the amazing work they're doing in this space.