Let's recognise the irony of your link. The need for ^^^ such services is a symptom of the problem.
We are all taking measures to circumvent the rubbish.
I don't believe that every link that I click should contribute revenue to any billion-dollar corpocracy. I definitely do not want rubbish content to be intermingled with valid information.
This is not the Internet that we want.
If an entity wants money from me, let it prove its value from the basic requirement of quality.
I think the main reason for the link is to circumvent the Telegraph's pay wall? In a way we are the problem - if we won't pay then newspapers have to get money for their staff salaries from somewhere.
> In a way we are the problem [...] newspapers have to get money for their staff salaries from somewhere
I understand your argument and I want to respond. I like a good discussion.
Yes of course the news business needs money. The modern economy is not the fault of the news business or its customers.
The paper-based news business is almost dead. The Advertising Business quit funding the paper-based news business in order to optimise for an empire of Web-based surveillance and profit. We know even by casual observation that the online advertising business is worth hundreds of billions of dollars. [0]
(Read the preceding line again, just for the effect of scale.)
Social media aggregates news content because people want news. The news business knows it needs a revenue stream from on-line advertising. The lack of direct traffic to news sites does not mean that people do not want news. Subscriptions could be part of a solution but a) using a paywall is often meaningless to international visitors, and b) the fact is that subscriptions don't scale.
Users of the Web and social media find their news via the aggregation provided by Google, Meta, and Xitter. These companies mine user data for profit. These companies are opposed to paying for news content. [3]
It's estimated that 30%-40% of users block advertising somehow. [1] Even if we accept this number for the sake of discussion, I doubt that this equates to a direct 30%-40% loss of revenue for a news site. To judge from Firefox's share of usage, a "privacy-focused browser" that is free as in beer isn't anywhere near a major concern for most people. [2]
Advertising revenue is easy money. The sad fact is that advertising, market segmentation, and data surveillance have all optimised for enshittification of the Web. Quality of news content or search content be damned!
If paywalls won't scale in the modern economy, should the only option be enshittification of content by the insidious advertising business (not to mention filler content -- generated or copy-pasta -- to feed click-bait)?
In summary,
People want and need news, but Google and Meta are definitely unwilling to pay for being the world's aggregators of news content. [3]
Subscriptions don't scale and can't compete with revenue from the Advertising Empire. [0]
Don't blame users for not being a multi-billion dollar source of revenue for these obscenely profitable companies.
[4] https://www.insiderintelligence.com/insights/ad-blocking/ _ "As consumers use ad blockers, the tech makes it harder for advertisers to track and measure their ad campaigns, which could negatively affect advertising revenues."
Let's recognise the irony of your link. The need for ^^^ such services is a symptom of the problem.
We are all taking measures to circumvent the rubbish.
I don't believe that every link that I click should contribute revenue to any billion-dollar corpocracy. I definitely do not want rubbish content to be intermingled with valid information.
This is not the Internet that we want.
If an entity wants money from me, let it prove its value from the basic requirement of quality.