Thoughts:
Today I went through all my informational subscriptions, text, audio, and video. Turns out I have been paying over $130 a month. I ask; Am I getting $130 worth of value? I would like to keep reading, listening, and watching, most of these. Yet this is hard, some of these I support because I know the writer, or want to support their work. But some have slightly increased their price, and put more of their work behind a paywall. So switching to free means missing out on more.
+
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I am not rich, I live on a fixed income, that is not going increase with inflation. I understand, creators need to get paid. And Ad-tech is killing the open web. Each time I cancel a subscription it saddens me.
I see no solution on the horizon. Is this even fixable?
So I ask; what do we do? Access to good information is going to get harder in the near future. How do we insure it continues?
@corlin I think for the mainstream stuff the situation will get worse before it gets better. The likes of Conde Nast and hedge funds are buying up the successful publishers and distributors, a lot of consolidation and accompanying layoffs, enshittification is happening. For Indies, how worthwhile is the Kofi/Patreon/? way? Maybe @estherschindler or others can share insights?