Putting Up Walls Around Information
Before I recently read an article called “The Truth Is Paywalled But The Lies Are Free,” I already had assumptions about what this article may be about. Based on my experiences, I started to think about how I’m allowed to only read a certain amount of articles from a website like The Atlantic before I am told I need to sign up and pay for a subscription. I assumed this article was going to be about how media has evolved to require the audience to have an obligation to pay if they would like to get past a paywall to know the truth. If they don’t want to pay, then they are left with whatever lies or inaccuracies are out there.
I was on the right track, but the article also offered an alternative to locking information behind paywalls. The idea is to have books, articles, and other media able to be accessed for free in a universal public knowledge database. Authors would be compensated by tracking how many people have looked at and read their work. I think this is a cool concept and an idea worth exploring but doesn’t seem like one that has any chance of happening. Change is something that is hard to do, especially when the normal has been ingrained into an industry. It’s difficult to change a concept that has been ingrained into an industry by the people that control and benefit the most from it.
I liked how the article brought up the reason for keeping Current Affairs from having a paywall. I think it’s important to practice what you preach and that’s exactly what they are doing. Current Affairs doesn’t have a paywall because they want as many people as possible to hear what they have to say and not to only allow people that are willing to pay to hear more of what they have to say. This seems like an effective way to expand their reach to any audience that is willing to listen, which could allow for them to bring in more recurring readers.
I’m all for the idea of a free-information library because information should be something that can be accessed by everyone, regardless of whether you can shell out money to view it. Making it easier to access information freely can possibly lead to a more informed and educated society, which would be a positive in my opinion. I also understand that creators need to be compensated for their hard work, effort, and final product or there won’t be much of an incentive to share this information with the public. I think the idea of tracking how many times a book or article has been viewed, read, downloaded, etc. is a great way to ensure people are payed for their work. It’s certainly feasible to do so because the technology is there and is already being utilized.
Keeping information free from being locked behind paywalls is also a way to combat some information being suppressed or told through a certain narrative. A creator has to keep their subscribers in mind when writing their article or book because they want to make sure their subscribers will think it is content worth staying subscribed for. This could hold a content creator back and possibly force them to present information in a certain way to ensure their subscribers will keep paying for their subscription. There is also the dynamic of ensuring a corporation would even want to allow a creator’s work to be published or held back in some way because they simply didn’t like something about it. Allowing someone to think and share any information they would like to without having to be restrained by another entity could allow for the truth to be more easily accessible and not altered in a way they were forced to.
