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Paywalls and Reading

Recently, just about everything I want to read is behind a paywall. The cost of entry is not one I am willing to pay though some of the content is great. I am definitely part of a large consumer trend here in my unwillingness to pay for content that may even be of interest. It seems like a pay per read would be a more palatable option for most people. Forcing a subscription down our throats can only meet with resistance. Consequently, everyone loses out - niche publications that are investing in content creation or curation will lose out because they lack in volume and variety to make  the subscription option attractive. 

 Mainstream publications that have the volume and variety issue solved do not offer enough in terms of spike in level of interest to trigger the subscription commitment. Add to this the growing use of ad-blockers. All of this makes for a very complex situation to negotiate between producers and consumers of content. In the meanwhile, I just go look for free content on the topic that I am pay-walled from. So far, that has been a positive experience and lead to discovering publications that are absolutely wonderful - but for the maze of paywalls, I would have never discovered them.

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