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by itopaloglu83 815 days ago
Although I agree with the sentiment, I also would like to point of that newspapers existed before the internet and we had to pay for them despite having ads on them.

I don’t know how but at some point as a society we decided that we must tip a restaurant 25% after tax, but the newspapers aren’t worth a dime. I also don’t understand why they have to be all $25 per month now. I don’t think they were ever so profitable to being with.

2 comments

> we had to pay for [newspapers] despite having ads on them

Absolutely. The main difference is that I could decide, day by day, whether I wanted to read newspaper A or B, or nothing at all; now I have to pledge monthly contributions to one paper, which are often very hard to cancel.

The industry cannot get their act together to solve microtransactions, and that's their doom; if a few major newspapers pooled together to, say, subsidize a browser feature that gives us back that model, they wouldn't be in the dire shape they're in now.

> at some point as a society we decided that we must tip a restaurant 25%

As an American society maybe, tips in Europe are not as common nor expected.

a) Not all newspapers were paid.

b) If someone handed me a newspaper I was not expected to pay for it as well.

c) The newspaper dosn't fucking track you.