[palmotea]

> It was inevitable when ads were no longer enough to sustain websites, I suppose. It is a shame how critical news may be paywalled out from the public, though. Tragic, but fitting.

Also when any public content started being gulped up by scrapers and resold as AI.

[johnnyanmac]

true, that defintiely accelerated things. But the paywalls were coming up a few years before AI really hit the scene.