Disinformation and the Paywall Dilemma
How do we fight disinformation when so much of the good information is behind paywalls?
Good journalism is slow, difficult, and expensive; misinformation and malinformation* are quick, easy, and cheap. Good journalism requires time for research and editors checking the work. Bad journalism does away with all that — just type up whatever you want, don't worry about whether your sources are reliable or even if you have sources, and hit publish without anyone checking your work. Bad journalism can make money on ads alone by simply publishing lots of content that is some combination of salacious, gossipy, or bias-confirming. Good journalism, however, needs additional sources of revenue. Thus, much of it is now behind paywalls.
In a nutshell, this is the paywall dilemma. We have an internet where misinformation and malinformation is easy to find but good information is hard to get to, and no one has quite figured out how to solve this problem.
I was reminded of the paywall dilemma this week while reading an article in The Atlantic (behind a paywall, ironically) by Richard Stengel titled, "Democracy Dies Behind Paywalls: The case for making journalism free—at least during the 2024 election" (gift link).
Paywalls create a two-tiered system: credible, fact-based information for people who are willing to pay for it, and murkier, less-reliable information for everyone else. Simply put, paywalls get in the way of informing the public, which is the mission of journalism. And they get in the way of the public being informed, which is the foundation of democracy.
Stengel argues that news sites should make all their 2024 election coverage free until the election. It's a good idea and he makes three other important observations about paywalls as well.
1) Most voters are passive consumers of news. Passive news consumers don't seek news as part of their daily routine. Instead, they take in information from the world around them and through their social media as they go about their day.
Digital-news consumers can be divided into three categories: a small, elite group that pays hundreds to thousands of dollars a year for high-end subscriptions; a slightly larger group of people with one to three news subscriptions; and the roughly 80 percent of Americans who will not or cannot pay for information. Some significant percentage of this latter category are what scholars call “passive” news consumers—people who do not seek out information, but wait for it to come to them, whether from their social feeds, from friends, or from a TV in an airport. Putting reliable information behind paywalls increases the likelihood that passive news consumers will receive bad information.
2) The paywall dilemma will worsen due to AI, which makes spreading misinformation even easier, cheaper and faster.
AI clickbait mills, posing as legitimate journalistic organizations, are churning out content that rips off real news and reporting. These plagiarism mills are receiving funding because, well, they’re cheap and profitable. For now, Google’s rankings don’t appear to make a distinction between a news article written by a human being and one written by an AI chatbot. They can, and they should.
3) Newspapers seem to view us news consumers as two types: subscribers and non-subscribers. One-off or occasional subscribers are treated like yesterday's news (pun very much intended). They make it easy to subscribe but hard to unsubscribe. One newspaper I've subscribed to in the past actually makes you call and talk to a person to unsubscribe, I kid you not. Sometimes you just want to read one article and are willing to pay for the privilege, but that's not an option. It's hard to be an occasional reader of a subscription newspaper. Stengel points out,
The internet should have been a virtual newsstand, but buying individual issues or articles is almost impossible. The failure to institute a frictionless mechanism for micropayments to purchase news was one of the greatest missteps in the early days of the web. Some publications would still be smart to try it.
To be fair, some newspapers have two common practices that help a lot with the paywall dilemma: 1) They allow a certain number of free articles per month, and 2) they let subscribers provide gift links, like I provided above, for a certain number of articles per month. More newspapers should adopt these two practices.
In a November 2023 op-ed for The Dallas Morning News on AI reporters (which is behind a paywall), I suggested that you pay for your news. "Subscribe to an established, reputable newspaper with human editors and human reporters," I recommended. I still think that's a good idea, but your friends or relatives who are deep inside conspiratorial or disinformation news bubbles that they access for free are unlikely to follow that recommendation. However, you might be able to share gift articles or gift them a subscription to a reputable news source. You won't solve the paywall dilemma but it's a difference you can make in your own circle of influence.
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What Else We're Reading
NBC News: "Verified pro-Nazi X accounts flourish under Elon Musk"
NBC News found that at least 150 paid “Premium” subscriber X accounts and thousands of unpaid accounts have posted or amplified pro-Nazi content on X in recent months, often in apparent violation of X’s rules. The paid accounts posting the content all consistently posted antisemitic or pro-Nazi material. Examples included praise of Nazi soldiers, sharing of Nazi symbols and denials of the Holocaust.
The pro-Nazi content is not confined to the fringes of the platform. During one seven-day period in March, seven of the most widely shared pro-Nazi posts on X accrued 4.5 million views in total. One post with 1.9 million views promoted a false and long-debunked conspiracy theory that 6 million Jews did not die in the Holocaust. More than 5,300 verified and unverified accounts reshared that post, and other popular posts were reshared hundreds of times apiece.
Ars Technica: “Measles could once again become endemic in the US, the CDC warns”
But in an alarming turn, the country's elimination status is now at risk. Measles cases in the first quarter of 2024 have increased more than 17-fold over the cases seen in the first quarters of 2000 to 2023. Measles vaccination rates among kindergarteners have slipped in that time, too, with vaccination coverage in the last three consecutive years below the 95 percent target that is needed to prevent sustained transmission. Outside the US, measles cases are exploding in the wake of pandemic-related disruptions to routine childhood vaccination programs. Altogether, the conditions are prime for measles to regain its foothold in the country—and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is clearly anxious.
The Unpopulist: “The Right’s Bogus Claims about Noncitizen Voting Fraud”
So let’s take up the challenge. It’s true that some laws do get violated a lot. Is the law against non-citizen voting among them? Does enough such voting go on to sway many electoral outcomes? While it’s impossible to prove a negative, there are ways to assess the probabilities. And as we do, we will find ourselves circling around to another question: If Musk or Trump or Vance have good evidence that this is happening, why haven’t they presented it?
What We’re Watching
*Malinformation is information that is true, or mostly true, but misleads by leaving out important context.
 | A guest post by
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Zero click content beats anything requiring a click, regardless if it’s behind a paywall or not.
Truly combatting disinformation will require letting go of the standard KPIs for website and begin figuring out how to translate native social KPIs into readership figures.