What did this paywall say? I simply don’t believe you. Was it this message?
About This Story
Perhaps you noticed: This story, like all the news we publish, is free to read. That’s because Inside Climate News is a 501c3 nonprofit organization. We do not charge a subscription fee, lock our news behind a paywall, or clutter our website with ads. We make our news on climate and the environment freely available to you and anyone who wants it.
Donations from readers like you fund every aspect of what we do. If you don’t already, will you support our ongoing work, our reporting on the biggest crisis facing our planet, and help us reach even more readers in more places?
Please take a moment to make a tax-deductible donation. Every one of them makes a difference.
I just gave them $25, just to irritate the two of you.
I didn’t memorize the message. It was a popup that asked for an email and there wasn’t a way to close the popup, so I closed the article. When I loaded it again, there was a different popup that asked for donations and could be closed.
Why would I lie about this? I cannot express in words how little I care about how you spend your money.
I don’t think you are lying, but I do think that you are mistaken. I think there’s probably a significant overlap between:
The population that has a knee-jerk “paywalls are bad” reaction, not really knowing or caring that it takes money to put together quality journalism, and that the people reading that journalism have some responsibility to make sure it can continue, if they want to be able to read it
The population that might see a “please donate” popup and react with a knee-jerk “ARHGHGHAFSASDHF PAYWALL OH NOES” reaction and close out and start whining in the comments, not bothering to find the “close” button or read closely enough to notice that it’s not a paywall.
You and the other person have shown yourselves to be part of population #1, so I’m assuming that you’re also part of population #2. This site does not have a paywall. Maybe I’m wrong and they just suddenly decided to reverse their whole funding model and install one, in a haphazard fashion that disappears if someone goes back and loads the page again, but I lean towards my explanation.
Yeah, I did figure that out after the whole conversation.
Having to input your email address, or just lie and click “I’m already a subscriber” which shows the article, or reload the page apparently, is not a paywall. Also, it would have been easier for these people to just do any one of those three things than to come into the comments with their mouths open, making a demanding noise like a little baby bird.
I think we should normalize showing respect to the sites that want to try to get paid for spending the money to put their good articles together, and de-normalize treating that behavior as some kind of affront against the reader and immediately start whining about it. (As if that wasn’t already clear from my rude messages about it so far.)
I’m with you Phil; the people that complain about paywalls are the most ill-informed people on the planet
Learn to bypass it or pay for it, or otherwise go get your news from some fucking duck-faced, turkey-toothed influencer somewhere and then you can start voting for fucking Nazis
What? They pop up a box asking for donations, but there’s no paywall.
I also got a paywall, but when I loaded the page a second time, it went away.
What did this paywall say? I simply don’t believe you. Was it this message?
I just gave them $25, just to irritate the two of you.
I didn’t memorize the message. It was a popup that asked for an email and there wasn’t a way to close the popup, so I closed the article. When I loaded it again, there was a different popup that asked for donations and could be closed.
Why would I lie about this? I cannot express in words how little I care about how you spend your money.
I don’t think you are lying, but I do think that you are mistaken. I think there’s probably a significant overlap between:
You and the other person have shown yourselves to be part of population #1, so I’m assuming that you’re also part of population #2. This site does not have a paywall. Maybe I’m wrong and they just suddenly decided to reverse their whole funding model and install one, in a haphazard fashion that disappears if someone goes back and loads the page again, but I lean towards my explanation.
It’s not a paywall, but it does require you to input your email address.
Yeah, I did figure that out after the whole conversation.
Having to input your email address, or just lie and click “I’m already a subscriber” which shows the article, or reload the page apparently, is not a paywall. Also, it would have been easier for these people to just do any one of those three things than to come into the comments with their mouths open, making a demanding noise like a little baby bird.
I think we should normalize showing respect to the sites that want to try to get paid for spending the money to put their good articles together, and de-normalize treating that behavior as some kind of affront against the reader and immediately start whining about it. (As if that wasn’t already clear from my rude messages about it so far.)
I’m with you Phil; the people that complain about paywalls are the most ill-informed people on the planet
Learn to bypass it or pay for it, or otherwise go get your news from some fucking duck-faced, turkey-toothed influencer somewhere and then you can start voting for fucking Nazis