Have We Gotten Too Used to Having News and Entertainment for Free?
Just because things are “free”, doesn’t mean we’re not paying for them
“I have been told the best things in life are free ~ I found them very expensive.” ― E.A. Bucchianeri
I grew up in the 1980s in the UK. We had four TV channels — BBC1, BBC2, ITV, Channel 4. The BBC was paid for by a compulsory license fee and had no adverts, but ITV and Channel 4 were commercial channels.
If you wanted any entertainment beyond broadcast TV and radio, you often had to buy it. VHS video tapes, audio cassettes, etc. If you wanted to find out what was going on in the world, you either paid for a newspaper or you waited for the news broadcast to come on the TV or radio.
Fast forward to 2021
These days it’s possible to be entertained and informed all day and night without buying anything. YouTube is crammed full of free videos, and if you have an ad blocker installed you don’t even need to watch the ads. But Google is tracking you, and you will see targeted ads when you search and customized news in Google News.
But the age of free content may be reaching the end of its lifespan. Many news sites have become nothing more than ad-fueled clickbait farms. I find these sites increasingly intolerable. Even when an article does have some useful content, it’s difficult to read when it’s surrounded by flashing adverts.
Ads vs paywalls: the dilemma
It’s becoming increasingly common for higher-quality news sites to sit behind paywalls. Many of their news stories still show up on Google News, but you can’t read the full articles without becoming a member.
Another emerging trend, for those sites still wishing to stick to the advertising model, is to block browsers that have ad blockers installed. Increasingly, I find myself adopting the stance of if I can’t access your site with my ad blocker on, I’m going elsewhere.
It’s in this environment that Medium can surely be a winner. With it being so broad, and only $5 per month for such a wide range of written content, it’s a no-brainer. I saw someone once describe Medium as the written equivalent of YouTube, but it’s not. It’s more like the written equivalent of Netflix — but even that’s not an exact comparison.
Quality products come at a cost
We either pay with money or we pay by being distracted and influenced by adverts — and by giving up our privacy rights.
Consider Facebook. It’s free for us to use, but it’s one of the richest companies in the world. You know why. You know exactly why. We all do.
If people so desperately want to narcissistically share everything about themselves with everyone they know, wouldn’t it be better to pay for it? If it’s considered an essential part of life, shouldn’t it be treated as such?
After all, we don’t get free water, electricity, and car fuel in exchange for adverts and giving up our privacy. You don’t get a free house in exchange for having adverts all over it and the makers of the house being able to know everything about you.
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