Good reminder to pay for journalism.

The Guardian, Le Monde, El País, Tageszeitung and many others need subscribers to stay independent of the oligarchs.

IPFS has gateways though, so you can link to the latest version of a page which can be updated by the owner, or alternatively link to a specific revision of the page that is immutable and can't be forged.

But Wikipedia doesn't need to bypass paywalls, and you can bypass them yourself with a bit of work.

There's websites with paywalls that even Bypass Paywalls Clean can't bypass. In cases that it can, it sometimes just fetches the article contents from archive.today.

That doesn't mean an alternative shouldn't be found, but we also shouldn't pretend that nothing is being lost by losing access to unpaywalled sources. For practical purposes, a paywalled source means no source for most readers, unless a non-paywalled alternative can be found to replace it.

Paying for journalism is ideal, but unfortunately makes it difficult to cite/link to a source the way Wikipedia needs as a way to ensure the information remains open and accessible.

Admittedly, I'm not familiar with these outlets enough to know if those paywalls are significant, but the problem with direct article links is that those links can change. Archival services (I suppose not archive[.]is) are important for ensuring those articles remain accessible in the format they were presented in.

I've come across a number of older Wikipedia articles about more minor or obscure events where links lead to local new outlet websites that no longer exist or were consumed by larger media outlets and as a result no longer provide an appropriate citation.

I don’t think the issue is paywalls. I think the issue is the personal actions of the owner. I also really don’t think Russia plays into this. Again, the personal actions of the owner of achive[.]today were the reason it was removed. The site was used by the owner to personally attack someone.

That's good for you, and it is okay for you to use archive.today personally, as long as you block their DDoSing.

But Wikipedia does not need to bypass paywalls, and they don't require the source to be freely (or easily) viewable to verify the info.

I'm still deciding how much I agree or disagree with this. It's true that they do cite books which you often can't read online, but adding information backed up by a paywalled proof feels a bit "trust me bro". E.g. I could find/create a site with an impossibly large paywall and no-one would realistically able to check my sources.

Paying for journalism simply promotes that those who don't pay it don't get it ie.: more paywalls, not less.

Okay so, what is the currently going-for alternative that bypasses paywalls?

I’m afraid there aren’t any. You can use the Bypass Paywalls Clean extension though

guardian is surviving by slowly becoming a tabloid. not sure if i would have paid for it anyway, and im not sure if this was preventable by paying for it in the first place.

And now Firefox completely bans it from even being sideloaded.

that's exactly one of the main reason they use archive sites for citations. but when an archival site does that it becomes useless.

Democracy isn’t possible without an independent press.

Epstein was persecuted because the frigging Miami Herold reported about his abuses in 2018. He would have continued raping and trafficking kids for who knows how long without that. In a world where the media is owned by Epstein, that won’t happen.

Oh well, archive.today it is in the meantime I guess.

I haven't said that journalists have to work for free. Just that we don't have to be the ones who are trickled out to feed them. I doesn't have to be "poors vs workers" unlike what the media is telling you, ya know? A better system is possible.

They're already mostly owned and working for the ultra-rich interests. There have been plenty of outlets over the years that had paying users, they're mostly owned at this point. Those that aren't are getting quite click-baity.

Capitalism is hard on News. Facism is worse.

Huh, I don’t get that argument. To me, it seems that citizens paying journalists is desirable. I’m genuinely curious, who else should pay them in your view?

It's relatively possible it never got out of the planning stages intact.

what democracy? every person in the leadership of america and most of the world were either friends with epstein or on his payroll.

The root of the problem is Wikipedia not having local snapshots leaves their articles vulnerable to eroding sources.

I appreciate the guardian a lot more than I did before now that someone gave me a nytimes subscription, seeing how bad they are now. For the guardian's faults, they do break some stories still, and somewhat comprehensively cover the news, perhaps better than the times, that is too busy trying to cover for Israel to even report honestly on epstein and apparently surrendered to the administration besides.

It's not our fault the media decided to switch to a subscription model while not providing a product worthy of paying a subscription, even before they downgrade it every year.

It's a problem, but one of their own making.

That’s very 1984 of them

Also remember the journalists that need support the most are local papers and news stations. The big ones have plenty of donors, and while it's worth the support, they are less likely to completely collapse than the news that is run in your city.

Go look for that independent source. They will report more news that actually affects you as well.

Is it reasonable for them to keep their own local snapshots?

That's not a trivial amount of work and data, particularly it it's multimedia.

copy the headline and find the same thing free somewhere else. usually it's a news site full of unreadable slop. pay walls used to be almost worth bypassing. no more. just another money grab, pretending to protect valuable information. not

yeah and they're also transphobic af as a policy. don't give them a damn cent

https://www.buzzfeed.com/patrickstrudwick/guardian-staff-trans-rights-letter

can also find more stuff by just looking up "the guardian transphobia"

i've had consistently good luck with the archive.org wayback machine

I think it's a concerning issue affecting long-term viability of the platform. It'll only get worse as time goes on and sources go offline.

Or ever made it into planning?

It could be the citizens but done indirectly, for example via taxes. Even better, not all citizens: just tax the rich and put the money into a journalism pool, so the rich can't choose to benefit any particular newspaper or editorial line.

Fair point. Very few if any news sites provide unique articles.