I copy-pasted a bunch of short, redundant “replies” because I was trying to let people who I had disagreed with know that I had edited/changed some of my main argument. I knew that wasn’t an ideal way, but I wasn’t sure if and how I should “mention” their usernames instead. But I decided to just delete all the redundant messages because I know that can be very annoying for people trying to scroll through all the comments. I guess they’ll either see my changes and tell me what they think or everyone will just move on.

He looks like he’s guarding something? A sentinel value in an array-based stack implementation in C or something? I don’t know, I’m a bit confused too.

In that case, I would say the advertisers are most directly paying the cost, and the readers are indirectly paying for it by sometimes buying the products that are advertised. I don’t like ads, and I especially hate when people try to force others to view ads whether they want to or not, but they are still one source of revenue for goods which are nominally “free”.

And, as I mentioned at the end of my post, as much as I dislike them, these attempts to force ad viewing can also function as a form of “price”, to put a limit on the number of people who bother with those sources, which can make it easier for them to keep up with the demands of those who tolerate that behavior. (Again, I don’t like this, but I can’t change it just by disliking it.)

Your first example is a very fair point, I wasn’t thinking about people who basically stumble into something important and decide to publish it. But unless something very odd is happening, that will not happen over and over again to the same person. More likely, it may happen to them once and then they’ll decide they want to become a regular citizen journalist, as you say, and then they will need to do a lot of work (with associated costs) even if they aren’t getting paid for it. Which would be another example of my first suggestion.

For the rest, I realize that there are plenty of examples where people provide accurate and timely information without charge (a lot of Lemmy is, and hopefully will continue to be, an example of that!). But those people are, for the most part, doing volunteer work, which is very valuable and healthy, but nevertheless is still work (that has costs).

I was not claiming that free goods, or free news in particular, “can’t” be worthwhile. Just that it implies that someone is supplying so much that goes above and beyond what a lot of people are trying to get that there is no need to charge for it. That can be an example of something very charitable and wonderful, or it can be an example of someone trying to push something that most people (rightly or wrongly) think is not very useful.

Yes, I think I agree, and I think there is more to be said here but I am tired. So I’ll sleep on it and maybe add something more later if I can think of anything useful. 🙂

Oh, don’t get me wrong, state-funded broadcasters can be excellent (or horrible, it really depends on the details). But when they are good, I would count them under the first case: they are being backed by the state itself (being charitable), and a lot of people like you use and love them.

Public funding is a double-edged sword: it lets news reporters not worry about profiting, but focus on their actual job instead; and it also lets “news” agencies that stopped caring about reporting truth a long time ago not worry about needing to actually be useful to the public at large, instead only needing to keep the government decision-makers happy.

Do I have the proposal for you! RFC2549

Coming Soon: Elon, screaming into a void that only he pays for…

ETA: Or maybe “even he doesn’t pay for”, if some of the other rumors are correct.

Edit: please note that I made at least one mistake here (as well as some kind of boneheaded comments later). FPTP, even in the US, does not require a 50% majority, just more votes than anyone else (a “plurality”). It can still benefit parties to get to 50%, since it makes their winning more likely, and so in the absence of any drawbacks, most successful parties will still aim for it, but it isn’t strictly necessary, as has been sometimes demonstrated in the UK. Thanks to squaresinger for linking a YouTube video that mentions this below. /Edit

I just want to share my thoughts on this. It started as a response to one comment, but I realized that there’s a lot more that can (and I think should) be said, so here goes.

First, for those who don’t know, FPTP stands for First Past The Post, meaning a system where everyone votes for a single candidate and whoever gets more than 50% (i.e. “past the post”) wins the entire election (the losers get nothing). For many Americans, this might be so familiar that one would wonder how it could be any different (in a small-d democratic system), but there are in fact many alternatives: ranked voting, proportional representation, Condorcet method, etc.

They all have strengths and weaknesses, but for FPTP, and other similar systems, there’s a result in political science called Duverger’s law that says FPTP-like rules tend to cause a two-party system, essentially because because even if you don’t team up with a larger party you may disagree with on many issues, to get a majority, others will, and then they’ll win and you’ll get nothing. And since getting significantly more than 50% consumes party resources that might better be used elsewhere, but gives no reward, 50% (plus a small “safety margin”) is what all the successful parties will eventually aim for, and thus you get two roughly equally-successful parties. Tiny swings in voting then lead to massive differences in outcomes, which threatens the stability and security of everyone (even America’s “enemies”).

So saying “just vote for third parties” (like I see some calling for here) is tone-deaf at best, or part of a cynical ploy to fracture the opponent’s party at worst. Even if a “third party” does win, the best that can be hoped for under FPTP is they just end up replacing one of the two parties, becoming one of the two parties in the “new” two-party system. And the two existing parties have likely spent far more time and effort researching ways to stop even that from happening than any of us ever will.

If we, as Americans, or others with a stake in what America decides to do, want to change this (and I personally do), then we need far more fundamental changes to how the system works. Just choosing a candidate we like (whether they have any chance of winning or not) won’t cut it. I don’t know what’s the best voting system to use, but I know I’d like to scrap the Electoral College, for a couple reasons:

1. Even though one might argue that Congress and the Supreme Court are more essential to reform, it’s hard to deny that the President has a very large leadership role today.

2. One might argue that relying on a convoluted/Byzantine method for choosing the President makes it harder to manipulate, and that’s probably true, but the two parties have shown that it being difficult is not a deterrent to them doing so: in fact, they likely both benefit from it by keeping smaller parties that can’t afford to do it out.

It reminds me of the fallacy in computer security of “security through obscurity”: if it’s possible to break into the system, and large numbers of people can benefit substantially from it, then someone eventually will, no matter how hard we make it to exploit. We need to change the system, not only so that it is prohibitively difficult for anyone to exploit the system, but also to get rid of a lot of the corruption that makes most people want to exploit it in the first place.

All of this is much easier said than done, I know, but we need to explain clearly to the public why “quick fixes” won’t work, before we can convince them of the need for more fundamental changes. We still need to work on figuring out the details of the best changes, but unless we can show people the reality of the deep structural problems that acually exist, why they exist, and how we know we’re right about what we’re saying, we’ll never convince most people to change anything.