For robots to serve us better, they need to be able to tell the difference between humans and other, potentially malicious robots. Every time we prove we’re not a robot through reCAPTCHA, robots get a tiny bit smarter. This means that in the future, the threshold for proving that we’re not robots will go up, which means that we’ll have […]
Tag: internet culture
Why Paywalls Don’t Work
I don’t have a problem with paying for quality content and I believe, a large number internet users don’t either. If millions of people used to pay to have their newspapers delivered, why shouldn’t that work in the internet age?
Especially in the last few years, with adblocker user base steadily increasing, online newspapers would try to fight back by setting up paywalls.
The general consensus is that people are just less willing to pay for things online. But online shopping is booming, so which is it? Is it because we’re talking about digital, intangible goods? Then why are people spending billions of dollars on coins for their social farming games? Other theories state that it’s a barrier between them and the user or an overabuncance of competitors and free offerings.
So even though publishers want to push for this model, they have to admit that it doesn’t work and take it down whenever they realize that someone actually wants to read their content.
Here’s my thesis about why paywalls really don’t work.
The anatomy of a Hitler Reacts video
I’d like to discuss an internet phenomenon here. It’s quite old now, but the long time it survived makes it even more interesting to analyze.