It goes without saying that most content and services on the net are completely free for customers: email, social networks, information portals… Yet have you ever wondered ‘why’? Maybe you pay for free internet content material, an excellent deal more than you can consider.
Facebook, Google, news website – a simplified version of maximum internet customers’ ordinary itinerary. This path is completely free and genuinely secure: you pass from one destination to another almost routinely. But what might appear if you visited your favorite (loose!) news portal and found out that you couldn’t read an unmarried article? Instead, you will be asked to pay if you need admission to the materials.
Your excellent stroll would sincerely be spoiled. “Why, for God’s sake, do I have to pay for it?” – many users would exclaim. “Why can I use Google or Facebook completely unfastened? Who do the editors assume they may be, asking me for money?” Many people assume that those who work in such massive agencies, like Google or Facebook, are passionately dedicated and enthusiastic volunteers who ordinarily sacrifice themselves in the call of “the person-orientated internet.” Well, numbers communicate louder than words: in 2014, the once-a-year Facebook income was 12 billion greenbacks, and Google – even greater, 66 billion greenbacks. Do you agree with the “person-orientated Internet” undertaking?
Our information portals can slightly consider such sums. “Not my problems, sorry” – a regular, added up using the miracles of the unfastened net person would nation. “The reality is that there are individuals who examine their portal, and it is already a big success for them.” Such logic proves that users do not recognize that they are concerned with capital accumulation – and in this “recreation,” their position is truly unenviable. As a reminder of reality, the internet isn’t a place where absolutely everyone is equal; it is a hierarchical pyramid governed by the aid of the ones on the pinnacle.
To show yourself that “the entirety is unfastened” is a petty illusion; you could be surprised how those “loose” offerings get so much money. The rule is easy: someone else does if you no longer pay. This somebody isn’t always a beneficiant daddy, prepared to pay his closing cent so that you could scroll through your news feed on Facebook or discover which to spend your evening on Google. This anyone is… Advertising.
To clean it up, if the websites dictate the top of the pyramid, advertising is its proprietor who creates these policies. Were you seeking out the area to have dinner? Awesome! Google will provide you with a gaggle of romantic venues so that you certainly discover what you have been searching for. Is that each one? Sure it isn’t: the next time you’ll be scrolling through your information feed, you may (marvel-surprise!) stumble into the photographs of the location you’ve visited, sending you a pretty linear message: go to us once more! Alternatively, you may see photos of other places, implying that it is high time you went somewhere out. It is the first trap of “the phantasm of unfastened” – you’re tracked, and your personal information is used without your permission.
The 2nd lure is even more dangerous – probably you do not even recognize that; however, you are a way to supply website capital at the pinnacle of the pyramid. Yes, no person pays yours for that. The stolen facts are used to steal your interest – and advertising does it. Ads are everywhere: in your private web page, in your information feed, in engines like Google, and even on your email – no person warned you about it, and no one asked whether or not you are allowed to apply your private details for such functions. Google and Facebook made this choice on your behalf and on behalf of millions of other people: nicely, guys, we offer our offerings free of charge; we forget about your attention and get our billions for that. It’s as easy as ABC.
The mechanism of exploitation on information websites is even more uncanny. Suppose earlier than the internet becomes a promise of the platform wherein all and sundry is the same. In that case, everyone can express their opinion (and be heard), and local and international issues are solved cooperatively. Handy to everyone, media fosters civil society; these days, as time has passed, this simplest places an unhappy smile on our faces. All of the noted dreams will be completed simply because a man or woman would be reputable. From the very second you open the information portal, you aren’t an individual anymore – you grow to be a part of site visitors.
“But is it so? I can comment and argue with others; subsequently, I can forestall touring this website online!” – one might argue. It is proper, but sadly, your opinion and the arguments you provide aren’t any big deal: in the present device, you’re both one or zero – both you’re; otherwise, you aren’t. This is one more lure of “the phantasm of loose” – the ghost of participation. You are not anything, however, 1 – and there are masses of such 1s. You are neither a customer nor a consumer; you are by no means right nor incorrect; you are only a figure, a part of site visitors. And yes, you obtain it right: your favored news portal ordinarily sells you to advertisers, stealing your attention.
Should we blame the owners of information portals for it? No. In this sort of device, they don’t have any desire. Should we blame reporters for low-satisfactory, ill-prepared, and, now and again, even silly content? No, they do their activity as long as the consequences fulfill their business enterprise – advertising. You visit the website – you grow to be 1, you read the fabric – all over again time, you turn out to be 1, you like or do now not like what you have studied, and you’ve got determined to percentage your thoughts – yes, you emerge as 1. The satisfactory manner is not anything within the pyramid; what virtually matters is the amount, your interest, and you as 1, which can be, without problems, transformed into bucks.
As the fourth electricity, the outcome is that journalism does not perform its most important social characteristic—to inform society and shape its self-recognition. Instead, it gives the phantasm of participation, which, as we recognize, is a traffic technology tactic used to draw advertisers. So, do you settle for handing over energy to unfair marketing?
First and important, the paid subscription must be delivered back (because it became with newspapers). We want to understand that, as long as anyone else can pay for us, everyone decides who you are and what you’ll examine. It is a way to convey a lower back paid subscription to rehabilitate pleasant analytic journalists and offer lower back journalism its valid energy. Paying for the content material turns out to be one of the responsibilities of the information portal. While journalists might be influenced to satisfy high requirements, you’ll get the only outstanding content material.