Isn’t this EXACTLY how it worked before publishers started using the internet? You had to pay either a subscription, or per issue for every magazine or newspaper you wanted to read. Instead of having subscriptions to “dozens of different news outlets”, people only paid for a few. The ones that interested you most, you paid a subscription for, and if you were interested in anything else, you just bought single issues.

I think the “garbage is free” narrative needs to change. AI generated garbage sure isn’t free, you pay for it with your attention and your data. Publishers need to make money somehow, and they can either do that with tracking cookies that harvest your data and sell it to the highest bidder, or in reality, both. If average consumers had any idea of how much data they give up for “free” content or services on the internet, I think more people would be okay with paywalls, and I think there would be a lot more pressure on paid subscription/service providers to use paywall revenue as an alternative to, instead of in addition to, the surveillance capitalism method that’s so pervasive right now