from the support-techdirt-and-feel-good-about-it dept
We’re a couple of weeks into our end of year crowdfunding campaign—donate $100 or more (take a look at that $230 possibility!) and we’ll ship you our first commemorative problem coin celebrating 30 years of Part 230. I’ve already laid out why our coverage matters, why we’re not selling out (as a result of we’re not like Bari Weiss), and why we’re one of the only sites getting Section 230 right.
However right here’s the actual motive to assist Techdirt: we’re one of many uncommon remaining web sites on the web that doesn’t consider in annoying individuals as a enterprise mannequin.
the drill. You open a information article. There’s a banner advert on the high that gained’t scroll away. One other on the backside, additionally caught. A skyscraper advert bisecting the textual content. You attempt to scroll previous it and by chance click on, launching some rubbish in a brand new tab. Or worse: the article itself is freely readable, however solely after you’ve dismissed three completely different popups begging you to subscribe, register, or flip off your advert blocker.
Otherwise you get six paragraphs in—simply sufficient to get invested—and hit this:
Bait and swap. Each time.
Techdirt does none of that. You possibly can learn the positioning without spending a dime. You may as well get the complete textual content of all our posts via RSS or in your e-mail with our newsletter. You don’t must pay or register. Hell, you don’t even must register to remark. We don’t cowl the web page in advertisements. We don’t pop up annoying reminders. You possibly can share our content material freely, protected from anybody saying “paywall, can’t learn” in response.
When websites try this, it appears like the primary stage of Cory Doctorow’s “enshittification” curve, the place a web site begins to determine methods to annoy customers to extract worth from them by making them pay to keep away from the annoyance. It’s intentionally lowering the worth within the hopes you’ll pay to do away with the annoyance.
And whereas the “paid e-newsletter” Substack-style setup is an enchanting enterprise mannequin, once I’ve requested supporters of Techdirt how they’d really feel if we provided one thing related, the response was virtually unanimous: individuals love studying Techdirt partially to share what’s right here, they usually’d get irritated in the event that they felt they couldn’t share our tales any extra.
I’d reasonably individuals pay right here not as a result of we’ve irritated them into supporting us, however as a result of they really feel they get real worth from what we do right here and wish to allow way more of that.
And, with a purpose to maintain offering worth we do need your support.
However that is about extra than simply maintaining Techdirt working. It’s about proving {that a} completely different mannequin can work—you can run a information web site by treating readers like individuals you respect, not assets to be mined. Right here’s our work, we predict it’s beneficial, and when you agree, assist it.
Each different mannequin on the web proper now assumes you might want to annoy individuals into paying. Frustrate them with paywalls. Interrupt them with popups. Make the expertise simply dangerous sufficient that they’ll hand over cash to make it cease. That’s not a relationship. That’s a hostage negotiation.
We’re betting that when you get worth from what we do, you’ll assist it since you need extra of it—not as a result of we’ve made it not possible to learn in any other case.
Should you suppose that mannequin deserves to exist, back it. As a result of if this works, it proves one thing: you can construct a sustainable information web site by trusting your viewers, not by annoying them into submission.
Filed Underneath: business models, coin, fundraiser, journalism
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