The Verge and 404 Media are building out new functions that would allow them to distribute posts on their sites and on federated platforms – like Threads, Mastodon and Bluesky – at the same time. Replies to those posts on those platforms become comments on their sites.

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments

[–] Metz 2 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago) (3 children)

Wait their articles are paywalled.

Journalists have to pay for food and rent too. What is the alternative? ads?

The money has to come from somewhere.

[–] solrize 14 points 5 months ago

Paywalls just don't mix that well with federation. The teasers are basically ads, and why would fediverse volunteers want to propagate some company's ads? The non-federated model they are using now seems fine.

[–] mulcahey 5 points 5 months ago (1 children)

I didn't read Solrize's comment as saying "There shouldn't be paywalls," just asking the very legitimate question as to how they will interact with federation.

Interestingly, 404 just solved something kinda related: they developed a way for subscribers to get a custom RSS feed address, so they can access paywalled articles directly in their RSS reader. TMK, they are the first publication to do this. I imagine they would do something similar for federation. (I believe that if any of the custom RSS feeds show huge traffic numbers, 404 shuts it down, but I'm not sure)

[–] [email protected] 3 points 5 months ago

I don't think that's new, you just need to throw in a personal subscription key in the URL

[–] [email protected] 2 points 5 months ago

The money comes from the companies that are hiring them to do the journalist work. Of course.

Let's be intellectually honest here. If a company has enough money that the boss can brand themself as "CEO" then it can pay at least living wages.