Online subscriptions: the second digital divide

Google and Facebook control almost all the world’s online advertising revenue. To get around this, news organisations and other online media use paywalls and subscriptions.

It makes perfect sense when there’s precious little advertising revenue to pay wages and other bills. Producing media costs money.

As Tom Foremski explains at ZDNet, this creates a new digital divide.

He writes: “The digital divide is about to get worse with the rise of subscription-based news media because of the failure of advertising to provide revenues for a sustainable business model.”

It’s another reason to not like Facebook. Another reason to fear Google.

Newspapers are not the only examples. Subscriptions, not advertising, pays for Video and sports streaming services. Pay-per-view is not new, but there is now more of it.

Here, the National Business Review hides all stories behind a paywall. The New Zealand Herald keeps the best stories for subscribers. They are not alone.

A second digital divide

As an upshot, low income people who manage to jump the first digital divide and get online, come up against a second divide. Subscription costs often shut them out from the best online content.

Free media has stepped in to fill the gap left by newspapers. Some free sites are good. the Guardian and RNZ both run excellent free news sites.

Some free media is darker. People with a hidden agenda and money to spend can publish plausible looking news. Although plausibility isn’t essential here. Manipulators have free run to bombard readers with lies and misleading information.

Propaganda

Look up an international story on Google News. You’ll find links to certain sites that are openly or not so openly propaganda sites. There are Russian and Chinese examples. In some cases intelligence agencies pay the bills.

Other free news services might push extremist ideologies or misinformation. Lies are common.

People who buy subscriptions end up better informed. They can make better choices. They may even live better, healthier, even happier lives than the poor souls on the wrong side of the second digital divide.