So, you've decided to complain about a paywall…

You don't like encountering paywalls. Writers don't like getting social media complaints about paywalls. Let's talk about that.

If you’re reading this sentence, it’s because you’ve clicked a link to read it – perhaps from your inbox, or an app notification, but more likely from social media. There is every chance that you’ve been sent that link passive-aggressively by me or another writer because you’ve replied to a post they’ve written with “paywall”, or similar.

So, before we get into the main thrust of this post, let me say this: thank you for clicking. Not many people do, and fewer people do with each passing month.

Especially thank you if you clicked this link after being sent it passive-aggressively: I’m going to try to convince you to support writers when we share work we’ve made that’s behind a paywall, and you likely don’t agree with that right now – but you’ve clicked the link anyway. No-one does that any more! So thank you for giving it a go.

Let’s get stuck in. I’m going to get to why the horrible, horrible economics of the internet have ruined everything (and AI is making it worse), but first thing…