Twitter to launch paid 'super follow' function that lets users charge for content

[DGRossetti]

www.theguardian.com/technology/2021/feb/26/twitter-to-launch-paid-super-follow-function-that-lets-users-charge-for-content

Twitter has announced it will launch a “super follow” feature, which lets users charge followers for access to exclusive content, later this year.

(contd)

Interesting. I have noticed this as a general trend on news sites over the last few months. Lockdown has exacerbated a situation that was untenable financially anyway. As the fuss and lawsuits over Google Books showed, people who create content need to be paid, even more so as regular PAYE jobs completely disappear. The economic contraction has finally hit the middle classes. The era of the free web powered by private content providers is over.

Another fairly common story you can attach to it is that of public providers being forced out ages ago in favour of highly-financed private ones, and once they’re gone the private can put up its prices. But in the case of the web they had to.

Tim Berners-Lee has some ideas, although he still seems to think he’s the first person who created any capacity to swap information. We didn’t need a concept of data sovereignty years ago - we automatically had it. theconversation.com/tim-berners-lees-plan-to-save-the-internet-give-us-back-control-of-our-data-154130