Great points about some of the unethical gray area tactics to keep customers locked in to subscriptions they don't use. I think what makes subscriptions "aligned" is less tactical than strategic or philosophical. Instead of hiding the 8-ball of the reality that huge megacorps like Apple and Pfizer and Exxon are actually paying the bills for producing content, it is a more direct arrangement: "Hey if you like this stuff that's cool but it costs money, so pay us plz."
IMO, a lot of the misalignment with ads comes not from the sponsor influencing the copy (although I'm sure that happens) as much as content getting more extreme and inflammatory and gimmicky for the sake of driving clicks and eyeballs in the attention economy. How often have all of us read an article recently that was more or less even handed, but has a horrible clickbait title and graphic? Or there will be normal content but at the bottom the terrible "chum bucket" of affiliate nonsense like "You'll never BELIEVE how badly this celebrity aged!" and "Doctors say this is the WORST thing for your gut!!" The ad and click economy also just turbocharges all of the empty calorie SEO garbage on the web that exists solely to push traffic to other sites.
IMO, more transparent subscription tactics + micropayments is the most ethical way forward, especially for people writing in niche or technical areas that don't want to dumb their content down to the point that Maybelline or Teen Vogue would sponsor it
Great points about some of the unethical gray area tactics to keep customers locked in to subscriptions they don't use. I think what makes subscriptions "aligned" is less tactical than strategic or philosophical. Instead of hiding the 8-ball of the reality that huge megacorps like Apple and Pfizer and Exxon are actually paying the bills for producing content, it is a more direct arrangement: "Hey if you like this stuff that's cool but it costs money, so pay us plz."
IMO, a lot of the misalignment with ads comes not from the sponsor influencing the copy (although I'm sure that happens) as much as content getting more extreme and inflammatory and gimmicky for the sake of driving clicks and eyeballs in the attention economy. How often have all of us read an article recently that was more or less even handed, but has a horrible clickbait title and graphic? Or there will be normal content but at the bottom the terrible "chum bucket" of affiliate nonsense like "You'll never BELIEVE how badly this celebrity aged!" and "Doctors say this is the WORST thing for your gut!!" The ad and click economy also just turbocharges all of the empty calorie SEO garbage on the web that exists solely to push traffic to other sites.
IMO, more transparent subscription tactics + micropayments is the most ethical way forward, especially for people writing in niche or technical areas that don't want to dumb their content down to the point that Maybelline or Teen Vogue would sponsor it