PayWall
I'm so sick of paywalls.
I've discontinued my payment for this next month, so I will go back to being private.
On another website I am on, they just recently limited people. Not what they can say, but how much they can say. The website limits you to 20 posts a day. 50 replies a day, unless you pay. I won't be affected much, but there are people who will be because they are pretty active. It will just cause the site to lose users. Theyve tried limiting activity behind a paywall before and they lost people. The website is slowly dying because their initial principle was free speech, now free speech is not free. It's just gotten ridiculous. It seems unless you give them your information, they want your money, or they censor your speech. I understand people gotta make a living, but the way how it's just everybody and there's really NO real place to go.
Anyway, this just happened yesterday, so Im irritated because I know, someday,this website I am on, won't be usable at all, unless you pay. By then, everyone will leave in protest and the site will be dead.
Well, that's about it. I've got work to do. I'm not in a very nice mood today(not just from this, but other things), so goodbye.
Comments (9)
I understand your frustration. I really do. I have pulled back from places on the internet for the same reason. But I have to say that this site is different. For one thing it has been around for a long time and you get to interact with the actual admin. A real person, not a corporation. In a way... Dear Diary is like buying local. I'm not kidding. And in all fairness, there ARE expenses in running a website and hosting and storing all our information. In my case decades of entries. I'm glad you have the opportunity to keep writing for free, and I hope you do. I will miss seeing your entries and reading about your experience of life.
I do enjoy how the admins are also DD members, and they are active and you can talk to them directly. I appreciate that.
It's just one of those frustrating days. I have been in pain from a fall yesterday and Im all sore, and then this whole paywall this website Im on is trying to pull again.
I do understand it takes money, but the hosts seem to be very disrespectful to their non-paying members, calling them freeloaders. Hosts like that don't deserve anyone's money and I predict the place will go dead after a while, or they will go full pay for everything. I may be gone before then, but Im just kinda tired of it.
Are you talking about the hosts on the other journaling site? Because I don't think Steve has ever referred to non paying members on Dear Diary 'freeloaders'... just to be clear. When you email the admin, that is Steve. He wrote the code for this site and started the whole thing over 25 years ago.
No, no, Im talking about the other website I am on.
I see. Yeah, it's true, most places now are squeezing everyone for every penny. It's exhausting and discouraging to say the least....sigh.
I am happy that this site is actually cheap to write publicly. Maybe someday, I'll go back to public, since it is actually pretty cheap(even for a year). At the moment, rent is more important, so we'll see.
Comments nested too deep.
I just want to clarify - because I believe in being open - Matt wrote the very original code in 1999. I joined with Matt (we worked our real jobs together and had been friends for a number of years) about a month or so after Matt's first vision for the site.
Matt is and always was a visionary programmer. He had the ideas. I fixed the bugs lol.
At the time when Matt left we had various projects on the go and they were diverged into those that Matt wanted to focus on and those I wanted to focus on.
But Matt was the original brainchild for DD and much of the early years code back when it was Perl and PHP. I think it was probably around 2003/2004 when Matt left.
Hiya,
I've read the comment thread and I appreciate everything you've said between yourself and D'vorahDavida. I also interpreted most of your ire being directed at the other site rather than DearDiary.Net anyway.
I do appreciate where you're coming from. It does seem as though places are trying to nickel and dime everyone these days and that's been going on for at least the last 10 years and getting worse.
DearDiary.Net has only increased prices once in 25 years and only then by $1/mth. There's no plans to increase any further and I've cancelled multiple subscriptions recently because of the constant 'we need more money from you even though we are making billions already' treadmill.
For the record DearDiary.Net isn't making anything like billions! (Thought I'd better put that out there).
Anyway, I appreciate everything you've said and I too will miss your updates. I do hope you keep your writing whilst private and if you go Plus again in the future all those entries will still be there and can be made public as soon as you wish.
Even as a private user please let me know if there's anything on the site you need help with. No-one is a freeloader here, the site is built for everyone.