I feel what you are saying.

A few things that make this less onerous and odious. One, you can switch stories from paywall to not paywall at will. I do it every day. I also write stuff that I never put behind the paywall too. In no world is my intent to keep my writing behind a paywall for good. I just don’t mind getting some shekels for my work.

Also, as I mentioned, they actually seem to value writers and are at least trying to make the splits much fairer than I have gotten using other models. I have probably had at least 50 posts with over 1000 hits on my blog and I still have not earned $100 from Google Ads.

Finally, Ev lost The Ringer and several other big name sites because he refused to cave on ads. Sure, like all owners of a company, he is trying to have a sustainable business model, but you can still read an article without closing 20 pop ups and shutting off like three video embeds.

I do get what you are saying, don’t mean to be naïve, just hopeful it will be a good thing.