Newish paywalls on the internet                               03/13/26
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More reasons to love Gopher:

The modern internet has developed  some interesting new paywalls. This
time, they're not asking for cash or credit. The currency they seek is
information.

One new type  is the the "I'm  not a bot, I promise"  blockage most of
the time. It's a continuation of  the "solve this puzzle and train our
AI models" paywall.  It's dehumanizing and pathetic,  a feeble attempt
to instill fear and panic into a soft-headed public while swatting the
fingers of  the bots who scour  the internet to steal  and regurgitate
content.  At the  same  time,  these paywalls  pave  the  way for  the
annihilation of anonymity. You can't  stop the bots, and these paywalls
aren't really about that at all.

Another new  type of  paywall is the  background CPU/GPU  access. Even
sites that  could give you  the features  you need, often  require CPU
loads that make  older computers grind to a halt.  And that's not even
counting malicious black or grey uses  of local CPU/GPU access that we
now have to consider.

You  must  pay  with  your  anonymity,  privacy,  humanity,  and  even
electricity and  CPU cycles. The  internet is  not free in  any sense,
when looking at the HTTP side.

Thank you for existing, Gopher. You avoid all of these.