How do you feel about older websites that changed to fit the modern internet?

[nebvla-north]

Hello melon land!
I think this may be my first forum post but this topic has been on my mind for a couple of days.
 While I was doing some online college homework, I was learning the basics of citations for essays. It suggested some resources on citation styles for different writing formats. Even though it wasn't mentioned I do remember using(and might still use later) Easybib.
 It's a site that is good source for helping me format my cite sources for my essay assignments. It's been around since 2003 and I remember vaguely how it used to be. As of now though I believe it succumbed to modern monetization practices which is understandable. It needs some form of funding to help run the site and what not through subscriptions. I remember it not needing a subscription just to cite a couple of sources for your paper.
 Same thing has happened to W3 schools, another very useful site thats been around since the late 90s and Ive been using it since maybe 2004. Subscription based plans have been added along with the option to get certified for the courses you do.
 I mention all this because old websites(the ones that are still running) now have changed. They do it to have it modernized and even though I understand why they do it, it does sadden a bit to see how much they changed. So far these are the only two I know of. What are your thoughts on the shift to subscription bases added to your old sites you used to use freely? Is it better to have the site be modern? Do you agree that subscription is a viable option for sites that need funding to keep the lights on? 

[SeaSlugUFO]

I feel like, in the old days of the internet, there were a ton of free passion projects that we could browse, and now, it's products. That's pretty bold of me considering I'm enjoying many things for free and I don't have to front the costs. 

I'm really not a fan of subscription models, especially since, from my experience, it always starts out as free and THEN changes to subscription model... How is that different from software where it's a free trial but you still have to enter your credit card details for when the trial is over?

I also look at sites like Ao3 which solely relies on donations to keep it going and it's thriving. No subscription needed.

It's disheartening to see every fun thing turning into a product, and I'm very lucky that I *have* been able to enjoy so many things for free. But it's still disheartening.

[Blue]

I don't think I've been in a situation where the site I used before became monetizable, but I do remember the switch Deviantart had for Eclipse, and how it fundamentally ruined the site for many, many people, myself included. The option of core was there even before I joined so it's not like I haven't seen it before, but I think that now you can't even get it with DA points like you could before (something I used to do to get pretty decoration with background images and subfolders) and let's not talk about their usage of AI and even allowing it. It's sad to see it because they could've benefited from not allowing it and making creators come back there after a lot of places started implementing AI onto the platforms, but nope, they just made it worse. It's sad to see a site that I loved to use in my childhood go to waste like this.

I don't inherently think that subscriptions are evil when done well. Neocities and Nekoweb have them, they're used for hosting websites. they're relatively low, so if you have spare money it's probably something you can do to also support the project and make sure the site doesn't go down.

I also look at sites like Ao3 which solely relies on donations to keep it going and it's thriving. No subscription needed.

I think the thing with ao3 is that a lot of people using it from the beginning are on the older side and have seen what happened with ffn. The same can be said with how people take care of Dreamwidth because they know what happened to LiveJournal. I think this one is more on fandom people in general not wanting another purge, so they do their best to make that not happen again. It's why the donation bar is filled by the first day every time there is one.

[alkemylabz]

i don't really have a problem with sites implementing monetization, but i have noticed a monetization creep in a lot of mainstream social media spaces that are just blatant cash grabs and don't make any sense if you know basic tech stuff. see: tumblr premium, which appears to be a 70 USD a year ad blocker. you can do the same thing with ublock origin and new xkit......... or revanced if you can follow a guide.

i dont really mind for some sites, though, if what was already free remains free. like if a site offers paid courses + certification bundles but keeps pretty much all of the resources free im fine. but if suddenly it requires me to make an account and then asks me for 200 bucks to look at something i was looking at yesterday im gonna assume that the people in charge view people only in how much money they can extract from them

which i guess is my biggest issue with site monetization in that regard. i dont mind if people sell extra stuff on the side but it shouldnt be like... taking over the site.

i do have some issues with certain sites that are run by donation campaigns but theyre mostly because some of them that make their financials public have revealed that they severely mismanage the funds or don't actually make any efforts to manage the site effectively using those funds