To begin with @jeffjarvis, there is no interest from this side to have some kind of unpleasant conversation for any of the involved, so this is not about scolding, unsolicited advise or what ever the internet already pounded into our minds as perceived aggression in our communication out here. In any case a conversation about that very communication problem, our nerved and nervous reaction to "social media communication" would be interesting or helpful. Also, such a conversation should start probably always with the definition by Prof Dr Peter Kruse about communication itself as defined in this video but would be quite off topic right now.

Like to say, would it be scolding, or irrelevant if I tell you that I'm looking at this conversation from #friendica so I have no idea why you mention #mastodon?
I mean, "who does not know that you are always communicating in the #fediVerse out here?" and that of course we #friendicans as the oldest standing living community are a complete different kind of people than those arrogant #mastodonians!
In other words, to a certain extent you sound like @pluralistic, living in some strange ilusional bubble.

Serious, for my self I'm in South America, read German, English and Spanisch articles when I get interesting comments or links, not your (right now) rant like stuff. In this moment yours is like a temperature thermometer on US journalistic politics (and we feel with you). No need to click for those articles at all. Actually the other day I "ranted" about a BRECHA link down here posted by @gusdelsur being a paywall link, while later on I realized that it was just an email registry requirement. I definitely should correct that rant. From german outlets I'm used to some articles being paywalled and others not. "La diaria" gives like 10 articles a month, and, no offense please, I truly actually give a f*** about the survival strategy of the #brokenUSpress right now, it most likely will change again and perhaps the @TexasObserver reflects actually a state of the art others haven't reached yet. The day the others offer fediVerse accounts as part of their membership service I'll check them out, being it NY Times, WaPo, ZEIT, @tazgetroete or LaDiaria. And no, I don't think that @evawolfangel who writes for ZEIT could convince them to open a mastodon instance for their subscribers either. All these people in charge of those outlet's miss the bigger picture, they can't think out of the box and wonder in any case how much resources they can save by implementing AI as Fuckerberg destroyed their business model in the last twenty years. They simply try to wallet garden their own readers struggling with moderating them one by one.

#Journalism and #media is your thing, not necessarily the one of your followers, so don't expect us to know what you know, feel what you feel or consider what you consider. That's on the cover of the book and we all know that, but certainly nearly never are consciously aware because that's just not how things work.

So if @divVerent states that:

I am here for years and read about that hashtag only now.

.. this can be true for his bubble, his internet culture language bubble and even probably be proven by some search, when how and why a "please tag as paywall" came up in the fedi.
btw - integrate #diaspora* and german language in that search, we have like 15 multilingual years on our back at this stage.

I remember when the autistic bubble of the mastodon fedi was screaming and pleading to "please content protect the posting of face pictures because of #eyeContact !". A useless request in face of the twitter wave that gave a f*** about existing customs or for some perhaps reasonable and important detail for minorities or safe spaces of some marginalized folks. Like the #AltText request you know ..
Unless it's US american #PoC people of course, because the autistic or visual impaired community probably are just white males who couldn't manage the black is beautiful pictures of the woke black twitter mob on first sight.

To be more precise, and to come back to the Kruse take, and actually @futurebird might remember when in it's time we struggled and fought to create understanding and communication with #blackTwitter people to integrate them. We all were and are trying to get a grip on the way mastodon, the fediVerse and federation itself out of technical reasons is different and has to be managed differently to become able to handle racism and harassment in a better way. In it's time we came to the point that here and right now we are creating our very own culture, are negotiating our very own "best practice of rules of engagement", and I truly consider that that is and should be a never ending process.
That's what culture is about.
When ever that process stops, it becomes a dead culture.

In other words, from over here it looks right now that you are raging and blind of rage, due to the actual political, social and professional circumstances in your life, your country, your bubble. Yet, if that makes you blind about the fact that even your own and our acquired cultural behavior out here might be and probably is part of the Zeitgeist that created this mess we are in in the first place, as always of course only on the other side of the isle, perhaps you should simple step back for a moment, think for a while, sleep over it, and maybe at least edit your profile and add:
"I don't tag paywalls, thx."
That's in part what profiles are for.

Or pin some general advise toots on your profile (like you actually did), that's another option to role out the rules of your Wendy's here.

The other day, a German podcast by @gnulinuxch claimed that there is no:
"¡ RTs ≠ endorsements!" kinda rule in the fedi.
Our profiles do state that explicitly for more than a decade now and we are not the only ones, @anonymiss would approve that message in a blink of an eye.

So please, be kind to each other, let's try to be or become better. And if you really need political asylum, "just take a trip down to L'America", we'll send you the @bitpickup to MVD airport and even make you disappear if that becomes really necessary.

¡peace!

(and no, for now we are not going to unfollow you because that's the only way that your input becomes part of this servers community page stream)