I think that the lumbering hogs we call publication web sites these days are making sure that you as a reader are paying a cost to use their otherwise free web site; paying a subscription is better, but no one will do that. People on mobiles pay a tax that people on desktops don't, and people on bad connections in poor areas pay a tax that people in rich fibre-wonderlands don't, and yet energy and money is wasted on transferring garbage that nobody wants.

I seem to get dismissed whenever I suggest this, but these web sites could instead try another approach: remove all the garbage, have a beautiful, clean web site, and implement artificial rate limiting on all connections to it. If you want a super fast experience, pay a subscription! What are the upsides?

* Less bandwidth and energy and mobile phone battery is wasted.

* The site will still load in the same time that people are normally used to anyway.

* Rich people and poor people get the same experience; you don't pay a poor people tax if you are poor. Equity!

* Mobile phone users don't pay a tax, either.

* Meanwhile, Rich people have disposable income; they should be spending money on magazines and newspapers that people are producing anyway, to show their support, but they don't, so here's an incentive. They also indirectly support the poor people with news/media, who can't afford to pay a subscription (or wouldn't benefit anyway).

Isn't anyone trying this model?