I published papers in the past. Are the fees (too) high? Probably. Should publishing be free? Good luck with that, especially now with llms.

I (my university) paid the journals, review was tough and I sank a ton of work in both the first draft and the revisions. And then upon acceptance the papers went both into the journal and to arxiv.

Reading the new papers on arxiv was also my start of the day. That is only possible if that list is heavily moderated, there were around 30-40 of which I would read/skim 1-5.