Late Stage Capitalism

This puts me in fear of a future where only the well-to-do have access to the outside world, if every major news outlet adopted a paywall, and the politicians are successful in ending net neutrality and censor non-western outlets, they could force a monopoly on public perceptions that would be magnitudes worse than it already is. That's some 1984 shit.

Possibly not gonna go down that way, paywalling their content could also just make them less popular with the masses, which could give independents and foreign outlets more access to the masses. Though, independents in the west usually just parrot the official narratives provided by the mainstream outlets, and I doubt they'd stop doing that - even if they have to pay to read articles.