Once upon a time, the internet promised free news for all. Those were the good old days, right?! Now? The Daily Mail (a UK news outlet that reports on a lot of stories in the U.S.) has apparently decided it’s 2013 again and you might actually pay for it. Yes, the outlet is rolling out a lot more articles these days that are for subscribers only – because nothing screams “urgent breaking news” like being told to fork over $1.99 first.

Daily Mail, known for offering a buffet of celebrity meltdowns and “you won’t believe what she wore!” headlines, is suddenly deciding that some gossip is too precious for the peasants – like their story on Viagra/cocaine trend or the update on Heather Locklear’s life.

It’s a bold strategy. And it sounds cheap. But will it work? Spoiler alert: probably not.

In a world where most people won’t pay 99 cents to remove ads from a game they play daily, asking them to cough up cash for news they can find somewhere (often with sassier summaries on sites like Gruber’s) feels like wishful thinking.

Especially when the competition is to scroll Facebook, X, Instagram or TikTok for free – or read the same news copied-and-pasted fifty times by fifty different outlets.

It’s not that good journalism doesn’t deserve to be paid for somehow. It absolutely does. But Daily Mail locking up Kardashian articles behind a paywall doesn’t exactly scream Pulitzer season.

Most readers will likely just shrug and click elsewhere. The internet is a buffet, and if the crab legs cost extra, people will happily stick with chicken nuggets.