Hey, remember Glenn Beck? The right-wing pundit who spent years pushing racist disinformation attacking President Obama before apologizing, un-apologizing, and then getting right back on his bullshit?
Welp, it turns out that the revenue from Beck’s YouTube channels must not be cutting it for him, because the latest release from Beck's disinfo outlet, Blaze Media, is behind a paywall as part of a recent move in response to troubles with ad revenue.
That’s too bad. We were really looking forward to finding out the real story behind the Maui wildfires, with the trailer teasing the debunked 'land grab' conspiracy theory.
Alas, Beck is asking for a $15 per month subscription to see the video, or just $120 for an annual subscription to see "Blaze Originals, Banned By Big Tech, Comedy Shorts, Live, Off the Record, SERIES, SHOWS, Shows, Specials, [and] The Summit."
To save you the clicking, the Maui show is the only Blaze Original so far, the "Banned By Big Tech" page is currently blank (while the un-banned Blaze YouTube channel has nearly 2 million subscribers and is monetized), there are no "Comedy Shorts" currently available, and "SERIES, SHOWS, [and] Shows," are all basically the same couple dozen programs in which a conservative gives you their opinion about some current event or viral topic.
Presumably, they'll be able to populate those categories once they get some subscription money in, but with how easy it is to find lies and conspiracy theories for free online, we're skeptical that there's a huge audience eager to pay real money for it.
But Beck’s audience is inherently gullible, so we'll just have to wait and see if paid video subscriptions are a viable business model for disinfo outlets.