Dictionaries, Paywalls, and Search Engines

 Episode 105 of I Hate Talking examines the word “paywall” and how it has come to define access-limited content online, using the Oxford Language Dictionary’s shift behind a paywall as the jumping-off point. The hosts discuss how dictionary access, search engines, and AI-generated summaries have changed the way people find definitions, and compare Oxford’s approach with alternatives like the American Heritage Dictionary and privacy-focused search tools.

The conversation expands into a broader debate about paying for information versus keeping essential knowledge free, especially when it comes to news, health, and weather. Along the way, they reflect on research habits, library access, creator support, and the growing role of paywalls in everyday digital life.

Keywords: paywall, Oxford English Dictionary, Oxford Language Dictionary, dictionary access, subscription access, free information, paywalled content, search engines, DuckDuckGo, AI overviews, Merriam-Webster, American Heritage Dictionary, research habits, library card access, online dictionaries, I Hate Talking podcast.

Transcript

I Hate Talking: 0:30

Welcome to episode 105 of I Hate Talking. Hi everyone. So today's word or phrase is a word, and that word is the word paywall. OK. So this has come up because the Oxford Language Dictionary is now behind a paywall of sorts. And this was previously used in all of our episodes or nearly all of our episodes, I guess it depends on if it was a particular phrase that we were doing and then if you've been listening to the last few episodes, you've known that we have not been able to use our favorite Oxford language dictionary because of said paywall. Right, so that we use that dictionary. For most of our episodes, and now we cannot. Right, so the Oxford Language Dictionary was actually a collection of dictionaries, mainly from the Oxford English Dictionary, which is and always was, I guess, required a subscription, though apparently you can use a library card. To get access to that, but we have not had a chance to test that yet if our library cards work or not. Oh, that's why is that why you asked me about my library card number. -- That -- is why I asked you about your library card number. -- That -- was weird. Um, I did look on Hoopla, where I get a lot of my audiobooks and Uh, e-books and they do not have it. There you go. So if you use a search engine to search Oxford Language Dictionary or Oxford English Dictionary and the word paywall, you can get to their fact sheet for free, which says that there's only one entry and it gives a little bit of frequency of usage and it gives very summary information about the etymology. Where it says that paywall is formed by combining pay and wall in English. And A little bit about the usage in terms of first being used in the early 2000s. Particularly 2004 and That apparently it was first published in Oxford English Dictionary in 2012. OK. And then if you use Google to ask for a definition of a word in the past, it would have incorporated some Oxford language dictionary results, but now it just gives AI overviews and it seems to source most of those from Merriam-Webster's. Interesting. So what is the purpose? Why do you think Oxford did this or the publishers? Well, there's perhaps. The fact that they want to make more money or didn't feel that they were getting equitable income for the usage, especially within Google perhaps, or maybe Google wants to just water down the meanings of words and Give it all over to AI. So I guess it depends if you go with the capitalism aspect or the conspiracy aspect. I probably go with capitalism, though I enjoy conspiracies, uh, because it is kind of challenging. If you have one, if all of your information and news and even vocabulary comes from one source, it may quiet every other source. They can really make words mean anything in a couple generations and. Really control the narratives. Yep, well, that was part of the theme of 1984. Probably need to go read that book again. It'd probably be Interesting to see how much has changed since my reading of that back probably in my high school days, maybe it was my last time reading that. Last time, did you read it multiple times? Yes. Oh wow, I've never read it. Well, there you go. Maybe we'll read that and do an episode on the book 1984. I think there's a quote about the meaning of words in that book. Now I'll have to search that. Will we use Google or will we use another alternative search engine? Is there even an alternative? There used to be like Yahoo. Does Yahoo even have a search engine any longer? I don't know. Yes, Jeeves, yeah, that was a good one. In Google's Chrome, you actually can choose. 5 different search engines. There's Google. There's Bing, which is Microsoft. Oh, I never liked that one. There's Yahoo. There's duck duck go. And Yandex. I've heard of Yandex. I've never used it. I think it's. It might be a European search engine, I think. Never heard of those last two, but yeah, so Yahoo's still around, I guess, huh? They're still hanging on. I'm not immediately finding any quotes, but maybe it was another dystopian novel that had something about how the meaning of words was used to subjugate the people. Well, I guess it's time to read the book again. Indeed, So something interesting that I found during the course of trying to research the history of the Oxford Language Dictionary and the use of the paywall, which we have not even actually defined yet. So I guess we'll have to do that, is that There's a Feature within Duck Duck Go, which I have now since changed my default search engine from Google to Duck Duck Go. It doesn't even sound like a real thing. You've never heard of Duck Duck Go? No, it sounds like a kid game. Well, it was previously purported to be less intrusive search engine, so basically privacy and they wouldn't keep your results and search history and things like that. So it's supposed to be more privacy friendly. Which I think perhaps is not the case anymore. There's people that say that Duck Duck Go does record all that information now and just like every other search engine. So maybe not so much. Useful from the privacy perspective, but they do have a feature where it has a no AI feature. OK, so. You can click that and they won't like how usually now Google gives you your first thing is uh AI generated -- or you just don't get any AI -- period. The search results are a little bit different, I think, from my brief testing of it. So you can go to no AI.duckduckgo.com and it brings you to the page that says no AI with a little cute picture of a duck icon. And it says you search privately without AI. It has AI assisted answers turned off, and it also removes AI generated images. And when I was briefly testing it and using it to search for different things like camping or some of the history on dictionaries. It It was quite refreshing of an experience. It was almost like going back to a decade ago and using search engines. How so? Like, what was refreshing about it? We got like results of websites that may contain the answers that you need instead of getting this perfectly curated answer that may or may not be correct. I think most times the AI generated answers are pretty close, but this was like the old days where you actually had to do a little bit of digging to find the answers that you wanted. So it was refreshing, -- like nostalgic -- for you. It was nostalgic. Look at all the different websites and then go to the website that you wanted to see and then read the text within the website because we have had that instance where We were trying to get New York boat schedules and things like that, and AI was completely wrong because it was reading a website that was outdated. And if you had visited that website, you would see that it like either no longer exists or no longer was relevant and would have not made that mistake. Yeah, that's I am, one of our kids is doing their very first research project. And that's what they're doing in school. They're big in the school activity. And so I'm teaching him how to do a research project, and, you know, you need a certain amount of books and magazines and Websites. And I cannot convince him. That we need to go to the library and get books. He wanted to cite Wildrats, which is a good show. Um, he's doing it on Porky Pines, and they have an episode. And then he found so much information online about porcupines. He's like, I don't need a book. But you do because it's the project and I do agree. He has a lot of information on porcupines, websites, we just googled porcupines, a ton of stuff pops up, right? Like National Geographics and all those. But they show something about having going to the library and looking up the actual books. Yeah, those aren't gonna change it. I mean, and porcupines probably don't change, right? That's not probably a hot button topic that The media changes. But it's harder to change something that's written down in a book and binded. And something that's online. -- That's -- true. So if I use noAI.go.com and search to find paywall, it does give a little bit of summary information from the website, so it does give a snippet of a definition. Provided by Wordnick.com, so word NIK.com, which primarily cites the American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language, 5th edition. OK, how do you feel about that one, when you're ranking them? So, I'm not converted 100%. I'm still probably going to try to see if our library cards work with the Oxford Language Dictionaries's access. But this could be a good replacement. Oh, OK. So, American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language, 5th edition. Defines paywall as a noun. A feature of a website that denies access to certain content to users who have not paid to view it, or a feature of a website, application, or service that only allows access to certain pages, data, or features. To paid up subscribers. OK, yeah, I mean, that sounds accurate. And then it does have etymology as well. So that is also a feature of the Oxford language dictionaries that I always enjoyed and The American Heritage Dictionary does have etymologies. I don't know if there's any very deep etymology in the word paywall because it is basically. A plus wall and part of the etymology was from related. Software terms of a firewall, so firewall being that thing to prevent. Unauthorized access into various softwares or applications or websites. So this is another type of wall, and it is a paywall because you have to pay to go past it. So would this only have been in the last couple decades then since the internet? It was not a term used prior to that? Correct. So it seems like this was first used maybe in some articles online in 2004, and then there's various dictionaries that added it to their dictionary. Sometime between 2010 and 2012 is when it seems to be. Categorically added into dictionary definitions. -- Oh -- wow, that's pretty soon. And then The American Heritage Dictionary also has stats. So you can go if you have an American Heritage dictionary or a Wordnick.com. Account you can favorite words. You can comment on words. And you can also learn that Paywall has a Scrabble score of 15. OK, so lots of interesting information. So there you go. So yeah, American Heritage Dictionary. Has a one up on Oxford language dictionaries cause it gives you the Scrabble score. Yeah, and you can like, you said like words or upvote words. What is it? So on here, there's a button that says love, so you can love the word. OK. How many people have loved Paywall? Nobody. You could be the very first. You can make your account on Wordnick.com or American Heritage Dictionary.com, and you can love Paywall, and you can be, the first. That's true. We can create an account and then we could go love every word that we've ever done. Oh, that will take a long while, but yeah, you can do that. So there you go. I suppose we will still look into Oxford Language Dictionary, see if we can use our library card, or perhaps you, our listener have tried that and either have paid for an account or have attempted to use your library card. You can always let us know your experience in a comment or send us a text or an email or whatever the case may be, but It sounds like I hate talking, maybe converting to the American Heritage Dictionary. There you go. What are your opinions on paywalls? Pro con. Pro at Contra on paywalls. I mean, I certainly am aligned that people need to get paid for the work that they do. So if that's the method in which they employ in order to Get a paycheck, quote unquote, for the work that they're doing. I can understand that, but I also am a proponent of the free exchange of information, especially if it's relevant to perhaps society or science or health, that those type of things should be more in the vein of free exchange of ideas. So like, if there's certain Medical studies or things like that that are maybe relevant to some sort of medical experience that you're encountering that would be nice if those things were free. Yeah, I agree. I think as a whole, I don't have a problem with paywalls or paying for information. Um, I do think that if it's like news or medical, And That sort of thing. I think that should be free for us all to know, even like the weather, right? You pay for more advanced weather alerts than I have on my phone. And I don't really like that you have to pay to get better alerts, cause that seems like a safety issue. So those I think, I don't like paywalls for that kind of stuff. I think if it's a safety issue, health or weather or anything like that, that should be uh free and common knowledge. I have no problem though with creators charging. For their stuff, like occasionally there'll be a content creator and I'll enjoy. They'll do like some free stuff on maybe Spotify, and then they'll have like a Patreon account. And I don't mind paying for their Patreons or paying for a while and then stopping again. Because their time is worth something, and I value their information they're sharing. And the same thing, another website I use a lot, I pay for is Teachers Pay Teachers. And usually it'll be like, you know, a teacher or someone makes some. I bought one the other day we're doing in school, one of our kids is doing the mouse in the motorcycle, reading the book. And so I paid for some curriculum for that, so that they have activities to do revolving around that book. And again, it was a couple dollars and I valued their time. Putting all those questions, discussion questions together and activities together versus me coming up with it myself. So I think they deserve that couple dollars. That's true. So, and I also don't feel too bad if it's a particular news source or something that is useful information that I can align spending some money to support that particular organization. But I suppose if you had to have accounts for all the different news organizations, it would be quite A significant sum to subscribe to everything. And then there is a trick that I guess if you need a particular paper or Medical study that oftentimes the author or group of authors will list their email and most times if you really want that, you can email them and say, may I have a copy of your study or paper and most times they will email it to you. Again, an internet tip, I've never actually attempted this, but I've read that that is possible if you are. Very set on getting access to content like that and don't want to pay for it. Oh, that's interesting. I didn't know that. Well, it may or may not work, but that's what the internet says. Well, does Duck Duck Go say that? I don't know. I mean, there is that famous quote from Abraham Lincoln that says, you can't believe everything you read online. Right. There is an AI video of the assassination of Abraham Lincoln. Oh yeah, it was actually, it looked good. It looks sort of like what the period would look like if they had cameras like that back then. Did they not have cameras at all back then? Well, I don't think they had videotography. But they had more than just like painters, right? Yes. Now, now I'm like trying to do the math in my head, like, yeah, right. Yes. According to Duck Duck Go's AI search assistant, the first photograph was taken in 1826. Wait, you just said they didn't have AI. They have AI, but you can turn it off. OK, so you have the two different options. So you can use their standard search, which does have their version of search assist, which is AI. Or you can go to no AI. Dot duck go.com and then it turns it off. OK, so read that to me again and then right before you do though, I'm gonna look at mine and see what my preferred search engine tells me. Yep, I searched for when the first camera was invented or when the first picture was taken. OK, what did you say? The first photograph was taken in 1826. Yeah, that's probably what I have. I prefer Gemini. It's where I actually get a lot of my information now and um as we're living in a new home, I'll even take pictures of rooms and be like, how should I decorate this wall? And it will create a nice image and reasoning for. Why I should put a picture frame there or something. So yes, they have a huge list and they break it down, but 9. 1826 was the date they have for the first camera, as we think about it. Yes, one can search for video camera, make sure. That The video camera was not invented during the assassination of Abraham Lincoln. Well, Gemini, again, says the first moving, moving picture camera was 1888. That is what mine has as well, 1888, The Roundhay Garden Scene by Louis La Prince. And he and Abraham Lincoln was assassinated in 1865. So cameras were invented but not video cameras. Yes, OK. It's not like I believed what you were saying that the camera video surfaced of it. I was just making sure. Yeah, Abraham Lincoln said it. Don't believe everything you read online. So, I guess we have some to do still. We still need to test our library card for Oxford Language Dictionary. I have to do some more research on the American Heritage Dictionary, make sure that is a suitable source, perhaps if we use that moving forward. And the good thing is you are a listener, do not have to pay anything. There is no paywall for our podcast. No. So you can always listen to this wherever you get your podcast and like, share, subscribe, and you can share it with other people, and they also will not need to Encounter any paywall to listen to this episode or any of our previous episodes, nor at this time planned any future episodes. There are people that do that, like that's sort of the way that podcasts go. They start out free and then they have subscriber episodes that are. Only available, right? And then they make you pay for their extra content. That's true. We do have a listener support link, though, I don't think we've ever mentioned that, we just silently added it in the background. But that is there. Yeah, I mean, that's great, but yeah, more than that, sharing and liking and commenting. Helps us in our. Our hobby done? Yeah. And then likewise, you can always let us know if you have a particular favorite search engine or a favorite dictionary. Yeah, let us know in the comments. So from your friends at I Hate Talking, until next time, remember, it is only through talking that we begin the journey to understanding.