I don't completely disagree (although I feel like there have been a lot of naive and overly simplistic CD "thoughts" posted on HN recently that rubbed me the wrong way). But consider on one hand the "fake news" / misinformation problem or whatever people want to call it, and the legacy academic publishing industry on the other. I'm looking at this from the perspective of an academic, the target audience of the publications, not a layperson for whom they are not designed. Like it or not, big concentrated power in academic publishing largely addresses trust in the quality of the publications. Good faculty want to review or serve as editor for good publications, and researchers will follow and rely on the quality of reputable, high impact factor publications. I know it's not always as simple as that, but I liked opening a new issue of my go-to journal and knowing that what I was reading had gone through a good review and was curated to be stuff that was relevant to me. I'm glad my university paid for it.
Not saying there are not other ways, but that these "scams" are providing a valuable service.
(And I'm aware of examples of bad research, retracted papers, etc, these are mostly issues for laypeople and the media, they have almost no impact on researchers and occur with insignificant frequency)
(And there are lots of real scams and rent seeking in the industry, but not what is covered in the twitter posts)
Not saying there are not other ways, but that these "scams" are providing a valuable service.
(And I'm aware of examples of bad research, retracted papers, etc, these are mostly issues for laypeople and the media, they have almost no impact on researchers and occur with insignificant frequency)
(And there are lots of real scams and rent seeking in the industry, but not what is covered in the twitter posts)