It's scary to people who are uncomfortable spending money sight-unseen on non-refundable goods with no guarantee of fitness-for-purpose and insufficient information to make educated estimations of the value of said goods.
That should be just about everyone who hasn't money to burn.
It's also scary to anyone considering breaking into the market. I certainly wouldn't pay to read content written by someone I've never heard of, published by a company I've never heard of, without a very compelling reason, such as a strong recommendation from someone whom I trust to have appropriate opinions on that specific kind of content.
It's also scary to anyone who hopes that the Internet could help to break the echo chamber effect. If my online reading is confined to what I'm willing to pay for (and indeed, to what I'm willing the author/publisher to be paid for, which is a subtly different thing), then my exposure to conflicting views is going to be restricted.
I learned so much on the internet, forum, learning website, etc... theses were living out of ads, they still do and in fact there multiple one that I was using when I was young that are now real enterprise and make quite a bit of money from theses ads.
Now that I'm an adult, I'm happy to pay for content but that wasn't possible for me younger.
