It's true that there are a few scientific journals that publish articles without paying "publication costs" and some invite comments on line. It's a great model; generally the best work will be found regardless of where published. However the highest prestige journals, which can determine careers, are usually difficult for submitted articles to be published, the acceptance rate after peer review ranges across journals from 1% to 93% (according to Elsevier); the most exclusive are usually considered the best.

Pre-prints (not peer-reviewed) became popular during Covid since the science was heavily censored and final peer-reviewed articles were stopped if they disagreed with the Official Narratives. Most of the important work on Covid was published in pre-print form. If important, and not reproducible by other scientists, the scientific community will raise objections.

Will be interesting to see how much of this "soft corruption" is stopped. Corruption is often the most profitable approach with the course of least resistance. Largely bipartisan, at least in the past.