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Serious question: What do journals actually do ? Do they check the article ? Why is it important for it to be in a journal ?

I don't know much about academic research, fyi.

I think it's also a midway proposal for other reasons. The proposal merely suggests open access but barely specifies anything. I don't want to give the government personal information and enable endless tracking to them just because I want to download a paper.

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The find one or more well-credentialed and cited experts in the field to anonymously review the paper and point out shortcomings in the research or drafting - this is the 'peer' part of peer review. Then they either accept for publication, suggest revisions, or reject it outright.

Note that the peer reviewers doing the work are unpaid volunteers, the people receiving the money are just middlemen.

I've heard this definitely more than I like, but is there evidence that this is true ?

Just go on academic twitter and ask, you will get a torrent of sob stories. Everyone hates the journal industry but nobody knows how to overturn it. Every so often a group in some field bands together and gets a new open-access journal going (good) but then that has to run for several years and feature heavyweight papers before it can compete with the incumbent, and it's a lot of work while making much less money.

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