Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

The Wall Street Journal to Close Google Loophole Entirely

digiday.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

231–240 of 345 posts

Re: The Wall Street Journal to Close Google Loophole Entirely

#231

Post by douche »

freddyc wrote: post #216
tptacek wrote: post #201

Tangent: I'm not sure I can think of recent money I've spent better than a year-long Washington Post subscription. Not because I want to support journalism (though I do), but because having a whole newspaper to flip through every day is so much more productive and efficient than getting dribs and drabs through Twitter and free news sites --- many of which are ultimately sourcing through the journalism that organizati…

It's amazing how many people I know who have subscribed to the WaPo in the last 12 months. I know, I know - echo chamber - but it gives me great hope that quality news organizations have a future. If executed properly, most people are willing to pay for quality content (side note: a major pet peeve of mine is when you pay for a subscription and are then bombarded with obnoxious pop-up ads whenever you try to access s…

> but it gives me great hope that quality news organizations have a future

I hope that high quality news organizations do have a future, but the WaPo? I'm not sure that label fits.

Re: The Wall Street Journal to Close Google Loophole Entirely

#232

Post by geodel »

freddyc wrote: post #216
tptacek wrote: post #201

Tangent: I'm not sure I can think of recent money I've spent better than a year-long Washington Post subscription. Not because I want to support journalism (though I do), but because having a whole newspaper to flip through every day is so much more productive and efficient than getting dribs and drabs through Twitter and free news sites --- many of which are ultimately sourcing through the journalism that organizati…

It's amazing how many people I know who have subscribed to the WaPo in the last 12 months. I know, I know - echo chamber - but it gives me great hope that quality news organizations have a future. If executed properly, most people are willing to pay for quality content (side note: a major pet peeve of mine is when you pay for a subscription and are then bombarded with obnoxious pop-up ads whenever you try to access s…

Once flying from Dubai to DC I got a free copy of Sunday Financial times. It had huge number of topics. I would have never gotten all this stuff in one place sitting in front of Internet.

Re: The Wall Street Journal to Close Google Loophole Entirely

#233

Post by Klathmon »

mirimir wrote: post #153
Taek wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A noble thought. My problem comes not from the fact that I don't want to pay but rather from the fact that it's super annoying. What if my browser could just say "article will be 25 cents?" and I could say y/n? But instead, I have to sign up for a service, hand over my credit card, blah blah, and now you've wasted enough of my time that it was worth just me stealing it. I'm pretty convinced it's just aUX thing.

There's already a system for selling ad space, based on tracking data and real-time bidding. Why would it be so hard to use the same sort of system for paid access, replacing ad resellers with readers?

That is what Google Contributor once did, but was shut down recently to be completely re-thought from the ground up (and hopefully will be relaunching in the next few months) because:

1. Nobody used it

2. It didn't block ALL ads, just most (based on if you won or lost the bid)

3. There was a LOT of backlash against it because it was google and even though you can opt out of tracking nobody believes them.

4. The old "adblock is free" argument.

It used to be that you'd pay an amount between $1 and $15 per month and it would use that money to "bid" on ad spots like a normal advertiser would. If you won the bid, you'd see a picture, a pattern, or anything else you wanted in that spot. If you lost, you'd see another ad.

The fee split worked identically to a regular ad, so Google would take their cut, the site would take the rest. And any money not spent at the end of the month was refunded back to you (not rolled over, actually put back in your bank account).

Re: The Wall Street Journal to Close Google Loophole Entirely

#234

Post by raldi »

glenneroo wrote: post #223
raldi wrote: post #56

Has any publisher tried out a paywall along the lines of the following? "Hey, you've spent 29 hours so far this year reading 119 articles. Suggested donation: $62"

I often open 10-30 tabs with stories I want to read later.. and I leave those tabs sometimes open for a few hours or up to a few days until I have time/interest to read them. How would a paywall deal with that? Or perhaps I am the exception with this type of reading.

Analytics code solved that problem long ago.

Re: The Wall Street Journal to Close Google Loophole Entirely

#235

Post by raldi »

aw3c2 wrote: post #141
raldi wrote: post #56

Has any publisher tried out a paywall along the lines of the following? "Hey, you've spent 29 hours so far this year reading 119 articles. Suggested donation: $62"

"Hey, we kept track of all the things you read here. This month you spent 13 hours looking at clickbait-boobies, 2 on politics and 27 on coverage of divorce cases. Wouldn't it suck if someone else used your machine right now or if we gave this information to tens of third-parties (we already did)?" I would support that. Might make people more aware of how pervasive tracking is.

It's like I started a conversation about haircuts and you're bringing up dismemberment.

Re: The Wall Street Journal to Close Google Loophole Entirely

#236

Post by icebraining »

tptacek wrote: post #201

Tangent: I'm not sure I can think of recent money I've spent better than a year-long Washington Post subscription. Not because I want to support journalism (though I do), but because having a whole newspaper to flip through every day is so much more productive and efficient than getting dribs and drabs through Twitter and free news sites --- many of which are ultimately sourcing through the journalism that organizati…

Yeah, if you're willing to read a single source, it's not expensive.

Re: The Wall Street Journal to Close Google Loophole Entirely

#237

Post by stop_thief »

monochromatic wrote: post #210
stop_thief wrote: post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ah, that tired old linguistic argument that completely misses the point.

If I steal your car, I've deprived you of the use of your car. If I copy your program, have I deprived you of the use of your program? How is that a linguistic argument?

Because you're using an unreasonably narrow definition of theft that doesn't include intangibles.

Re: The Wall Street Journal to Close Google Loophole Entirely

#238

Post by stop_thief »

contras1970 wrote: post #192
stop_thief wrote: post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ah, that tired old linguistic argument that completely misses the point.

if copyright infringement is theft, then theft is surely murder?

Illogical. Please show your working.

Re: The Wall Street Journal to Close Google Loophole Entirely

#239

Post by freddyc »

geodel wrote: post #232
freddyc wrote: post #216

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's amazing how many people I know who have subscribed to the WaPo in the last 12 months. I know, I know - echo chamber - but it gives me great hope that quality news organizations have a future. If executed properly, most people are willing to pay for quality content (side note: a major pet peeve of mine is when you pay for a subscription and are then bombarded with obnoxious pop-up ads whenever you try to access s…

Once flying from Dubai to DC I got a free copy of Sunday Financial times. It had huge number of topics. I would have never gotten all this stuff in one place sitting in front of Internet.

Funnily enough, I'm also a subscriber of the FT! The app has the full newspaper ordered in the same way (Lex, The Big Read etc) and provides a pretty great experience for a digital consumer. It's not quite the same as having a hard copy in your hands, but for ease of access and portability - I can read it wherever I am in the world - it really is a fantastic product.

Re: The Wall Street Journal to Close Google Loophole Entirely

#240

Post by gaius »

kofejnik wrote: post #188
kaspiCZ wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Let's pretend you developed a piece of software you want to sell. People download it without paying you. What do you do in that case?

it's a logical fallacy to assume that people who downloaded your work would have discovered it and actually paid for it if there was no free option a lot of artists would PAY to get millions of downloads/views

Let me know when you can pay rent or buy groceries with retweets.
Post reply on HN