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The Wall Street Journal to Close Google Loophole Entirely

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Re: The Wall Street Journal to Close Google Loophole Entirely

#331

Post by Neliquat »

mynameisvlad wrote: post #279
bitexploder wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It still helps them if it all aggregates under one account.

Then create a fake account every week. On a fresh VPN/Tor connection so it's not tied to your IP. Better use a different browser too so it's not fingerprinted [0]. Make sure you disable those sharing links and the JS that loads them in. Let's be real, they get data about you in a million ways. It'll all be aggregated somehow, and I wouldn't be surprised if they did aggregate in other ways like IP/browser, and those s…

Just to read an article from wsj? No thanks.

Re: The Wall Street Journal to Close Google Loophole Entirely

#332

Post by Neliquat »

user5994461 wrote: post #256

This article makes no sense. The Google loophole only works half the time at best. All articles posted on HN invariably end up with the same discussion: 1) "Behind a paywall. Can't read it." 2) "You need to use the google link" 3) "The google link also gives a paywall." 4) "It worked for me." 5) "Doesn't work for me."

If you cant just click on it, its paywalled. Idk why we put up with all this bs for the so so rag that is the WSJ. I just downvote paywalls and move on.

Re: The Wall Street Journal to Close Google Loophole Entirely

#333

Post by dredmorbius »

skissane wrote: post #324
dredmorbius wrote: post #319

Earlier quoted context omitted.

DNS lookups are expensive at server scale. Bot traffic ranges from maybe a quarter to 80% of traffic, though googlebot was only a subset of that. Cheaper to look for Google ASNs.

> DNS lookups are expensive at server scale. Even if you use a distributed in-memory cache to store the DNS lookup results? If User-Agent contains "Googlebot", then check for client IP in cache – if cached as "Google" continue, if cached as "Not Google" display error page. If client IP not in cache, do DNS lookup and then update cache – or, you could even let the request continue if there is a cache miss, and do the…

A local caching DNS server should offer high-speed response. You could build out a tier if necessary. High-capacity, high-speed DNS is not a greenfield.

The genuine Google requests will typically be cached quickly, and given HTTP codes, you could give a nonpermanent error whilst you're adding new entries, so there's that.

The problem is your misses may come from all over. So they're both expensive and (potentially) large.

Even if Googlebot is only a fraction of requests, it's a large fraction, and I've not investigated how many of same are suspect.

For ASN, either the CIDR Report or Routeviews.org offer information. The latter has downloadable tables, in CIDR format, for IP-based lookups. I've long advocated that this be incorporated into routing hardware with reputation data allowing for linespeed determination of traffic acceptability and rate-limiting. Shifts toward VPN and Tor are making this slightly less useful than previously, but it should still be a generally worthwhile option.

Re: The Wall Street Journal to Close Google Loophole Entirely

#334

Post by msimpson »

So the best offer the WSJ can provide is "All Access Digital" for $198 over 12 months, after which the price is doubled to $396 for the same length of time. That means, eventually, you'll be spending about $33 a month just to read what are mostly AP stories without even the guarantee of an ad-free experience.

How is this attractive?

Re: The Wall Street Journal to Close Google Loophole Entirely

#335

Post by hollerith »

grzm wrote: post #14
freehunter wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would love to see the NYT completely ad-free. I subscribed for a few months thinking my subscription fee would remove the ads, but that wasn't the case. I want a good source of news, ad-free, and I'm willing to pay for it. Unfortunately it seems like I'm in the extreme minority.

I'd like that, too. However, subscriptions alone—unless raised significantly—won't cover the costs for the NYT (or other paper). Note that the physical paper always carries ads and each paper is paid for—either the cover price or through a subscription. Hopefully subscriptions will encourage better quality ads, headlines, and stories. Subscriptions do allow for less click bait.

Ms magazine was completely ad-free for many years starting in 1991. They currently accept only 'mission-driven advertisements from primarily non-profit, non-partisan organizations'.

Re: The Wall Street Journal to Close Google Loophole Entirely

#336

Post by hollerith »

Neliquat wrote: post #332
user5994461 wrote: post #256

This article makes no sense. The Google loophole only works half the time at best. All articles posted on HN invariably end up with the same discussion: 1) "Behind a paywall. Can't read it." 2) "You need to use the google link" 3) "The google link also gives a paywall." 4) "It worked for me." 5) "Doesn't work for me."

If you cant just click on it, its paywalled. Idk why we put up with all this bs for the so so rag that is the WSJ. I just downvote paywalls and move on.

>I just downvote paywalls and move on.

I am confused. I always thought that on HN only comments can be downvoted.

Did you mean "flag paywalls and move on"?

Re: The Wall Street Journal to Close Google Loophole Entirely

#337

Post by tracker1 »

paulddraper wrote: post #308
ctrl_freak wrote: post #302

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The reason I posted the workaround is because I feel like the publisher is trying to have their cake and eat it too. In other words, they enjoy the publicity they get from having their articles shared on Google, Facebook, Hacker News, but these sites usually don't want to feature articles that require their users to pay, so WSJ sets up a soft paywall that lets some of these users view the article for free. But of cou…

> everyone from HN should be able to freely read an article shared here, or no one. If no one can read it, then the link shouldn't be allowed here. Then we'll have the laments: oh the ads, the humanity; or, why does all journalism suck?

I'm fine with their paywall... however, they should no longer come up on google news... their rules have been quite clear, and why google is letting WSJ skate on the issue is beyond me.

Re: The Wall Street Journal to Close Google Loophole Entirely

#338

Post by tracker1 »

stop_thief wrote: post #156
rhaps0dy wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> How come this isn't culturally perceived in the same way as not paying for software or movies or music? Perhaps it is? I've almost never had anyone remark that I was doing something bad when not paying for a software or movie or music.

Well it is bad. You're basically a thief, no matter how you try to justify it to yourself. Really, you should be ashamed, rather than nonchalantly unconcerned about your behaviour.

I expect that when I click a link via google, that I get the same content that google gets. It took years for google to demote expertSexChange and now that WSJ is fully paywalled, they shouldn't get a pass on this.

Re: The Wall Street Journal to Close Google Loophole Entirely

#339

Post by tracker1 »

hendersoon wrote: post #229
cobookman wrote: post #217

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If they lower the price they might not get more subscribers. So they are pricing it to maximize revenue.

I can't speak to that-- all I can say with certainty is I personally would subscribe at $5/month.

Same here... while I've appreciated the articles I've clicked through to, I do not feel their content is worth over $20/month to me. I pay for netflix, cable, etc, and don't even use it much, I mostly download for convenience, but I pay for it because I feel guilty if I don't.

If I click on a google search link, I expect to see the same content google does.. for that matter, it's part of google's own rules... WSJ should not get a pass, and google should now deindex WSJ based on those rules.

Re: The Wall Street Journal to Close Google Loophole Entirely

#340

Post by offa »

nraynaud wrote: post #329
offa wrote: post #300

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What 'real subscription journalism' big-name newspapers that don't do advertising can you name? I am honestly struggling to think of any.

Sorry, I'm French, so I can only cite you 2 French ones: Le Canard Enchainé (100 yo, no website) and Mediapart (pure web). We are talking serious news: the first one discovered that a minister had sent 1500 Jews in a train during WWII, the second one has discovered the minister charged of tax collection had an undeclared bank account in Switzerland.

Thank you for your reply. I can read a little bit of French, so Mediapart is something I'll keep an eye on in the future.
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