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On the Future of 12ft

12ft.io

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Re: On the Future of 12ft

#91

Post by imgabe »

Swizec wrote: post #35
PragmaticPulp wrote: post #19

> How does it work? > The idea is pretty simple, news sites want Google to index their content so it shows up in search results. So they don't show a paywall to the Google crawler. We benefit from this because the Google crawler will cache a copy of the site every time it crawls it. > All we do is show you that cached, unpaywalled version of the page. This seems like something that could be accomplished entirely clie…

You can't do it client side. Well-implemented paywalls clip the content server-side. If you're Google, you get the full HTML, if you're not, you don't.

Doesn't Google penalize sites that show something different to the crawler than they do to a regular user?

Re: On the Future of 12ft

#92

Post by probably_wrong »

imgabe wrote: post #91
Swizec wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can't do it client side. Well-implemented paywalls clip the content server-side. If you're Google, you get the full HTML, if you're not, you don't.

Doesn't Google penalize sites that show something different to the crawler than they do to a regular user?

I know that this used to be common knowledge, but evidence points to "no". Or at least to "either not anymore or not strongly enough".

Clear examples of websites that block content from me: Pinterest, Facebook, LinkedIn, newspapers.

Re: On the Future of 12ft

#93

Post by Someone »

rhinoceraptor wrote: post #80
wrs wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What the heck are the “rules of the web”? Only valueless information is allowed to be indexed? Are you offended that when you search for a book on Amazon you have to pay to read the whole thing?

It's a bait and switch. They give the search engines full text to crawl, and then nothing when a user clicks that link from their search. They got the tangible monetary benefits of having a high Google search ranking, without giving access to the actual content, which is how the web is supposed to work. It's not my fault that news websites have continually debased their users with horrible advertising and tracking, t…

> They got the tangible monetary benefits of having a high Google search ranking, without giving access to the actual content, which is how the web is supposed to work.

That’s an opinion. Another opinion is that the web is a hypertext system and that Ted Nelson, who defined that term, included a royalty mechanism (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Xanadu#Original_17_rul...)

Re: On the Future of 12ft

#94

Post by probably_wrong »

ChrisLomont wrote: post #49
iqanq wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, because when you read an article a copy is made and sent to you. You are not depriving anybody from anything.

It is theft under federal law, punishable by up to 5 years in prison. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No_Electronic_Theft_Act

I read the text of the act [1] and the related sections in the US code [2]. I would argue that, assuming I read Title 18 correctly, this act doesn't apply to 12ft: the distribution is neither for "private financial gain" (Section 506.a) nor the distribution of "a work being prepared for commercial distribution" (because it's already released, Section 506.c). That leaves 506.b, but for that you need to show that the article has "a total retail value of more than $1,000" and is less than 180 days old.

[1] https://www.govinfo.gov/app/details/PLAW-105publ147

[2] https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text

Re: On the Future of 12ft

#95

Post by pseingatl »

postingawayonhn wrote: post #90
wrs wrote: post #8

The “Why?” section of the home page is rather disingenuous, since the Economist is not “SEO optimized garbage”, nor does it want you to “sign up for some newsletter”. It’s just an excellent newspaper that needs to pay the staff that writes all those articles. Just like 12ft.io needs to pay its hosting provider.

I'd be happy to pay The Economist but I won't buy an expensive subscription because I don't read enough of their articles to make it worthwhile. I'd like a browser based wallet which I could use to pay per article with one click.

This would work with true micropayments, i.e., payout in mills, not cents. You wouldn't even notice it, but like streaming, magnified by 1000's, eventually it's real money for the content provider.

Re: On the Future of 12ft

#97

Post by animex »

makeworld wrote: post #69
PragmaticPulp wrote: post #19

> How does it work? > The idea is pretty simple, news sites want Google to index their content so it shows up in search results. So they don't show a paywall to the Google crawler. We benefit from this because the Google crawler will cache a copy of the site every time it crawls it. > All we do is show you that cached, unpaywalled version of the page. This seems like something that could be accomplished entirely clie…

You're not missing anything, it can be done fully client-side. https://gitlab.com/magnolia1234/bypass-paywalls-chrome-clean

I'm glad they put clean in the title, otherwise I wouldn't trust it. :-)

Re: On the Future of 12ft

#98

Post by rdbell »

postingawayonhn wrote: post #90
wrs wrote: post #8

The “Why?” section of the home page is rather disingenuous, since the Economist is not “SEO optimized garbage”, nor does it want you to “sign up for some newsletter”. It’s just an excellent newspaper that needs to pay the staff that writes all those articles. Just like 12ft.io needs to pay its hosting provider.

I'd be happy to pay The Economist but I won't buy an expensive subscription because I don't read enough of their articles to make it worthwhile. I'd like a browser based wallet which I could use to pay per article with one click.

I like the model that Yalls.org implements: https://yalls.org/articles/97d67df1-d721-417d-a6c0-11d793739...

"Continue Reading: $0.06 USD"

Re: On the Future of 12ft

#99

Post by WithinReason »

mdoms wrote: post #46
spiderice wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Surely you don’t need someone to point out to you that those aren’t the same things.

You're right. One of them is professionally produced content, advertised with a preview to whet your appetite, where you're expected to pay for the right to consume it fully. While the other is.... uhh.... the same thing.

When you click a click to a trailer, you know it's not the whole movie.

When you click a click in Google, you don't know if it's paywalled.

How can you not see the difference? It's basic.

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