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The desperation of NYTimes

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Re: The desperation of NYTimes

#181

Post by nikisweeting »

whack wrote: post #166

> I earn a small fraction of what NYTimes earns. If I'm not desperate, why are they? With all due respect, you are not responsible for covering every single thing the Trump administration is doing and ensuring they are held accountable. While simultaneously satisfying customers who are used to getting endless content for free, and sniff their noses at paying $2/month. The journalism business is a hard business. I may…

Sending 5 marketing emails with no unsubscribe link is not "operating in good faith", that's a blatant CAN-SPAM violation and could be used in a textbook explaining UX dark patterns.

Re: The desperation of NYTimes

#182

Post by armchairhacker »

devindotcom wrote: post #15

It's not just them. Yeah, this is bad, but I get tons of unsolicited messages from any company I establish a basic relationship with. Every interaction I have with a store or site signs me up for some promotional thing, which I unsubscribe from immediately, only to find it's one of 4 different lists I was added to. Then 6 months later I receive some stupid new thing as they try to drum up engagement. One that particu…

> I get tons of unsolicited messages from any company I establish a basic relationship with

Give them a masked email (if you get a custom domain, you can make it so any random string of characters is a new masked email). Block all calls and texts except from contacts

> Bank of America, which sends all kinds of promotional stuff

Use a different bank (for more reasons than avoiding spam)

Re: The desperation of NYTimes

#183

Post by nixosbestos »

Just earlier I opened 404 Media's subscribe page and was going to spend sometime after work subscribing to them, NYTimes, and maybe a couple others. It's past time I pay for some news media.

This has guaranteed I will not even consider NYTimes for the foreseeable future. So disrespectful.

Re: The desperation of NYTimes

#185

Post by delecti »

no_no_no_yes wrote: post #5
epistasis wrote: post #3

NYTimes is predatory on subscriptions. Over my long lifetime I've subscribed twice, and regretted it both times with intensity. Any place that allows easy instantaneous subscription by a simple web form, but makes you call and talk to a person during limited business hours for cancellation , is a toxic place. I've been told they have stopped this predatory practice due to some newly passed laws or something, but they…

You can subscribe with your library card and get access to all NYTimes (games/crosswords too). One caveat is the subscription "rental" is for only a 3 day period, so you have "renew" your subscription every 3 days. This only takes 2 clicks though. For San Francisco public library: https://ezproxy.sfpl.org/login/nyt .

Aren't the games free? I hear that people pay for the games, but I've done Wordle daily since before NYT bought it, Connections whenever I've watched enough Hank Green videos to forget how much I hate it, and Tiles when I remember it exists, and I've never needed to pay for any of them.

Re: The desperation of NYTimes

#186

Post by fragmede »

schoen wrote: post #152
Centigonal wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is an interesting topic. If a company does something you approve of (e.g. do journalism) and something else you disapprove of (e.g. make canceling hard), is there a good way to signal both as a consumer? This is also relevant in the context of companies like Target, which has been boycotted by both sides of the US political spectrum for various reasons.

I have also wondered about this when boycotting companies for reasons that I suspected were not the most common reasons. If they sent out a survey about "why you're no longer a customer" I suppose it would provide one channel for explaining one's actions. Oddly, I seem to get those constantly when I am a customer, but essentially never when I'm a former or inactive customer. On privacy grounds I like the idea that no…

Thus the thing to do, for funsies, is to subscribe, and then cancel, and give the poor customer service person on the other end of the line, a piece of your mind, every time you cancel. Boycotts generally don't work. But the goal is to make a signal that gets noticed by the C-suite. Unfortunately, the routes I see are in the pocketbook, the customer service department, and via Twitter, if they do actually happen to be there. A sustained prolonged boycott would work, but most people don't care. Screaming at the customer support person is just shitty to a low level employee that doesn't have the ability to affect change so empathetically thats horrible to do to them, so that's a no go as well. But that is by design. Thus, one way is to overcome that and be horrible to the CSR. But that sucks.

Yay, American "capitalism".

Re: The desperation of NYTimes

#187

Post by aj7 »

“It made me feel powerless.”

Your problem. Read some of Michael Porter’s books on competition. In an economic interaction, all players compete with each other. The Times thinks it’s in its interest to try to brainwash you with some garbage.

And you look for Mommy.

Re: The desperation of NYTimes

#188

Post by kmoser »

Centigonal wrote: post #68
dieselgate wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I respect your opinion but am grateful for and find tremendous value in my NYT subscription. I share it with my SO and read their articles constantly. Prior to getting a subscription I was a "turn js off" kind of person - which is fine I suppose and still do it for other sites. I do not maintain any streaming or other subscriptions outside of Deezer (and a Garmin GPS FWIW). I would like a Bloomberg subscription but t…

This is an interesting topic. If a company does something you approve of (e.g. do journalism) and something else you disapprove of (e.g. make canceling hard), is there a good way to signal both as a consumer? This is also relevant in the context of companies like Target, which has been boycotted by both sides of the US political spectrum for various reasons.

> If a company does something you approve of [...] and something else you disapprove of [...], is there a good way to signal both as a consumer?

I'm a fan of writing actual paper letters, which are (marginally) harder to ignore than emails, and (at least I like to think) carry a bit more moral authority, since I'm making the effort to print and (pay to) send them. In my letter I make it clear what I like they're doing, but reserve most of the rest of the letter to express my displeasure at the things I'm most displeased with.

Often these letters disappear into a black hole. Morbid curiosity leads me to wish for a response, but I'm jaded enough to know that even if they respond enthusiastically to my criticism with promises of change, until they actually change, it's just an empty promise. So at the end of the day, often I just want to vent and move on.

I have to believe that if enough people did this, it would move the needle somewhat. If not, well, at least I have the satisfaction of having done something.

My pet peeve with the NY Times online is that there's no escaping the upsell screen after logging on.

Re: The desperation of NYTimes

#189

Post by aj7 »

epistasis wrote: post #3

NYTimes is predatory on subscriptions. Over my long lifetime I've subscribed twice, and regretted it both times with intensity. Any place that allows easy instantaneous subscription by a simple web form, but makes you call and talk to a person during limited business hours for cancellation , is a toxic place. I've been told they have stopped this predatory practice due to some newly passed laws or something, but they…

I like the system. Every single time I talked to the human, and explained that the Times wasn’t worth the “regular” price, back came a much lower one.

Re: The desperation of NYTimes

#190

Post by ALittleLight »

Hmm. I also recently got a subscription to the NYT. I noticed they sent me a lot of email so I just filtered it with the click of a couple buttons. It's obnoxious but in the minor way that having to click a couple buttons one time is.
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