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Wait, Google Sent Me

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131–140 of 246 posts

Re: Wait, Google Sent Me

#131

Post by makeitsuckless »

donohoe wrote: post #37

Disappointed in you Jeremy. Its fair for many here to complain about some of the online advertising practices of publishers. However the viable alternative it to pivot to some form of subscription model. Its a hard transition and many orgs are making risky changes to do better. Extensions like these are a step backwards. If you value the work you should support it. See bio for usual disclaimers

The free-for-Google paywall is in many ways similar to online advertising: it's all bait-and-switch.

Anything that discourages such practices is a step forward.

It's time publishers start considering their readers as customers to be treated with respect instead of either dumb cattle or the enemy in a digital arms race.

What kind of a legit, respectable business tries to trick people into thinking their giving their product away for free? At the very least don't whine about the public tricking you back in return.

Re: Wait, Google Sent Me

#132

Post by bdcravens »

eli wrote: post #120
maratd wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I feel that both extensions are wrong. I feel that discriminating based on referrer is wrong. Or IP address. Or geographic location. Or user agent. More than that, discriminating based on those things is really flimsy. A website should provide the same content regardless of what browser you're using or where you're coming from.

I'm not saying I think the WSJ's paywall is a good idea (I don't), but if they want to try to make money to support their (largely very good) journalism that way, I don't think it's very nice for someone else to publish a tool that automatically subverts the paywall for countless other users.

This tool saves the 3 seconds it takes to highlight the article title, 'Search Google for ...', and click the link in the search results.

Re: Wait, Google Sent Me

#133

Post by gambiter »

whatsgood22 wrote: post #72
jashkenas wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Who'd link to the NYT if it was always a paywall, indeed? Of course I understand that the publishers don't want to cut themselves out of the conversation. But why must "the conversation" be limited to powerful internet companies? Do we not converse about news articles in blog posts? Comment threads? Up and coming social platforms that don't have Facebooks media clout yet? It's simply unfair to treat a visitor arrivin…

>Let's build a better paywall. and hasten the death of print journalism

Yes, please.

Re: Wait, Google Sent Me

#134

Post by bovermyer »

ryandvm wrote: post #99
manghoti wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Now there's a stinging criticism of HN. Sorry habosa. You're not popular enough to do disruptive things.

Too true. I'd love to see what Hacker News comments would look like if all comments were anonymous for the first 6 hours...

I really like this idea.

Re: Wait, Google Sent Me

#135

Post by rrrrob »

indienkid wrote: post #123
colinbartlett wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am a working professional but I have always resisted buying a subscription because I don't want one single publication to become my de facto news source. I would love if I could pay $20 to $30 per month to some aggregator that lets me read articles from Al Jazeera, NY Times, WSJ, BBC, and a selection of other diverse sources.

If you get a chance you should check out BriefMe -- pretty much that, except free, with a very clean UI. http://www.getbriefme.com

Oh my, that's a terrible site. So I have to watch a full page video to find out what I might want to install?

Re: Wait, Google Sent Me

#136

Post by bdcravens »

eli wrote: post #124
guelo wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fine you can have a paywall but then you won't get the free organic traffic from Google. WSJ tries to have it both ways.

I guess I just disagree. Right now if WSJ comes up in your google results, the link works and you can read the article. If link didn't work and paywall appeared instead of the article, that would be a problem (which is why Google outlawed it). Would you prefer it instead if WSJ.com just removed themselves from Google? And applied the paywall to everyone? I don't see how that's better. Or is the complaint that any pay…

If you discover content via Google, you can see it. If you discover content via HN, you can't. Anyone who believes this is ok is pretty much saying they are opposed to net neutrality.

Re: Wait, Google Sent Me

#137

Post by manigandham »

patcon wrote: post #43
donohoe wrote: post #37

Disappointed in you Jeremy. Its fair for many here to complain about some of the online advertising practices of publishers. However the viable alternative it to pivot to some form of subscription model. Its a hard transition and many orgs are making risky changes to do better. Extensions like these are a step backwards. If you value the work you should support it. See bio for usual disclaimers

Not a fan of the shaming... If news orgs value their journalists and the future of the profession, they should experiment with more daring models, rather than ones that simply maximally enrich the org under the same old model EDIT: imho a model that falls apart legally under a browser extension that fits in a 40-line gist is nothing on which to base the livelihoods of a bunch of people

More daring models? It's easy to just say "do something else" when actively circumventing a system. I really wish people would generally stop with comments like this unless they have an alternative to propose, otherwise its just criticism without purpose because the people involved in this industry are trying their best to make things work.

What does the size of the "hack" have to do with anything? Simple execution doesn't make something ok by the fact of being simple to execute.

Re: Wait, Google Sent Me

#138

Post by dragonwriter »

bdcravens wrote: post #136
eli wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I guess I just disagree. Right now if WSJ comes up in your google results, the link works and you can read the article. If link didn't work and paywall appeared instead of the article, that would be a problem (which is why Google outlawed it). Would you prefer it instead if WSJ.com just removed themselves from Google? And applied the paywall to everyone? I don't see how that's better. Or is the complaint that any pay…

If you discover content via Google, you can see it. If you discover content via HN, you can't. Anyone who believes this is ok is pretty much saying they are opposed to net neutrality.

This has nothing to do with net neutrality. While it may be an important issue, conflating it with net neutrality is unhelpful.

Re: Wait, Google Sent Me

#139

Post by gambiter »

donohoe wrote: post #55
patcon wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not a fan of the shaming... If news orgs value their journalists and the future of the profession, they should experiment with more daring models, rather than ones that simply maximally enrich the org under the same old model EDIT: imho a model that falls apart legally under a browser extension that fits in a 40-line gist is nothing on which to base the livelihoods of a bunch of people

I agree - but to be fair you're assuming they haven't experimented. Micro-payments, dumb 'capthcha' based models, memberships, events, "premier access". All have been tried in various flavors. Some with limited success. I'm not asking for you to dream up an alternative solution, but don't assume this is a problem that has not been given a lot of thought by many organizations. This is partly why we are stuck with thin…

When have micro-payments actually been used in any meaningful way? I've only seen companies complaining that they aren't viable. They were certainly quick to make the choice for me.

Otherwise, if people saw truly unique content from you (and others), they would be paying in one or more of the options you mentioned. They obviously don't see the point, however, because very little on the web is truly unique.

This seems like more evidence of the thing we all already know... large news/opinion organizations, especially those who started in print and are trying to maintain their business models, have become irrelevant.

Re: Wait, Google Sent Me

#140

Post by c3RlcGhlbnI_ »

jashkenas wrote: post #42
semenko wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That granularity exists -- it's called activeTab: https://developer.chrome.com/extensions/activeTab (Though it might not be possible to modify the referer with activeTab alone :/)

Nifty tip. Let's try it, and see if it works. Edit : Sorry bud. I gave it a shot, and `activeTab` doesn't allow you to modify the "Referer" header.

There is always the option of not messing with the request at all. Instead actually have it redirect through google. For example you could have the background script do:

  chrome.browserAction.onClicked.addListener(function(tab) {
    chrome.tabs.executeScript({
      code: 'window.stop(); window.location = "http://www.google.com/badurl/' + encodeURIComponent(tab.url) + '";' 
    });
  });
and then you can have a content script run on "http://www.google.com/badurl/*" which just does:

  window.location = decodeURIComponent(window.location.pathname.split("/")[2]);
Now that is super brittle compared to your solution, but it does work(for the sites I tried, some may require you to actually fake a search query). It only requires the activeTab permission and content script permissions on one page.
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