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Wait, Google Sent Me

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Re: Wait, Google Sent Me

#141

Post by gambiter »

jgrowl wrote: post #66
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

Guess what I do when I hit a paywall like this? I get annoyed and close the site. Just because I click a link doesn't mean I value it. I would be just as happy if no one ever sent these links to anyone. As far as I'm concerned people that let google index their site and try to paywall everyone else are the ones abusing the system.

Exactly what I do too. I suspect it's pretty common. I've never felt that I missed out because I didn't read a paywalled article. If anything, I probably found more interesting info in the comments.

Re: Wait, Google Sent Me

#142

Post by mahouse »

chavesn wrote: post #109
habosa wrote: post #84

Interesting. I posted a Chrome extension that did the same thing a while back (WSJ specific) and HN unanimously told me I was in the wrong, so I took it down. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8109987 This time the comments seem to be mostly positive.

I think you had a branding problem. Yours appeared to be an attack on a brand that is doing good work; this one seems more to be thwarting a sinister publisher practice. Responding to specific criticism from your comments: > It does feel excessive or cynical or something to install an actual app to work around a paywall. The WSJ organization says, you must pay us $28.99 a month for full access to this content. That's…

> WSJ certainly deserves to set whatever price on their work that they wish, and they also deserved to be compensated according to the value of that work.

Don't you think we should also have the option to decide not to pay using these "dirty" tricks of the trade?

Re: Wait, Google Sent Me

#143

Post by manigandham »

scrollaway wrote: post #51
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

It's quite a bit absurd to complain about technical solutions which fullfill the needs of users. If a source of income revolves around annoying users into paying and for them not to find a way around such annoyances, don't expect it to last forever. In this model, I consider the whole tactic to be publishers relying too much on Google's policy in the first place. If they change that policy, said publishers are screwe…

Life and business is all about 3rd parties and working with and against them. It's quite easy to say that things should just be better but it's not like all these publishers are stupid and just sitting around not trying to come up with better solutions. This is actually the best we have at this moment without a massive shift in how the web works.

The fact is that the internet makes things very easy to take without repercussions. Physically walking into a store and taking something has consequences but a quick hack on the browser is basically unnoticeable. The abilities and democracy of the internet architecture facilitates the extraction of content without compensation. Just because it's easy though, doesn't make it "right".

Re: Wait, Google Sent Me

#144

Post by bdcravens »

dragonwriter wrote: post #138
bdcravens wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Traffic flowing through one discovery channel is free, but traffic flowing through another isn't. While technically separate from net neutrality as it's happening in a different place in the networking stack, it's the same principle: if it flows over the network, it should be equal.

Re: Wait, Google Sent Me

#146

Post by manigandham »

bdcravens wrote: post #129
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

Problem is that Google, HN, "share" links etc is free advertising. Media says that certain discovery channels (Google) should be let in, while other (HN, emailed links, etc) shouldn't. This extension only equalizes that. Perhaps a better extension would be to hide organic search results in Google for pay-walled content providers, while leaving AdWords links intact. In the interests of protecting profit-based interest…

Publishers are all for-profit, they just choose different monetization models. Whether it's ads or paywall, content is content.

Why should it be ok for Google to discriminate which content is shown by the host's business model instead of the relevance and quality of the content?

Re: Wait, Google Sent Me

#147

Post by manigandham »

donohoe wrote: post #69
herbig wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I see you wrote a Chrome extension that cuts most of the ads from NYT.

Yes. My guess is you're leaving that statement hanging to make a larger point? If so I'd love to add that I'm annoyed by some of the tactics and lengths that publishers go to to monetize content ad the expense of user-experience and other costs. The only path right now are ads, 'sponsored content', 'native units'. I would much rather we have a subscription-based model that generated enough revenue to ween them off aw…

I agree with most of your other posts on this thread but why is it ok to just remove ads from other competing publishers?

It's their choice to choose a business model, whether ads or subscriptions. If they serve ads and it's not the experience you want, shouldn't you just move on and not go back to that site?

The ad model actually works well for lots of sites and is the sole reason we have the long-tail of the internet. Someone working at an ad-based publisher would have the exact same comments about your ad disabling extension, why circumvent if they're trying to make it work?

Re: Wait, Google Sent Me

#148

Post by Nemcue »

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'll chime in with that it's an interesting idea, OTOH my gut feeling is that most people won't come back to read article comments after this initial 6 hours or so — hence you might as well essentially make the user handles anonymous altogether.

Re: Wait, Google Sent Me

#149

Post by manigandham »

hire_charts wrote: post #94
donohoe wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes. My guess is you're leaving that statement hanging to make a larger point? If so I'd love to add that I'm annoyed by some of the tactics and lengths that publishers go to to monetize content ad the expense of user-experience and other costs. The only path right now are ads, 'sponsored content', 'native units'. I would much rather we have a subscription-based model that generated enough revenue to ween them off aw…

I support subscription content. But you can't have your cake and eat it too -- in other words, you can't put content behind a paywall and also have it publicly indexed by search engines. Remove the trick where it's okay for Google searches to circumvent the paywall and this extension becomes useless.

Why not? So paywall content is not good enough? It's just a different business model by publishers: free access with ads or pay for access.

Why does that penalize the content itself and the discovery of it?

Re: Wait, Google Sent Me

#150

Post by traek »

mahouse wrote: post #142
chavesn wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you had a branding problem. Yours appeared to be an attack on a brand that is doing good work; this one seems more to be thwarting a sinister publisher practice. Responding to specific criticism from your comments: > It does feel excessive or cynical or something to install an actual app to work around a paywall. The WSJ organization says, you must pay us $28.99 a month for full access to this content. That's…

> WSJ certainly deserves to set whatever price on their work that they wish, and they also deserved to be compensated according to the value of that work. Don't you think we should also have the option to decide not to pay using these "dirty" tricks of the trade?

I think we should (and do) have the option to decide not to pay and not consume the content.
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