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Wait, Google Sent Me

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Re: Wait, Google Sent Me

#221

Post by mturmon »

gambiter wrote: post #139
donohoe wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

This does not come across as very well-informed. You are replying to someone who is talking about the NYT, which, whatever its limitations, is probably the best daily source of the thing we call "news" in the U.S.

You say that there is little unique content out there -- but this a false statement if we're talking about the WSJ and NYT. If you are talking about the web as a whole, then you've changed the subject, and you're talking about an unbounded thing.

Saying the NYT is irrelevant is also completely false. Endangered? Fearful? Sure. A mouthpiece for the establishment? Often. Caught in their own thought-bubble? Sometimes. But not irrelevant.

Information and quality analysis have value - this is obvious. Coming around the other way and saying that because publishers are failing to extract the value, that therefore the news has no value, is a fallacy. Markets can fail to price correctly for many reasons.

*

Clay Shirky's original 2009 essay on "Thinking the unthinkable" (http://www.shirky.com/weblog/2009/03/newspapers-and-thinking...) was plenty frightening for publishers, and it did not need to exaggerate to make the point.

Re: Wait, Google Sent Me

#222

Post by wtallis »

strommen wrote: post #186

Attention, everybody who publishes on the web: Selectively requiring authentication (based on referrer, user-agent, cookies, etc.) is not a supported feature of the internet. If you want to go ahead and implement it anyway, that's fine - but it's pointless to get mad when it doesn't really work the way you hoped it would.

More generally, everyone who publishes on the web should understand that user agent is to be taken literally and at face value. The browser does what the user tells it to do, which may not be what your server asks it to do. A good browser will do things like lie to your server on behalf of the user when you try to get it to act counter to the user's interests.

Re: Wait, Google Sent Me

#223

Post by iamcreasy »

umurkontaci wrote: post #145

I have actually made a bookmarklet that allows you to do the same without installing an extension. https://umur.io/paywall-bypass-bookmarklet-come-from-google/ Related HN discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9134118

I am going to use your bookmark. Thank you for making it.

Re: Wait, Google Sent Me

#224

Post by robryan »

PhantomGremlin wrote: post #208
untog wrote: post #199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

we want to pay cents for an article, not dollars for a website, nor tens of dollars for a long-term subscription Is that true, though? I think Spotify has proved that people prefer subscriptions to one-off payments for music, for example. Having to make a purchase/don't purchase decision for every news article you read doesn't seem like a good experience at all.

Yes it is true. For a single payment to Spotify you get access to music from all four major record labels. OTOH paying for a subscription to a single newspaper is like subscribing separately to Sony, EMI, Warner Music Group, and Universal. Not gonna happen.

I think they would be much better off with the Spotify model. I would happily pay a monthly fee for a collection of all the major newspapers.

Re: Wait, Google Sent Me

#225

Post by DigitalSea »

Great idea. This will probably be up there with the invaluable-ness of Adblock. I have nothing against companies like the Wall Street Journal who want to charge visitors to see content, but if you are going to paywall content at least be consistent and charge everyone or don't charge at all. You can't give it away to visitors from Google and expect people who weren't lucky enough to come from Google to have to pay. It is unfair and discriminatory in my opinion.

This kind of reminds me of the aged old trick that people used to use for Google to get better SEO. Normal visitors would get one version of the site, the Googlebot would get an over-SEO optimised version of the site stuffed with keywords and junk (I am talking early 2000's here before Google was as advanced as it is now) to give the impression of a different site.

Like I said, I think content publishers should be able to charge people for their content, but you can't have two sets of rules for the same content for the sake of a better SEO ranking and NOT expect people to exploit that loophole. What WSJ and other content publishers are doing is a little borderline dodgy.

I am pretty disappointed in the comments from some people here shaming the author for creating this plugin. He isn't doing anything that we haven't already been able to do for a while now. He isn't breaking into servers and getting the content for free, he is exploiting an SEO trick WSJ and other sites are using to avoid being penalised in Google. Completely legitimate if you ask me. If WSJ wanted to truly protect their content behind a paywall, they would have presented the wall to everyone regardless of their referrer.

Re: Wait, Google Sent Me

#226

Post by esrauch »

eli wrote: post #194
bdcravens wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

I don't follow. Would using the plugin be less acceptable if the paywall were harder to get around?

Yes, definitely.

Re: Wait, Google Sent Me

#228

Post by jfoster »

hueving wrote: post #96
jfoster wrote: post #8

It would be nice if Google could make some of the Chrome permissions a bit more fine-grained. This one needs to "read and change your data on all websites", but with a better extensions architecture could be something much less scary like "read and change your data on the current website whenever you click the extension's icon".

The issue is that if it can modify one page, it can use that to inject code to request data from any web site. Those requests will contain your cookies for those sites so your data can be revealed.

I'm not expert on security, but wouldn't that only apply to sites that have XSS vulnerabilities? The extension script only needs to have the same trust level as the top-level HTML in order to do its thing, in most cases.

At the moment, the ask is that users put 100% trust into some extension from the Chrome Web Store. It's not clear that Google does much to ensure that the companies are even who they say they are. It's a completely unreasonable ask, in my opinion. Then, in other areas, Google is hyper-sensitive about security. Eg. Chrome, under some circumstances, won't even let users download zip files anymore without trying to intervene. (https://code.google.com/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=423217)

Re: Wait, Google Sent Me

#229

Post by sukilot »

schoen wrote: post #171
marcosdumay wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Every time there is also somebody complaining that we shouldn't evade pay walls at all. But that's indeed a really odd set of comments. While there is some criticism on this thread here, it's way more down to Earth, nobody is talking about theft or anything.

Maybe people feel that people should only avoid paywalls in a random and haphazard way, and not a systematic way, or that people should avoid paywalls whenever they want but not make it convenient for the general public to do that? Is there a name for ethical notions related to whether people make a habit of something, or whether people help make something convenient?

It is called "abusing a privilege" , and most elementary school children are taught not to take all the cookies from the jar just because they are invited to take one.

Re: Wait, Google Sent Me

#230

Post by jeo1234 »

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...

Just like that movie 'The Purge'.
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