Google unlocks 33% of publisher paywalls on July 30 • Hacker News Board

Re: Google unlocks 33% of publisher paywalls on July 30

#161

Post by beatgammit » Tue, Jul 30, 2019, 11:34 PM UTC

hyperbovine wrote: post #149

liability wrote: post #124

So real news continues to make their content harder to read, while fake news does everything they can to spread far and wide. Journalism for profit is fundamentally broken.

No, their model is fine. Sell a decent product for money. The problem lies squarely with hordes of credulous morons who either don’t know or don’t care that their news is fake, and aren’t willing to shell out for quality content. Whether that exposes a deeper flaw in human nature, or is just an oddity of our times, is left to you to decide.

I keep hoping that something like GNU Taler will catch on. I have having subscriptions to various services, and I think something like Taler will help because it makes payments easier.

An even better service would be to have something like Netflix, but for news. I could pay $X/month and have access to a variety of news sources. Ideally, those news sources would be paid according to their popularity and accuracy, and I would have a simple bill every month to pay instead of several.

I had a subscription to The Economist for a little while, but I found that I still read other news sources and only read a handful of Economist articles. I want quality journalism, but having subscriptions to every source I trust is cost prohibitive and no single source has everything I want. I want a curated set of high quality articles for a constant price.

Re: Google unlocks 33% of publisher paywalls on July 30

#162

Post by manigandham » Tue, Jul 30, 2019, 11:35 PM UTC

Spivak wrote: post #158

manigandham wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People, through their actions, have proven they want free and easy sensationalism. Not in-depth investigative reporting. You can't really just sell into that.

The popularity of investigative journalism podcasts from NPR, Gimlet, ProPublica, Center for Investigative Reporting, etc. seem to disprove this theory. Outside of a few exceptional pieces the typical content on print "news" sites is utter garbage. The pressure to have a bunch of different columns publishing multiple stories a day seems like it really drives the quality down. All the super cool long-form investigativ…

The people who listen to those are the same people who would be reading it in the first place. They are a fraction of the population.

Re: Google unlocks 33% of publisher paywalls on July 30

#163

Post by 40acres » Tue, Jul 30, 2019, 11:36 PM UTC

Is this not anti-competitve? I don't know Google's share of the browser market but this action feels like tearing down a merchant stand at the farmers market. These firewalls are how publishers display their prices and establish a good faith "sample" of the work. If this goes to trial I can see myself on the side of publishers.

Re: Google unlocks 33% of publisher paywalls on July 30

#164

Post by [deleted] » Tue, Jul 30, 2019, 11:42 PM UTC

manigandham wrote: post #153

literallycancer wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Newspapers don't know how to sell properly and it's the users' fault for not buying?

People, through their actions, have proven they want free and easy sensationalism. Not in-depth investigative reporting. You can't really just sell into that.

[deleted]

Re: Google unlocks 33% of publisher paywalls on July 30

#165

Post by zamadatix » Tue, Jul 30, 2019, 11:45 PM UTC

40acres wrote: post #163

Is this not anti-competitve? I don't know Google's share of the browser market but this action feels like tearing down a merchant stand at the farmers market. These firewalls are how publishers display their prices and establish a good faith "sample" of the work. If this goes to trial I can see myself on the side of publishers.

I'm amazed that an article about a tracking loophole being closed is posted on HN and the top comment is "is this not anti-competitive". This is not Google subverting advertiser networks for their benefit this is Google fixing a flaw in Incognito mode that has been lazily applied to prevent users from working around article limits.

The browser is an agent of the user, don't expect it to reliably hold information that determines what content they have rights to on your server.

Re: Google unlocks 33% of publisher paywalls on July 30

#166

Post by liability » Tue, Jul 30, 2019, 11:51 PM UTC

danharaj wrote: post #157

levythe wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While your question isn't wrong, how is that fundamentally different from how things were before? How can news be free if it relies upon paying readership for its sustained production?

There was a brief golden age of newspapers that went away with industrialization. It hasn't been Ben Franklin's game for a long time and I think people need to think about what that has meant and will mean.

It's my impression that early in Benjamin Franklin's publishing career he published newspapers so he could put ads in them to sell more books. And that later in his publishing career, he used his newspapers more to promote his revolutionary agenda. The man wasn't a journalist.

Re: Google unlocks 33% of publisher paywalls on July 30

#167

Post by magduf » Tue, Jul 30, 2019, 11:52 PM UTC

hyperbovine wrote: post #149

liability wrote: post #124

So real news continues to make their content harder to read, while fake news does everything they can to spread far and wide. Journalism for profit is fundamentally broken.

No, their model is fine. Sell a decent product for money. The problem lies squarely with hordes of credulous morons who either don’t know or don’t care that their news is fake, and aren’t willing to shell out for quality content. Whether that exposes a deeper flaw in human nature, or is just an oddity of our times, is left to you to decide.

If the end product of this is that society collapses because of the eventual effects of only fake news succeeding, then I'd say their model isn't "fine" at all.

Re: Google unlocks 33% of publisher paywalls on July 30

#168

Post by LegitShady » Tue, Jul 30, 2019, 11:54 PM UTC

40acres wrote: post #163

Is this not anti-competitve? I don't know Google's share of the browser market but this action feels like tearing down a merchant stand at the farmers market. These firewalls are how publishers display their prices and establish a good faith "sample" of the work. If this goes to trial I can see myself on the side of publishers.

no. the users are allowed to use incognito mode. that there was a flaw in it that made it less effective is not google promoting competition, and fixing said security flaw is not about competition again.

Is windows fixing security flaws anti competition? Sounds like anti virus companies should sue.

Re: Google unlocks 33% of publisher paywalls on July 30

#169

Post by magduf » Tue, Jul 30, 2019, 11:57 PM UTC

40acres wrote: post #163

Is this not anti-competitve? I don't know Google's share of the browser market but this action feels like tearing down a merchant stand at the farmers market. These firewalls are how publishers display their prices and establish a good faith "sample" of the work. If this goes to trial I can see myself on the side of publishers.

Your analogy just doesn't work in the digital world, just like so many other analogies with physical things.

The publishers are happily sending their entire articles to people whether they pay or not. Then they add in some Javascript code to cover up the article if they don't pay up. Google has done nothing more than prevent this code from running, which is what the users want. The users own the computers, and they have every right to choose what code to run on it.

Nothing is forcing the publishers to send the entire article to non-paying users. They only do it because it's convenient for them. If they don't like Google's actions, they're free to come up with a different technical method of hiding their articles from non-paying users. Most other subscription-based sites don't do these things: they force you to login to access premium content, so the only way to get that data is to either have a valid login, or to hack the site somehow (which is obviously illegal).

Re: Google unlocks 33% of publisher paywalls on July 30

#170

Post by soraminazuki » Tue, Jul 30, 2019, 11:59 PM UTC

throwaway542134 wrote: post #136

eli wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a publisher, there's absolutely no way I'm letting Google, Apple or Facebook manage the identity or control the authentication of my readers.

As a user, there's absolutely no way I'm going to give you a real name and email address if you roll your own authentication. I probably won't use your service at all.

Who said anything about real names?