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Google unlocks 33% of publisher paywalls on July 30

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

#181

Post by jmccaf »

slang800 wrote: post #179
hyperbovine wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 don't think that paying a monthly subscription gets me news that is any less fake or higher-quality than what I can find from non-paywalled sources. I guess I'm a "credulous moron".

Huh, I have a different experience, I hit a paywall (or a free article limit like NYT or Bloomberg) on most news stories I follow

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

#183

Post by 52-6F-62 »

reaperducer wrote: post #129
52-6F-62 wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sounds like Apple News?

Yep. And if the price of two cups of coffee a month is too much of a burden on one's wallet, there's always Blendle for 40¢ an article.

How have I not heard of Blendle? Thanks for the reference!

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

#184

Post by andromeduck »

vulpes wrote: post #145
kabdib wrote: post #91

My household still gets a physical paper (the Seattle Times), and a digital version of the same. We subscribe to the NYT and The Economist. That's about our limit for news subscriptions. I'm not going to fork over $10/month to each of the other potential news sites for every article they publish. I have no idea why the Podunk Press and the Suburban Picayune Times even consider that as an option for out-of-area reader…

This is Apple's News+ in the nutshell, so federated subscription service you're envisioning would have to compete with Apple.

My problem with apple news is that it still doesn't really resolve the gamified nature of news and the misaligned incentives between a concise but high quality and information dense content that the user wants and the click-bait, flame bait, low density, attention stealing articles news companies are incentive to write when their compensation is proportional to impressions and time engagement irrespective of the quality of that interaction.

I want to be able to have a non trivial level of discretion as to which writers/groups to starve and which to support. For example, being able to pick a handful of sites or articles where my subscription/views/view-time don't count towards their bottom line. Or we could set aside 30-40% of subscription cost to distribute based on the the proportion of some active user action for like Medium's claps or some other rating.

At present the economist/ft are the only publications that haven't let me down in a big way and I'm weary of supporting anything else.

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

#185

Post by dingo_bat »

brandmeyer wrote: post #102
dymk wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Who says it’s unacceptable? The incredibly tiny minority of readers coming from HN?

I used to think this was a tiny minority, too. But a key takeway from https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2019/07/adblocking-how-about-n... was this statistic: "26% of Internet users are now blocking ads." Its a minority, but its not tiny.

It's only my personal opinion, but I don't care at all about tracking. They can track me all they like. I block ads because they make my browsing slow, cause my CPU to turbo boost, interrupt my browsing, clutter the web pages excessively. I suspect a huge majority of that 26% is similar to me in this.

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

#186

Post by creato »

magduf wrote: post #167
hyperbovine wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

If that's the outcome we are headed towards, then I'd say it's an inevitability, and the problem is not with the business model of news providers.

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

#187

Post by creato »

joegahona wrote: post #177
fooey wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem with requiring an account to view content is doing so removes your content entirely from Google, and probably from most social media snippet generators. Google will only include your content in their search results if the user can see your content. The "metered paywall" trick is a loophole to get around that. If you put all your content behind a paywall, you're siloing yourself off from the entire rest of…

> Google will only include your content in their search results if the user can see your content. That's not true for the WSJ.

They seem to allow enough of their pages to appear to enable Google to see it. I can always see the first few sentences and the titles of WSJ articles, that's probably what google can see too.

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

#188

Post by creato »

jwmoz wrote: post #64

Why does Google not penalise them on search for this behaviour? Seems exactly against webmaster guidelines on hiding content or showing different content to a user and bot.

Google penalizing publishers for something, legitimate or not, sounds like a good way for google to get another few billion in fines from the EU.

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

#190

Post by zhoujianfu »

vulpes wrote: post #145
kabdib wrote: post #91

My household still gets a physical paper (the Seattle Times), and a digital version of the same. We subscribe to the NYT and The Economist. That's about our limit for news subscriptions. I'm not going to fork over $10/month to each of the other potential news sites for every article they publish. I have no idea why the Podunk Press and the Suburban Picayune Times even consider that as an option for out-of-area reader…

This is Apple's News+ in the nutshell, so federated subscription service you're envisioning would have to compete with Apple.

Looks like apple news just needs to have a few different bundles, like one that includes The NY Times, Bloomberg, and the economist..
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