Live data from Hacker News

The desperation of NYTimes

rozumem.xyz

191–200 of 331 posts

Re: The desperation of NYTimes

#191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is an interesting topic. If a company does something you approve of (e.g. do journalism) and something else you disapprove of (e.g. make canceling hard), is there a good way to signal both as a consumer? This is also relevant in the context of companies like Target, which has been boycotted by both sides of the US political spectrum for various reasons.

Good point. I vote with my dollar and do not support Amazon (directly; AWS is unavoidable). But that's your point! I deleted linkedin a few years ago because of the ridiculous volume of emails and their dark patterns about cancellation. NYT is just not a hill i'm willing to die on unlike linkedin, for example

Your dollar is always your vote. What society spends its labour on is the society it creates, far more so than a random tick in a box.

Re: The desperation of NYTimes

#192

NYTimes is predatory on subscriptions. Over my long lifetime I've subscribed twice, and regretted it both times with intensity. Any place that allows easy instantaneous subscription by a simple web form, but makes you call and talk to a person during limited business hours for cancellation , is a toxic place. I've been told they have stopped this predatory practice due to some newly passed laws or something, but they…

> Do not do business with unethical companies. If they got what I want, I don't care about ethics, I care about value. I've just never seen value in NYT.

[flagged]

Re: The desperation of NYTimes

#193
post #172
post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

.I urge everyone reading to unsubscribe instantaneously from the NYTimes for their business practices. Do not do business with unethical companies. You are not wrong for thinking that, but I encourage people to consider that generally the business and editorial areas are largely independent of each other because of the value of editorial independence in case they think that the lack of ethics applies to their journal…

Have they issued a retraction for the biologically impossible “dog rape” claims yet?

I suspect this has something to do with a middle eastern conflict of which I don't know the details. That said I know from other stories that this isn't impossible

Re: The desperation of NYTimes

#194

It's not just them. Yeah, this is bad, but I get tons of unsolicited messages from any company I establish a basic relationship with. Every interaction I have with a store or site signs me up for some promotional thing, which I unsubscribe from immediately, only to find it's one of 4 different lists I was added to. Then 6 months later I receive some stupid new thing as they try to drum up engagement. One that particu…

The Mitch Hedberg joke about getting a receipt for a donut is now an email newsletter.

Re: The desperation of NYTimes

#195

It's not just them. Yeah, this is bad, but I get tons of unsolicited messages from any company I establish a basic relationship with. Every interaction I have with a store or site signs me up for some promotional thing, which I unsubscribe from immediately, only to find it's one of 4 different lists I was added to. Then 6 months later I receive some stupid new thing as they try to drum up engagement. One that particu…

There needs to be a small claims private right of action for this.

Re: The desperation of NYTimes

#196

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You probably know but firefox on mobile let's you use extensions, for which i have ublock origin installed and regularly use it to block modals and things that my filter lists (every single one activated) don't cover already.

I've actually been meaning to move back to Firefox, so this is encouraging. I didn't realize you could do that sort of thing with uBlock, though? I thought it was just for blocking ads, etc.

Under the hood, uBlock works by filtering DOM elements. The "ad blocking" part of it is the set of curated filter lists built on top of that. But it also allows you to right-click on any element and create a custom filter, or write your own using DOM queries.

Re: The desperation of NYTimes

#197

It's not just them. Yeah, this is bad, but I get tons of unsolicited messages from any company I establish a basic relationship with. Every interaction I have with a store or site signs me up for some promotional thing, which I unsubscribe from immediately, only to find it's one of 4 different lists I was added to. Then 6 months later I receive some stupid new thing as they try to drum up engagement. One that particu…

> Every interaction I have with a store or site signs me up for some promotional thing, which I unsubscribe from immediately, only to find it's one of 4 different lists I was added to.

Luckily this kind of thing is very much illegal here in the EU. If they send me marketing shit without my explicit active consent, they are in violation of the law, and I can at least report them. As I do. It is still not perfect, but the amount of spam I get from previous business relations has declined a lot in the past years. Other spam is still rampant, and I can only block any such sender until they find a new way to push their shit.

Re: The desperation of NYTimes

#198
post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have also wondered about this when boycotting companies for reasons that I suspected were not the most common reasons. If they sent out a survey about "why you're no longer a customer" I suppose it would provide one channel for explaining one's actions. Oddly, I seem to get those constantly when I am a customer, but essentially never when I'm a former or inactive customer. On privacy grounds I like the idea that no…

Thus the thing to do, for funsies, is to subscribe, and then cancel, and give the poor customer service person on the other end of the line, a piece of your mind, every time you cancel. Boycotts generally don't work. But the goal is to make a signal that gets noticed by the C-suite. Unfortunately, the routes I see are in the pocketbook, the customer service department, and via Twitter, if they do actually happen to b…

Being horrible to the CSR will never be noticed by the C-suite.

If you think they give one flying fuck about what customers think I have news for you: the only thing that matters is what the board thinks and if revenue is rising but everyone hates the product/company they won’t even blink.

Re: The desperation of NYTimes

#199
As an NYT subscriber, I'd like to toss out there that Brave browser (or the ad blocker of your choice) + bypass-paywalls-clean works very well. You can even be signed into your account, and everything works smoothly.

I use a throwaway email that's just for NYT for the subscription itself, like I do many other things, and just expect to get the daylights spammed out of it.

Post reply on HN