51–60 of 331 posts
This is why I love Apple's Hide My Email. I use it ALL the time and the unsubscribe button is always there. It's not the most polished interface, but it works perfectly. Also, for any subscription for which I don't use HME, I will immediately "mark as spam" any minimally-spammy email I get. The ones described in the article would be insta-marked due to the lack of Unsubscribe button.
Scott Alexander as the most memorable, and then the backlash after they post the backrooms movie creator's house on twitter recently
Just very shortsighted behavior
NYT makes more money from their games than actual news, right? Newspapers are dead and there is nothing to replace them. There is no loner money in informing the masses, only is disinformation. The people who can make money from the news and data buy surveillance data that is far more accurate than the government publishes and trade on it. You can’t have anything resembling a liberal democracy when the monetary insen…
NYTimes and the big media papers in general seem to have this entitled arrogance. Like they feel entitled to have an audience or something. I've noticed similar predatory behavior from car and driver magazine. they would send me a bill marked "overdue" even though I never reknewed my subscription. they would harass me repeatedly over and over saying that I owed them money. It's fraudulent, and I will never subscribe…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Thanks for that! I have been on Levine's website recently and for some reason thought they may deviate in content or something. But will try it out. It's a daily newsletter which is kind of high volume for me (which is why I hadn't subscribed prior) but will check it out. I actually may have been sub'd previously and had to check out because the push-model was slightly too much; would kind of prefer a pull model.
If you prefer pull, subscribe to it with https://www.kill-the-newsletter.com/ (I subscribe to Bloomberg, and send their emails to feeds which end up in a https://karakeep.app/ instance for consumption)
If you think that's bad, 5 years ago you had to call someone on the phone to cancel NYT subscriptions (the boiler room retention script always gave you an option to extend at the cheaper rate, but it was a pain to have to go through the motions). IIRC new consumer laws at the state or local level ended that practice. I'm still paying the NYT intro rate ($4 a month billed annually) and on day 364 go to the account pag…
I was gifted a subscription and clicked cancel on it in January out of concern it would roll over.
It still rolled over and the person who gifted it had to call them, repeatedly, from New Zealand and spent ages on the phone (at their cost).
If being user-hostile in tech created real consequences, Facebook would've shuttered 15 years ago. Sad to say but I'm guessing this is an effective strategy.
Given how the "hostility" is often more than just ugly-UI, and aspects like monopolies, surveillance, and billing you for services you don't want, I think this is relevant:
> I've written before about the futility of "voting with your wallet." [...] Shopping isn't politics. Politics are politics, and shopping is shopping. [...] No matter how indie your coffee, books and social media, your consumption choices will not have a material impact on Starbucks, Amazon or Twitter.