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Scroll: Ad-free subscription for news sites

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Re: Scroll: Ad-free subscription for news sites

#61

Post by donohoe »

twitch-chat wrote: post #14
winkelwagen wrote: post #7

It’s strange. Part of me thinks this is a great idea, but some of the websites are also the worst offenders of what the site is trying to combat. Looking at Gizmodo and the verge, the crazy amount of 3rd party cookies, unable to really opt out at all. While writing pieces about how horrible google and Facebook are for all the privacy evasive stuff they are doing. I’d rather support content that aim for quality and di…

You're being lenient. All of these websites either have crazy amount of trackers, actively engage in accusing others of what they're doing, or just write clickbait articles with little substance. You may not get ads but everything you do in the sites is sold. Why would I pay for this?

Change has to start somewhere

Re: Scroll: Ad-free subscription for news sites

#62

Post by gcb0 »

arctictony wrote: post #45
winkelwagen wrote: post #7

It’s strange. Part of me thinks this is a great idea, but some of the websites are also the worst offenders of what the site is trying to combat. Looking at Gizmodo and the verge, the crazy amount of 3rd party cookies, unable to really opt out at all. While writing pieces about how horrible google and Facebook are for all the privacy evasive stuff they are doing. I’d rather support content that aim for quality and di…

CEO of Scroll here. Glad you're a fan of The Correspondent, we love them too. Also hear you on the privacy concerns. The publisher contracts with Scroll require that they remove third-party trackers 'that share information with parties other than Publisher or have a commercial purpose other than improving user experience.' It's always going to be a negotiation when you're trying to work with sites rather than unilate…

isn't scroll a tracker on itself?

Not saying what is done or not, but what is technically possible. The proposed product is very much 100% identical to facebook/google login buttons on 3rd party sites. The provider (in this case scroll) have access to the full browsing history, what is accessed at what time.

Isn't this tracking (even if only in possibility) diametrically opposed to promoting an internet without ads/trackers? I mean, Scroll will have to track users to divide the contributions per-access back to the sites.

Re: Scroll: Ad-free subscription for news sites

#63

Post by arctictony »

fbelzile wrote: post #59
arctictony wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

CEO of Scroll here. Glad you're a fan of The Correspondent, we love them too. Also hear you on the privacy concerns. The publisher contracts with Scroll require that they remove third-party trackers 'that share information with parties other than Publisher or have a commercial purpose other than improving user experience.' It's always going to be a negotiation when you're trying to work with sites rather than unilate…

I actually had this concept in my Trello list of good business ideas. I wasn't going to pursue it since I like running one person businesses, but I'm glad you're working on it! Good job, keep it up and good luck!

Thank you! I really appreciate that

Re: Scroll: Ad-free subscription for news sites

#64

Post by ericd »

arctictony wrote: post #48
ericd wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've been wanting someone to do this idea (spotify for news) for years. But they really need to get one of the heavy hitters with paywalls (NY Times, The Economist, Financial Times, WaPo, or WSJ). But maybe it's worth paying just to show publishers that it's viable. It's a rough chicken/egg problem.

CEO of Scroll here. It's hard with the big guys when you get started, they tend to move slow. However, the NYT and WSJ are both investors in the company so we're hopeful we can bring them in over the next year.

Great! I wish you all the luck in the world, I’ve been wishing for many years that someone with connections in the news world would make this happen.

I’m hopeful that fixing the business model of news on the web will cause them to step back a bit from polarizing clickbait and back towards factual reporting, which I think should help reduce the polarization in the political sphere.

Re: Scroll: Ad-free subscription for news sites

#65

Post by MikeGale »

A fascinating area. I've seen several people getting into it in one way or another:

Blendle

The system in the Brave browser

Scroll

...

What I really want is:

1. A friction free way to pay what I want AFTER I've read an article (I assume a base level fee to read it in the first place) so that I can reward an excellent article. I want to know that that money goes to those who made that article not all the other people at the "publication".

2. Coverage of many good articles and publications, so that I can get most anything I want.

3. Excellent search that suits me. (Would be great bonus to have a mechanism to automatically hook me up to a rewardable version.)

4. No attempted surveillance at all. (I block much of it but hate that people try this nonsense, and I note that they do, if they're really objectionable I block them permanently at the DNS. Newspapers and magazines tend to be the worst offenders of all.)

Re: Scroll: Ad-free subscription for news sites

#66

Post by lambdatronics »

MikeGale wrote: post #65

A fascinating area. I've seen several people getting into it in one way or another: Blendle The system in the Brave browser Scroll ... What I really want is: 1. A friction free way to pay what I want AFTER I've read an article (I assume a base level fee to read it in the first place) so that I can reward an excellent article. I want to know that that money goes to those who made that article not all the other people…

How far do you think we could get with merely a friction-free method to pay a small fee to read individual articles across a broad range of publications?

I'd be concerned that if pay-per-view articles became the norm, clickbaiting would only intensify. I suppose the countervailing force would be source reputation.

Re: Scroll: Ad-free subscription for news sites

#67

Post by animalnewbie »

winkelwagen wrote: post #7

It’s strange. Part of me thinks this is a great idea, but some of the websites are also the worst offenders of what the site is trying to combat. Looking at Gizmodo and the verge, the crazy amount of 3rd party cookies, unable to really opt out at all. While writing pieces about how horrible google and Facebook are for all the privacy evasive stuff they are doing. I’d rather support content that aim for quality and di…

I've said it before but verge is long form and sophisticated tabloid with sensational articles and a deliberate attempt to go against the consensus or prevailing view, only to come across as edgy.

Re: Scroll: Ad-free subscription for news sites

#68

Post by dehrmann »

I was thinking about doing something like this a year or two ago, but the cross-domain cookie landscape is making the idea less workable.

Also how much people hate paying for things. I recently went on a short rant about how I've never seen anyone with a paid version of Sublime Text. A lot of its users are professional software engineers should either be able to afford it or work for a company that can, and engineers that should have empathy for someone trying to make money off software

Re: Scroll: Ad-free subscription for news sites

#69

Post by asdff »

jarrell_mark wrote: post #52
asdff wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All of these sites also offer RSS feeds, by the way.

Good point I should look into that. If RSS has pictures and categories, might be the way to go.

Depends on the webmaster on each site. Some of them have embedded images. Some papers offer specific feeds for certain sections, others will only offer the firehose feed of everything. Many RSS readers offer some way to categorize incoming articles from feeds, akin to rules for email.

Re: Scroll: Ad-free subscription for news sites

#70

Post by pozdnyshev_ »

ericd wrote: post #10
bratao wrote: post #6

Every time people say that if they had how to pay for the site they would use it. Now is the time to show the truth

I've been wanting someone to do this idea (spotify for news) for years. But they really need to get one of the heavy hitters with paywalls (NY Times, The Economist, Financial Times, WaPo, or WSJ). But maybe it's worth paying just to show publishers that it's viable. It's a rough chicken/egg problem.

Just use firefox + bypass paywalls. It's free and good.
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