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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

#71

Post by hedora »

radium3d wrote: post #25

They should think hard about their next move because all that these paywalls have done is make it so I don't read their articles, and I don't feel like I'm missing anything. Maybe I'm the only one? I'm definitely not signing up to read them either.

I wish they’d just ban incognito-blocked articles from HN (or at least flag them, so I don’t waste my time).

Modifying browsers is preferable to that. It will (hopefully) solve the the problem at the source, and make a HN-level solution redundant.

I imagine other news aggregators face the same problem.

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

#72

Post by woogley »

crazygringo wrote: post #44

Just curious... does anyone know what the main workaround sites were using to detect incognito? And if there are other likely ones the sites will be able to fall back to?

TFA links to this in the first sentence: https://www.blog.google/outreach-initiatives/google-news-ini...

Basically, attempting to use FileSystem API but getting an Error === Incognito

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

#73

Post by shusson »

glerk wrote: post #30
shusson wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> while their subscription terms continue to be asinine Agreed. The only official way to cancel a NYT subscription is to call them. Infuriating.

Same with the Economist. They must have crunched some numbers and determined this is more profitable. I usually “unsubscribe” from these kind of services by changing my credit card to an empty prepaid one and let the payment bounce.

> I usually “unsubscribe” from these kind of services by changing my credit card to an empty prepaid one and let the payment bounce

Yeah, luckily I subscribed through paypal, so I could block them through that.

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

#74

Post by shusson »

orwin wrote: post #63
pier25 wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Meanwhile other, better forms of journalism are thriving. Such as?

Most investigative journalism, at least in France, only live from subscribtion. And it is starting to works pretty well.

examples?

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

#75

Post by [deleted] »

kyledrake wrote: post #34

But how will we pay the NYT to try to drag the US into wars while David Brooks lectures debt-loaded millennials about work ethic and family values unless we let them continue to exploit a bug in web browsers? Monopolist news orgs are losing readership/revenue because they're terrible and refuse to change, not because of Chrome. Meanwhile other, better forms of journalism are thriving.

[deleted]

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

#76

Post by echelon »

Could a startup go the Spotify/streaming music route and aggregate all of the popular news stories? I imagine bootstrapping content from NYT, WaPo, and all of the other popular news orgs, stuffing them into a common and unobtrusive web interface, and then providing them all for free to visitors.

The startup could then try implementing micro transactions or minimal ads and do a revenue share with the original publishers.

The problem would be surviving without being sued long enough to gain the traction and acceptance that Spotify has.

The real problem, of course, is that there are a billion different news organizations with independent paywalls and gateways. It's a hassle to sign up for them all and completely unreasonable to expect that we should subscribe to all of them. Because they don't have a federated micro transaction model in place, the solution is to come up with one for them and get them to adopt it. It's better for both us and them, they just don't know it yet.

Could it work?

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

#77

Post by raverbashing »

amelius wrote: post #58
FabHK wrote: post #33

> Without fail, the websites detected the intrusion attempt and prevented access to the content Using incognito mode in the browser to make it a bit harder to be tracked (without even blocking ads!) is "an intrusion attempt"? Excuse me? That's absurd language.

The author was deliberately trying to use incognito mode to view the paywalled content, so this is imho rightfully called an intrusion attempt. Of course, if you're just using incognito mode normally and happened to visit the same page, then it is not an intrusion attempt but just incognito browsing. The whole point is that news websites can't distinguish between the two.

So is their server intruding onto my computer when they set cookies without my permission?

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

#78

Post by pessimizer »

More content disappearing behind hard paywalls will expose a lot of publishers to the truth that very few people are interested in their content specifically, their link was just the first thing to come up about the subject in some aggregator.

The only reason I bypass paywalls is so I don't have to be annoyed by them, go back to the page I came from, and choose the next option. If the aggregators I use stopped linking paywalled content entirely (or gave me a checkbox option), I wouldn't even bother.

edit: there are outlets I donate to, and they don't even have paywalls. This may sound weird, but I donate to orgs so they produce content that other people can read. People who want me to read their takes should really be paying me.

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

#79

Post by frabrun »

pier25 wrote: post #55
kyledrake wrote: post #34

But how will we pay the NYT to try to drag the US into wars while David Brooks lectures debt-loaded millennials about work ethic and family values unless we let them continue to exploit a bug in web browsers? Monopolist news orgs are losing readership/revenue because they're terrible and refuse to change, not because of Chrome. Meanwhile other, better forms of journalism are thriving.

> Meanwhile other, better forms of journalism are thriving. Such as?

antiwar.com

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

#80

Post by drivingmenuts »

eli wrote: post #54
qmarchi wrote: post #10

There are going to be people complaining about the new requirement to have an account to view content. To the publishers, you should _really_ use some kind of federated login. Google, Apple, Facebook, etc. but don't forget those who are willing to have a unique account.

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.

Why not? Saves you the trouble of building and maintaining a secure access system. You likely gain more users because of network effects, which doesn’t cut your advertising budget so much as supplements it. If your trying to preserve user privacy, there’s a good chance you’re too late there - they most likely already gave that up a long time ago.
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