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Scroll: Ad-free subscription for news sites
81–90 of 102 posts
Re: Scroll: Ad-free subscription for news sites
#82A 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…
> 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".
Sounds like a great way to lose more publications.
Re: Scroll: Ad-free subscription for news sites
#83Earlier quoted context omitted.
Well, primarily: > Scroll may, from time to time, change these Terms of Service, including the Privacy Policy. Such revisions shall be effective immediately and we will notify you if these changes are significant. There is also the usual arbitration agreement.
That is found in pretty much every TOS/PP on the internet, including my own. Do you have a specific problem with that language? If so, how do you use the internet? I don't mean that question in a "how do you even" sense. I mean, what are your typical internet habits, given feelings about such terms?
Language being ubiquitous does not make it okay. ToSs are commonly full of crap, to the extend of most of them being invalid, hence every one of them having their "survival" clause.
This specific section renders the ToS pointless from the perspective of a user, as it may fundamentally change on a whim. Tomorrow, the company may change the ToS to sell you out for easy money, throwing away your private life and privacy rights before you'll have a chance to review and cancel. Even without a company turning on you like that, you will have to actively monitor the ToS and possibly cancel your service with a moments notice.
After all, only some changes will trigger a notice, and even then only a notice.
As for how I use the internet: I just don't sign up for/install a lot of things. If I do sign up for/install something, it's only if I can accept/live with the terms. I don't have social media accounts (Self-hosted Matrix/Mastodon not counted), I don't use random cloud services, my app list is roughly limited to government/bank stuff, a single parking app, Matrix and duolingo.
I also live in a region of the world where EULA's are only used as toilet paper, so that takes care of the worst part.
Re: Scroll: Ad-free subscription for news sites
#84Earlier quoted context omitted.
Are there any concretely troubling parts to the terms that you saw?
Well, primarily: > Scroll may, from time to time, change these Terms of Service, including the Privacy Policy. Such revisions shall be effective immediately and we will notify you if these changes are significant. There is also the usual arbitration agreement.
That seems indeed non-compliant with many legislations. I think in the EU this would not be legal as you have to inform your customers about any changes in the terms and if you change them they have the right to end their contract with you.
This clause would otherwise allow them to raise prices tenfold without the consent of their customers.
Maybe they should revise this...
Re: Scroll: Ad-free subscription for news sites
#85Struggling to see how this is different from running an ad-blocker or PiHole?
Re: Scroll: Ad-free subscription for news sites
#86A 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…
Friction-less payments is unfortunately an issue that seems unsolvable on the 'banks' end. There's no easy way for you to just one-click take care of a payment, and for good reason. I do wish it wasn't as friction-full as it is right now, and there are initiatives by alternative banks to make that happen (direct API connectivity for small payments etc., although seems like the new EU standards will turn that into a p…
> Friction-less payments is unfortunately an issue that seems unsolvable on the 'banks' end.
This is actually already solved in Brave, you can tip a website or even a youtube channel with a click (technically it's 3 clicks: click BAT triangle, click "send tip", choose amount).
Re: Scroll: Ad-free subscription for news sites
#87Advertising is bad and it's good to get rid of it but you also need to get rid of tracking.
Re: Scroll: Ad-free subscription for news sites
#88The problem with Scroll is we trade one evil for another: instead of ads and trackers, we get legally dubious "AS IS" clauses in Terms of Service, and censorship-laden arbitration clauses that cannot be subject to oversight.
CEO of Scroll here. It's really helpful to get this feedback, if we were to try and fuck people over through opaque moves hidden in our terms we'd lose half our business overnight and everyone here would quit. Either way, I totally hear you on this stuff, first thing on the list is building members even more privacy/data controls so that if for any reason you think you don't trust us anymore, you can make sure that y…
> if we were to try and fuck people over through opaque moves hidden in our terms
Then why have them in your terms at all, if you never intend to use them? Just take them out right now.
Re: Scroll: Ad-free subscription for news sites
#89There's an unfortunate lack of what I consider "real" news (I realize the definition is subjective), such as NYT, WP, Guardian, BBC, Al Jazeera, RT etc. I'd never pay for a subscription of "news" that doesn't cover my basic need of actual news.
And just to cover my bases here, by "real" news I don't mean that they are "unbiased". I just mean sources that will give me actual, interesting reports about things happening in the world. As long as there is a baseline, I'm happy to filter what I believe on my own as long as the sender is clear.
I'm also skeptical as to why a paid service selling news would include things like The Onion. I appreciate them as much as anyone but I don't want it in my "news" feed.
Re: Scroll: Ad-free subscription for news sites
#90Earlier 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…
Does Scroll work if I block third-party cookies? Update 10 minutes later: It isn't working for me on theatlantic.com; I got the "free articles" drawers and then got blocked after they counted down to 0. So perhaps the answer to my question is "no". I can whitelist third-party cookies on specific sites, but I don't think I can whitelist a single cookie across all sites. This seems unfortunate. Update 30 minutes later:…
If you whitelist [*.]scroll.com in Chrome for example, Scroll should work. Important to note it doesn't get you past paywalls. The economics would make the price insanely high for that.