4 ms·

Same should go for HN, really. Paywalls and adwalls are a great way to make me not even read the article and thread. Yet, they make frontpage due to buzz.

• Strom 10y ago
  It may surprise you, but there are people here who don't mind these sites. It's already possible to flag links that you think have no place on HN. Please use that instead of trying to setup preemptive censorship.
  • coldpie 10y ago
    I don't think you understand what censorship is.
    • talmand 10y ago
      I see nothing wrong in that usage of the word censorship. Please explain.
• morgante 10y ago
  Yea, it's horrible that high-quality journalists won't just work for free.
  • krapp 10y ago
    No one is saying "high quality" journalists should work for free (although their employers would probably prefer it), only that they can no longer depend on advertising for revenue. If companies want to remain on the web and continue making money they're going to have to be more creative, begging people to view their ads by blocking ad blockers (while understandable) probably isn't going to work in the long run.
    • morgante 10y ago
      The parent was railing against both adwalls and paywalls. If you don't want advertising and refuse to pay for content, I don't see how that's anything less than expecting free journalism.
      • mobiuscog 10y ago
        Except all of the media companies are scared to do that, because they fear that not enough people are interested in their 'content' to pay, and they don't want that point to be proven. There's more content these days than most people care for - to be honest, if 99% of sites were paywalled, I'd probably be far more productive and not surfing 'information' that is free for the sake of just existing.
      • krapp 10y ago
        Fair enough, but there are valid reasons to object to paywalled content being posted to a news aggregator like HN other than wanting everything free. Content not available for everyone to read leads to low quality conversations dominated by complaints about the paywall. Unfortunately, people still complain even when there is a workaround. Showing partial content then asking for payment to read the rest seems like a dishonest tactic, and it kind of is. If people don't want to pay for anything on principle, then there's not much sites can do about that either. Paywalls are a better option than advertising but sites are still probably going to lose a lot of revenue either way.
        • morgante 10y ago
          > Showing partial content then asking for payment to read the rest seems like a dishonest tactic, and it kind of is. How is that dishonest? The alternative would be far worse (demanding payment without a preview of what you're paying for). The problem with posting paywalled content isn't posting paywalled content. It's the entitled people who can't even be bothered to use well-known workarounds and instead completely derail discussions on political grounds.
          • 10y ago
• realityking 10y ago
  How do you propose content producers earn their income, if you think neither ads nor paywalls are acceptable?
  • bweitzman 10y ago
    There's nothing wrong with paywalls and ads. It's annoying when sites with paywalls are posted to public forums since any number of people are not going to be able to join the discussion, but this isn't the site's fault. I think sometimes people forget that they pay for certain websites when they submit. Plus it turns the forum into an advertisement which is not really the intended use. Likewise, ads are fine in theory but the implementation is absolutely horrible.
  • alkonaut 10y ago
    Ads are fine, "ad networks" are (often) evil. Content producers couldself-host ads without tracking and do tgeir own ad sales and no one will block them. Paywalls are also fine. Content producers choice. It's (un-annotated) links to paywalled content that is annoying.
    • john_reel 10y ago
      Reddit, Mozilla, and Project Wonderful have pulled this off well.