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The Wall Street Journal to Close Google Loophole Entirely
- perlpimp 10y agoI am just wondering if sites can have affiliated material subscriptions like with hn have free clickthrough for 2$ a month or 5$ a month to all sites from where the articles originate from.
- perlpimp 10y agoI am just wondering if sites can have affiliated material subscriptions like with hn have free clickthrough for 2$ a month or 5$ a month to all sites from where the articles originate from.
- gnu8 10y agoFuck the Journal then. Above everything else, I will never reward their bad behavior by paying them money.
- lunchladydoris 10y agoOut of curiosity I searched for the Wall Street Journal subscription page. I selected my country (UK) and then clicked on the subscription offer. I was then taken to a Hong Kong page with no obvious way of changing it back to the UK. If they want subscribers, they're going to have to do a better job than that.
- sumedh 10y agoI agree their pricing page is confusing. I just got information about a discount offer but its not clear how much is the full price after the discount.
- manarth 10y agoIt took me a couple times to find it. Go to https://buy.wsj.com/wsjuspresday17 https://buy.wsj.com/wsjuspresday17 and click the "Act now" link. $32.99 (plus tax) a month, for digital access.
- justin_vanw 10y agoThey are 'striving' to hit 3M subscribers? Sounds like they are trying very hard to go right out of business anyway.
- bpchaps 10y agoSo... is this good reason to stop posting WSJ on HN yet?
- dang 10y agoIt might be, if it happens.
- CaliforniaKarl 10y agoHmmmm. In the FAQ, under the question "Are paywalls ok?", there's this: >It's ok to post stories from sites with paywalls that have workarounds. If this loophole is closed, will there be any workarounds? If that's the case, then I wonder if it'll still be OK to post WSJ links to HN.
- aardvarks 10y agoAs of earlier today you could still follow links from WSJ social media, for example their official twitter feeds, and get access to the whole article. Any way to set that up as a link in HN?
- alfalfasprout 10y agoFor what it's worth, whenever you share an article from the WSJ as a subscriber it seems to generate a custom link that bypasses the paywall for the recipient. I hope they retain this feature because I do enjoy sharing articles with people that might not subscribe.
- pascalxus 10y agoFirst of all, I think it's great that journalists can get compensated for their work. but, strictly speaking as a consumer, I must say their paywall is completely out of touch with the way I want to pay for news consumption. I don't mind paying 5c or even 10c per article, but I'm certainly not going to sign up to pay 120$ for 6 months, if I'm only going to read 1 or 2 articles here and there. but since they've done it this way, I can only conclude that most consumers prefer it that way.
- perlpimp 10y agoI totally agree with you, it would also make me read the article worth the money spent. As a company they must pay salaries of established staff, that sort of stands at odds with per article revenue. Its like this, if business hires people for at least 6months they ought to make an effort to get those people paid and projecting income from penny articles can be substantially difficult.
- fovc 10y agoI posted this somewhere else on this thread, but I've seen a lot of the "I just want to pay 25c per article" comments. Try https://blendle.com https://blendle.com
- sgt101 10y agoI'd be happy to buy an issue at a time - I think $.5 would be a fair price given that there is no printing cost and that the advertising is more valuable as it's micro targeted to me. I'd buy an issue to read a particular article or because I want one to read for general amusement. Subscription feels like monogamy, I've got lots of different things to spend cash on, I don't want to commit at this scale to spending it on things I may not want.
- maverick_iceman 10y agoThey need to go iTunes way and unbundle payments for individual articles. The past has shown that people will pay for quality contents. Also they need to make the payment UI super efficient. If I have to take out my credit card every time then forget it.
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- jay_kyburz 10y agoI think this is great news. I'd love to see WSJ ad free and funded with subscriptions. I'm not sure I would subscribe, but I want to live in a world where it's possible.
- freehunter 10y agoI would love to see the NYT completely ad-free. I subscribed for a few months thinking my subscription fee would remove the ads, but that wasn't the case. I want a good source of news, ad-free, and I'm willing to pay for it. Unfortunately it seems like I'm in the extreme minority.
- grzm 10y agoI'd like that, too. However, subscriptions alone—unless raised significantly—won't cover the costs for the NYT (or other paper). Note that the physical paper always carries ads and each paper is paid for—either the cover price or through a subscription. Hopefully subscriptions will encourage better quality ads, headlines, and stories. Subscriptions do allow for less click bait.
- rootusrootus 10y agoI hope you're not in an extreme minority, because I'm right there with you. I currently subscribe to the NYT, and I'd welcome the opportunity to entirely pay for my content without having to worry about ads. I get around it now by using ABP -- with no guilt, since I'm a subscriber -- but it would be nice to not need such interventions.
- the_duke 10y agoSadly for most newspapers, WSJ is in a special position. It has the highest circulation of any paper in the US, and it has a target audience that really doesn't mind paying. A paywall wouldn't work out well for many others.
- tonyedgecombe 10y agoI suspect most of the others would be better just posting teaser material on the web and trying to make the rest up in the paper edition.
- briandear 10y agoThe Houston Chronicle has a similar dual system. The print newspaper is online but paywalled: houstonchronicle.com the "chron.com" version is mostly buzzfeedish fluff that's free.
- rspeer 10y agoSo does this mean Google is going to stop indexing the text of WSJ articles?
- gleenn 10y agoThere is still incentive for WSJ to allow Google to index, they probably just will redirect you to sign up when you click through. Perhaps they'd let Google just index the preview text to prevent using the cache
- freehunter 10y agoDoesn't Google punish sites that show different content to Googlebot than they do to a user?
- jschmitz28 10y agoIt seems like they should otherwise it would seriously hurt their search quality (unless they did something like personalized search ranking for users who they could determine were signed into those particular walled off sites).
- abraae 10y agoYes, that's "cloaking".
- ohashi 10y agoThe old experts exchange rule where they put all the content at the bottom :/
- Someone 10y ago"Perhaps they'd let Google just index the preview text" would take care of that.
- robryan 10y agoGoogle should absolutely not index, at least not under the current organic and news search. Why should they send traffic to articles that people can't freely view? I would support some kind of premium news offering from Google where they do index these and you are allowed access through a revenue share subscription made via Google.
- ikeboy 10y agohttps://support.google.com/news/publisher/answer/40543?hl=en&ref_topic=2481296 https://support.google.com/news/publisher/answer/40543?hl=en... According to this, it will need to mark WSJ links differently in Google News. Interestingly, I tested it and links from Google news still had a "First Click Free", contrary to OP. To test: 1. Go to https://news.google.com/ https://news.google.com/ from a computer that hasn't visited any WSJ articles that day 2. Click on a WSJ link (mine was https://www.wsj.com/articles/daniel-tarullo-federal-reserve-regulatory-point-man-resigning-1486751401 https://www.wsj.com/articles/daniel-tarullo-federal-reserve-...) 3. See if the whole article is displayed. For me, it was, but when I tried again it only showed a snippet. So it seems like they're only showing the very first click, which does not comply with Google's guidelines above (which require 3 articles a day to be viewable). Anyone else want to offer data points? Edit: oh, OP says it's only starting Monday. (Of course, WSJ may be exempt because of direct communication with Google, which I'd expect anyway at their size and at the fact that they weren't banned when they started testing this. But Google should really note any exceptions in their policy.)
- ikeboy 10y agoUpdate: WSJ articles that are paywalled are now marked as subscription in google news.
- Animats 10y agoPaywalls have been tightening up recently. The Washington Post now has stronger anti-ad-blocking. So do the Chicago Tribune and the Los Angeles Times. The New York Times is still accessible. It's a concern that the newspapers which have actual reporters in the field are disappearing behind paywalls.
- grzm 10y agoActual reporters need to be paid :) The idea of free access to news is relatively recent, since wide-spread web access. Prior to that, people paid for subscriptions, or bought papers at new stands or from boxes. Sure, people might share a few papers at the office or at a restaurant, but having access like we've had for the past 20 years or so is pretty remarkable. I think it's becoming increasingly clear that purely ad-based publishing is encouraging an increase in yellow journalism.
- jrs235 10y agoI was under the impression that the subscription fee for newspapers was to cover printing and delivery. And that the ads were how the publishers got paid.
- ghaff 10y agoThat's true. But it was a bundle that couldn't be separated at the end of the day. So given print ad dollars to digital dimes the subscription fee needs to cover web readership as well.
- Animats 10y agoThe idea of free access to news is relatively recent, since wide-spread web access. Not really. Radio. TV.
- grzm 10y agoBoth of which are commercial-supported and transient. Print news is a different beast.
- ctrl_freak 10y agoIf anyone's looking for another workaround, the article actually hints at the solution: Facebook's l.php redirect that it uses when you click on a link shared through the platform. It functions similarly to the Google redirect, and you don't even need a Facebook account for it to work. E.g. https://www.facebook.com/l.php?u=https://www.wsj.com/articles/daniel-tarullo-federal-reserve-regulatory-point-man-resigning-1486751401 https://www.facebook.com/l.php?u=https://www.wsj.com/article...
- ikeboy 10y agoI would give you HN gold if it existed (now we just need a bookmarklet/extension to automate this). Do we know that this will still work on Monday? Maybe this will also be closed and you'll need a special link?
- wfunction 10y agoBookmarklet for Facebook: javascript:window.location="https://m.facebook.com/l.php?u="+encodeURIComponent(window.location.href); Bookmarklet for Google: javascript:window.location="https://www.google.com/url?rct=j&url="+encodeURIComponent(window.location.href);
- dankohn1 10y agoThis is awesome. Just for folks who aren't clear how to create a bookmarklet: Create a bookmark of any page, by going to a URL such as https://www.wsj.com/articles/SB122878081364889613 https://www.wsj.com/articles/SB122878081364889613 (note that only the top part of the page loads) and enter Cmd (or Ctrl) D. Now Save the bookmark to your bookmark bar. Find the bookmark, right click, and replace the WSJ URL with the javascript URL in the parent post. Save and now test by clicking the bookmark in the bookmark bar. After a redirect through Facebook, the full WSJ article should display.
- sfritz 10y agoI may be misunderstanding your instructions, but I think the intended use (in Chrome, at least) is to highlight the javascript and drag it to your bookmarks bar. This creates a bookmark that executes the javascript, which you can click to unblock the WSJ article you're currently viewing by redirecting the current page through Facebook. Another useful bookmarklet for deleting annoying DOM elements: javascript:(function(){document.styleSheets[0].addRule(".highlighted_to_remove","background:red !important");var e=function(e){if(e.keyCode==27){i()}};document.addEventListener("keydown",e);var t=function(e){e.stopPropagation();this.classList.add("highlighted_to_remove");return false};var n=function(e){e.stopPropagation();this.classList.remove("highlighted_to_remove");return false};var r=function(e){this.parentNode.removeChild(this);i();e.preventDefault();e.stopPropagation();return false};var i=function(){var i=0;var s=document;while(s=document.body.getElementsByTagName("*").item(i++)){s.removeEventListener("mouseover",t);s.removeEventListener("mouseout",n);s.removeEventListener("click",r);s.classList.remove("highlighted_to_remove")}document.removeEventListener("keydown",e)};var s=0;var o=document;while(o=document.body.getElementsByTagName("*").item(s++)){o.addEventListener("mouseover",t);o.addEventListener("mouseout",n);o.addEventListener("click",r)}})()
- frakr 10y agoIt's easier to not read Rupert Murdoch owned content.
- jcoffland 10y agoI prefer Reuters. They seem to have less bias, their articles are free and many stories at other news outlets are bought from Reuters anyway.
- seanp2k2 10y agoThere's also AP.org http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/fronts/RAW?SITE=AP&SECTION=HOME http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/fronts/RAW?SITE=AP&SECTION=HOME Many news agencies are just editorializing AP news anyway.
- aw3c2 10y agoWhen I realised that, I stopped considering the majority of "news regurgitation" worth my money.
- raldi 10y agoHas any publisher tried out a paywall along the lines of the following? "Hey, you've spent 29 hours so far this year reading 119 articles. Suggested donation: $62"
- perlpimp 10y agoI am just wondering what would be equivalent to scanning some articles not reading them, conflating two destroys potential value to offer this proposition. I don't often read articles but I want to see if its worth reading. So it is a bit of a hardsell on part of wsj, but they do cater to more of the affluent public so my guess they stand to gain more from playing hardball with people who do have more disposable income than rest of the internet public.
- idclip 10y agoDo you realise the kind of tracking that entails?
- raldi 10y agoMost paywall newspapers already keep track of how many articles you've read this month, and count it down for you; this would just add a timer, too. Which their analytics code is surely already reporting.
- pzh 10y agoThe Guardian is doing something similar but without tracking the hours spent. They just say "Hey, we see you spend a lot of time around here. Why don't you help us out a bit so we can stay afloat?"
- colanderman 10y agoThe Guardian's tactic actually got me to pay for news for the first time in my life. For some reason I'm really turned off to the idea of buying a ~$100 subscription to a single paper, but I'll gladly toss $25 here or there in response to good journalism.
- gesman 10y agoWith every single news outlet taking polical position lately - it became intolerable to read or find somewhat objective news source. I don't mind paying <$10 / mo for clean no BS objective and detailed coverage.
- arjie 10y agoThat makes sense. But your pricing is unreasonable. I don't mind paying $10k for a Ferrari.
- hnbroseph 10y agoferraris are toys where each copy bears an unavoidable cost of production. news articles have a single upfront cost, but subsequent copies carry near-zero production cost.
- mcintyre1994 10y agoIs WSJ not a political news source? They're owned by News Corp and at least in the UK that conglomerate is responsible for the most politicised and polarising media.
- hnbroseph 10y agoyes, wsj is politicized.
- soVeryTired 10y agoAnother way to get around many paywalls is to change your browser's user agent string to 'Googlebot'. I've got a subscription to the Financial Times, but if there's a one-off article somewhere else that I want to read, that's my go-to method for getting through a paywall. I wonder if their fix will close it off too.
- skissane 10y agoGoogle recommends using reverse DNS lookup to determine if a client claiming to be Googlebot is really from Google – https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/80553?hl=en https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/80553?hl=en It isn't hard for paywall website operators to use this to block Googlebot fakers. (Rather than doing a reverse DNS lookup on every request, you'd want to maintain a local cache of those results, so you only need to do DNS lookups on new client IPs.) I believe Cloudflare already does this, and possibly some other CDNs too.
- dredmorbius 10y agoDNS lookups are expensive at server scale. Bot traffic ranges from maybe a quarter to 80% of traffic, though googlebot was only a subset of that. Cheaper to look for Google ASNs.
- skissane 10y ago> DNS lookups are expensive at server scale. Even if you use a distributed in-memory cache to store the DNS lookup results? If User-Agent contains "Googlebot", then check for client IP in cache – if cached as "Google" continue, if cached as "Not Google" display error page. If client IP not in cache, do DNS lookup and then update cache – or, you could even let the request continue if there is a cache miss, and do the DNS lookup on another thread. That might let a Googlebot faker get a few requests through, but they'll be blocked very quickly unless they keep on changing IPs (something your average paywall bypasser will find hard.) You don't need to consult the cache for every request, only for requests with User-Agent contains "Googlebot". (And any other bots you are choosing to let through your paywall, e.g. Bingbot.) > Cheaper to look for Google ASNs. How does one do that as an application developer? Do you need to speak to a BGP server?
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- BuffaloBagel 10y agoMy pain at the loss of the Google loophole is tempered by the realization that the WSJ has largely become a propaganda organ of the GOP.
- qwrusz 10y agoI see in the comments there are still some workarounds to this paywall. Good to know. Cheers. Just a reminder another workaround to the paywall is to you know actually subscribe to the newspaper. That is an option they offer. Obviously not possible for everyone. But if you have the money and want to read and support journalism... WSJ is really far from perfect but it's not the worst newspaper one could be subscribed to. Also I think their discounted corporate plans program is huge, so depending where you work you may get a discount or it could be free, never hurts to ask. Also, maybe YC could negotiate some sort of group WSJ discount for Hacker News users above a certain karma count? Just an idea...
- nraynaud 10y agoI don't think it's smart to pay to read stuff from a group that also gets money from advertisers. You're either the product or the customer, when in doubt you'll be the product. Real subscription journalism doesn't do advertising.
- offa 10y agoWhat 'real subscription journalism' big-name newspapers that don't do advertising can you name? I am honestly struggling to think of any.
- nraynaud 10y agoSorry, I'm French, so I can only cite you 2 French ones: Le Canard Enchainé (100 yo, no website) and Mediapart (pure web). We are talking serious news: the first one discovered that a minister had sent 1500 Jews in a train during WWII, the second one has discovered the minister charged of tax collection had an undeclared bank account in Switzerland.
- offa 10y agoThank you for your reply. I can read a little bit of French, so Mediapart is something I'll keep an eye on in the future.
- downandout 10y agoThe larger problem here is that unless they plan to have their Google search results all say "click here to pay" or similar, this entire scheme violates Google's cloaking policy and should result in their being deindexed. This has traditionally been the entire reason that sites offered this workaround - it wasn't out of the goodness of their hearts. Here's hoping Google actually enforces their policy.
- sokoloff 10y agoIf history is any guide, they absolutely will. Google doesn't want people having a bad experience on Google which would drive them to consider any other source for search. If a search turns up an article and preview and a click-through doesn't show the same content, Google users will be annoyed, which will drive Google to act. Google's anti-cloaking policy, while presented as a benefit for users [which it is], is strongly in Google's best interest to enforce as well.
- tomjen3 10y agoWhat I don't get is that they could just leave the first two paragraphs and let every see that, then require you to subscribe for more - google would accept that and they would still show up in search, right?
- tyingq 10y agoThey could, but then only those two paragraphs would be indexed. That would make the content less rich, less relevant, so it wouldn't rank as high. That's for the normal organic search results. I don't know the policy for showing up in Google news and the carousel. I suspect it wouldn't be allowed. Edit: You can be subscription-only and be in Google news, but you have to show the same limited snippet to both Google and end users. And you get 'tagged' in the UI as subscription only. https://support.google.com/news/publisher/answer/40543?hl=en https://support.google.com/news/publisher/answer/40543?hl=en
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- arjie 10y agoThe WSJ is a fantastic source of information. I no longer subscribe since I no longer live in the US but I easily made more money from the information in the paper than I paid in. It was also very informative. If you can't derive value from it, I understand all the trouble people go through to bypass it. It's just that I see that people's stated aims and revealed preferences are in contradiction. Everyone wants high quality news. No one seems to want to pay what it costs.
- iamgopal 10y agoI would pay if I don't fear them. They constantly trying to push a propogenda, and you have to pay for it is indigestible
- wcummings 10y ago>The Journal is a rarity in publishing in that it gets more money from readers than advertising This is probably a good indicator of quality.
- mattraibert 10y agoIt's true that it indicates quality, but I suspect it also indicates the exceptional wealth of WSJ's readership.
- sverige 10y agoThe problem is that newspapers believe the myth that they were really efficient at reporting on and delivering news, when really their core competency was their ability to deliver print advertising to every doorstep in a given market on a daily basis. This is similar to the music industry, whose core competency was not developing talent or setting the standards of taste, but rather delivering precisely molded disks of vinyl to far-flung stores every Tuesday. Oh internet, what myths do you believe about yourself? That you are the harbinger of universal enlightenment and democracy?
- dredmorbius 10y agoArchive.is is another frequently viable workaround.
- tptacek 10y agoTangent: I'm not sure I can think of recent money I've spent better than a year-long Washington Post subscription. Not because I want to support journalism (though I do), but because having a whole newspaper to flip through every day is so much more productive and efficient than getting dribs and drabs through Twitter and free news sites --- many of which are ultimately sourcing through the journalism that organizations like WaPo do anyways. Realizing in retrospect how trifling the amount of money we're talking about for a subscription is (it's a tiny fraction of my monthly information services bill [cable/Internet, Netflix, &c]), I feel kind of embarrassed for not having done this a long time ago. I like WaPo but you might prefer something else, like NYT or WSJ. I'm sure all the major papers are solid choices. Most of you are younger than me. Don't be like me! Subscribe to a damn newspaper already.
- carbocation 10y agoTo lower the barrier even further, if you're an Amazon Prime subscriber and subscribe via Amazon, the first 6 months are free and then the cost is $4/month thereafter.
- tptacek 10y agoWhat's funny/terrible about this is that I am in fact a Prime subscriber, and didn't know this. I'm tempted to revise my subscription stuff and add the NYT. :)
- stablemap 10y agoMaybe this doesn't count as supporting, but: you also get free access with a .edu, .gov, or .mil email address.
- djKianoosh 10y agoreally? I cant find that option. How does one sign up?
- stablemap 10y ago
- golemotron 10y agoSomething people don't appreciate about the culture wars: as left-facing publications paywall, they yield ground to free right-facing ones.
- thomasthomas 10y agoThis is why google needs to get into social search. WSJ is basically moving discovery from traditional search to social search. how many searches across social platforms is google completely missing out on? I know for certain topics, i run to twitter to search as opposed to google. buy google already
- user5994461 10y agoThis article makes no sense. The Google loophole only works half the time at best. All articles posted on HN invariably end up with the same discussion: 1) "Behind a paywall. Can't read it." 2) "You need to use the google link" 3) "The google link also gives a paywall." 4) "It worked for me." 5) "Doesn't work for me."
- Neliquat 10y agoIf you cant just click on it, its paywalled. Idk why we put up with all this bs for the so so rag that is the WSJ. I just downvote paywalls and move on.
- hollerith 10y ago>I just downvote paywalls and move on. I am confused. I always thought that on HN only comments can be downvoted. Did you mean "flag paywalls and move on"?
- desireco42 10y agoI welcome this move. It will stop their articles being posted here and in other forums, we simply can't read them. While WSJ does have good content, I will not pay for it and this will make sure it doesn't trick me into clicking links and have to close browser. On other hand, for their business to continue to grow, they need to come up with way to show us that content somehow, maybe not the one they charge for but something that can display excellence. Good examples would be ArsTechnica and Nautilus.
- dforrestwilson 10y agoI have found that the best way to get past editorial bias is to aggregate using Realclearpolitics.com
- hnbroseph 10y agoafter this election i'm even less interested in any newspaper subscriptions than i was before. they're all biased liars, or at least run stories buy such authors.
- msimpson 10y agoSo the best offer the WSJ can provide is "All Access Digital" for $198 over 12 months, after which the price is doubled to $396 for the same length of time. That means, eventually, you'll be spending about $33 a month just to read what are mostly AP stories without even the guarantee of an ad-free experience. How is this attractive?
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