4 ms·

That paywall just led to me blacklisting the entire economist.com domain at extension level. Too bad. Don't do paywalls like that please.

by cfv 8y ago

deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
huffmsa 8y ago
It's the only site on the I internet that tells me I've read all of my free monthly articles every time I link to it.
chrisseaton 8y ago
HN guidelines ask that you don't complain about paywalls. It's explicitly off-topic.
- huffmsa 8y ago
  Then it's a bad rule and we need to petition our benevolent overlord's to strike it from the charter.
  - chrisseaton 8y ago
    Ok - but until you've done that, please follow the rules of the site.
- robertAngst 8y ago
  Maybe its worth banning websites with paywalls? This is like a front page advertisement.
wongarsu 8y ago
What would you prefer them to do? - There are plenty of good reasons against using the typical ad platforms, and the increasing adoption of ad blockers shows that users don't like them - Hosting your own ads is hard in the internet and doesn't seem very profitable - Running the website as a marketing expense to increase sales of the paper version used to work, but now people just stay on the website - Microdonation platforms like flattr fail to gain any traction Unless you somehow find good journalists that work for free a model of allowing X article reads per month before requiring payment seems like the best model available.
- robertAngst 8y ago
  >Microdonation platforms like flattr fail to gain any traction What about Wikipedia? I run my website in this fashion.
  - wongarsu 8y ago
    Patreon also works great for some sites (and not at all for some others). To be honest, I don't particularly like Wikipedia's huge banners with pleas to get the last few millions in donations. If every site did that users were as annoyed as they are by regular ads. A donation model might be the best thing to do, we just have to find the best way to implement it.
    - robertAngst 8y ago
      Is that annoyance worse than being blocked from the page? EDIT: serious question, because if it is, I can restrict content on my website.
      - ghaff 8y ago
        It can be, especially if everyone starts doing it--as is increasingly the case. At some point, I'm fine with just doing without sites that have a hard paywall whereas having all, or at least many/most, sites annoy me for donations/subscriptions degrades using the Internet as a whole.
    - Macha 8y ago
      I used to feel guilty about the Wikipedia donation banner, but so much of that spending seems to go elsewhere: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2017-02-27/Op-ed https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2... Was wikipedia really 3.5x more expensive to host in 2016 than 2010? Why? (Previous HN discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14287235 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14287235 )
anonymouzz 8y ago
Off-topic, but you should want to pay for news. You should want to pay a lot. Which kind of meal would you prefer? 1) Expensive, tasty and healthy. 2) Cheap and loaded with sugar (so you come back to get more) while ads flash all around your plate and on the tip of your fork. Same goes with cars, cosmetics, education. For some reason paying more for those goods is universally accepted. Why wouldn't people want to pay to get high quality news? "No sir, just give me the lowest quality, most clickbait news you have. Yes, I strongly prefer that to paying $10 a month."
- ReptileMan 8y ago
  Okay. But give me way to pay 5 cents for this article, not 12$ all you can eat. There are 200 articles per month I am willing to pay, spread along 80 magazines. How?
  - anonymouzz 8y ago
    This is a good point, and I agree with you completely. Perhaps the Brave org will come up with a working solution. It's likely the largest problem with the Internet economy today. Personally, for now, I'm paying monthly to those news sources that respect my attention and provide an honest representation of reality.
dang 8y ago
If there's a workaround, it's ok. Users usually post workarounds in the thread. This is in the FAQ at https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html and there's more explanation here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10178989 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10178989 https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=comment&storyText=false&prefix&page=0&query=by:dang%20paywall https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=comme...
manigandham 8y ago
Then pay for the content.

That paywall just led to me blacklisting the entire economist.com domain at extension level. Too bad. Don't do paywalls like that please.

by cfv 8y ago

That paywall just led to me blacklisting the entire economist.com domain at extension level. Too bad. Don't do paywalls like that please.

deleted 8y ago

[deleted]

huffmsa 8y ago

It's the only site on the I internet that tells me I've read all of my free monthly articles every time I link to it.

chrisseaton 8y ago

HN guidelines ask that you don't complain about paywalls. It's explicitly off-topic.

huffmsa 8y ago
Then it's a bad rule and we need to petition our benevolent overlord's to strike it from the charter.
- chrisseaton 8y ago
  Ok - but until you've done that, please follow the rules of the site.
robertAngst 8y ago
Maybe its worth banning websites with paywalls? This is like a front page advertisement.

wongarsu 8y ago

What would you prefer them to do? - There are plenty of good reasons against using the typical ad platforms, and the increasing adoption of ad blockers shows that users don't like them - Hosting your own ads is hard in the internet and doesn't seem very profitable - Running the website as a marketing expense to increase sales of the paper version used to work, but now people just stay on the website - Microdonation platforms like flattr fail to gain any traction Unless you somehow find good journalists that work for free a model of allowing X article reads per month before requiring payment seems like the best model available.

robertAngst 8y ago
>Microdonation platforms like flattr fail to gain any traction What about Wikipedia? I run my website in this fashion.
- wongarsu 8y ago
  Patreon also works great for some sites (and not at all for some others). To be honest, I don't particularly like Wikipedia's huge banners with pleas to get the last few millions in donations. If every site did that users were as annoyed as they are by regular ads. A donation model might be the best thing to do, we just have to find the best way to implement it.
  - robertAngst 8y ago
    Is that annoyance worse than being blocked from the page? EDIT: serious question, because if it is, I can restrict content on my website.
    - ghaff 8y ago
      It can be, especially if everyone starts doing it--as is increasingly the case. At some point, I'm fine with just doing without sites that have a hard paywall whereas having all, or at least many/most, sites annoy me for donations/subscriptions degrades using the Internet as a whole.
  - Macha 8y ago
    I used to feel guilty about the Wikipedia donation banner, but so much of that spending seems to go elsewhere: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2017-02-27/Op-ed https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2... Was wikipedia really 3.5x more expensive to host in 2016 than 2010? Why? (Previous HN discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14287235 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14287235 )

anonymouzz 8y ago

Off-topic, but you should want to pay for news. You should want to pay a lot. Which kind of meal would you prefer? 1) Expensive, tasty and healthy. 2) Cheap and loaded with sugar (so you come back to get more) while ads flash all around your plate and on the tip of your fork. Same goes with cars, cosmetics, education. For some reason paying more for those goods is universally accepted. Why wouldn't people want to pay to get high quality news? "No sir, just give me the lowest quality, most clickbait news you have. Yes, I strongly prefer that to paying $10 a month."

ReptileMan 8y ago
Okay. But give me way to pay 5 cents for this article, not 12$ all you can eat. There are 200 articles per month I am willing to pay, spread along 80 magazines. How?
- anonymouzz 8y ago
  This is a good point, and I agree with you completely. Perhaps the Brave org will come up with a working solution. It's likely the largest problem with the Internet economy today. Personally, for now, I'm paying monthly to those news sources that respect my attention and provide an honest representation of reality.

dang 8y ago

If there's a workaround, it's ok. Users usually post workarounds in the thread. This is in the FAQ at https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html and there's more explanation here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10178989 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10178989 https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=comment&storyText=false&prefix&page=0&query=by:dang%20paywall https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=comme...

manigandham 8y ago

Then pay for the content.