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> I apparently spent my free articles this month, and barely had a decision in the matter — lead their by HN, and wasn’t paying attention "I already read so mu

by hnnh44 8y ago

> I apparently spent my free articles this month, and barely had a decision in the matter — lead their by HN, and wasn’t paying attention "I already read so much great content that people find interesting that they TRICKED ME into reading" What's the theory here? If only you knew which articles would be out in 2 weeks you'd better be able to budget your free reading? Serious question: what's the threshold at which youre willing to part with $10/month?

setr 8y ago
The only filter I had was HN, and if I cared about it, those were all surprise usages, as I wasn’t paying attention to the domain. I clicked a link with no intention of using my economist.com credit, but whoops, there it went. I’m certainly not interested in having the same mistake cost me something. (No one said I cared about chickens enough to pay for this insight, and at the very least, when I got blocked from this article, I didn’t care enough to pay for it; my free tier rating attempted to though, and I would have accidentally paid if I had been subscribed). If I wasn’t going through a content-aggregator, then the only filter I’d have is the title, which is just incentivizing clickbait, and the same issue arises. As for the threshold question, it depends on trust. I have no issue shelling out cash for (older) nautilus, though content-wise it got me nothing, simply because I had trust that future issues would be (just as) decent, and the print format was nicer. Same with LWN; it offers me little content-wise (just wait a week, and you’ll get the same thing free), but they’re consistently decent, so I’m fine with ponying up for the week ahead of time. But economist, nytimes, fox, quartz, etc are much less consistent, and a random selection of 12 articles, or a monthly collection, and you’ll probably get a good deal of trash in there. The good articles are probably better than LWN, but the bad ones are worse, and I have no trust that I’ll get much, if any, value from subscribing. I shouldn’t have to go to HN for article curation (at least in terms of quality, ideally it should just be subject); I want to pay economist to curate for me, and they’re not doing it. Or rather, they’re doing a poor job of it, and I don’t want to pay up for a poor job done. A newspaper has two jobs: 1. Put out the news 2. Curate the news and writers Afaik, they’re generally only managing the first one. On the latter, its a crapshoot. Not being much of a gambler, I don’t have much interest putting actual money into that crapshoot.

by hnnh44 8y ago

setr 8y ago

The only filter I had was HN, and if I cared about it, those were all surprise usages, as I wasn’t paying attention to the domain. I clicked a link with no intention of using my economist.com credit, but whoops, there it went. I’m certainly not interested in having the same mistake cost me something. (No one said I cared about chickens enough to pay for this insight, and at the very least, when I got blocked from this article, I didn’t care enough to pay for it; my free tier rating attempted to though, and I would have accidentally paid if I had been subscribed). If I wasn’t going through a content-aggregator, then the only filter I’d have is the title, which is just incentivizing clickbait, and the same issue arises. As for the threshold question, it depends on trust. I have no issue shelling out cash for (older) nautilus, though content-wise it got me nothing, simply because I had trust that future issues would be (just as) decent, and the print format was nicer. Same with LWN; it offers me little content-wise (just wait a week, and you’ll get the same thing free), but they’re consistently decent, so I’m fine with ponying up for the week ahead of time. But economist, nytimes, fox, quartz, etc are much less consistent, and a random selection of 12 articles, or a monthly collection, and you’ll probably get a good deal of trash in there. The good articles are probably better than LWN, but the bad ones are worse, and I have no trust that I’ll get much, if any, value from subscribing. I shouldn’t have to go to HN for article curation (at least in terms of quality, ideally it should just be subject); I want to pay economist to curate for me, and they’re not doing it. Or rather, they’re doing a poor job of it, and I don’t want to pay up for a poor job done. A newspaper has two jobs: 1. Put out the news 2. Curate the news and writers Afaik, they’re generally only managing the first one. On the latter, its a crapshoot. Not being much of a gambler, I don’t have much interest putting actual money into that crapshoot.