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New York Times is taking down its paywall for World Press Freedom Day
- dredmorbius 7y ago"You’re in private mode." "Log in or create a free New York Times account to continue reading in private mode."
- blakesterz 7y agoI've noticed they can catch Chrome in incognito, but it doesn't catch Firefox in private mode.
- Cthulhu_ 7y agoI believe that's one of those cat-and-mouse games, where ideally they can't tell if you're in incognito.
- mffnbs 7y agoIf you try chrome canary, there's a feature you can enable that removes the incognito leak.
- dredmorbius 7y agoSupposedly Chrome is closing the loophole (a test of local storage IIRC/IIUC). Still ironic under the circumstances.
- ricardobeat 7y ago> The Times is taking down its paywall from May 3 to 5 so everyone who registers can browse as many articles as they like > everyone who registers Nice move, to celebrate “freedom” by collecting personal data that will most definitely be used for marketing and upselling subscriptions.
- tyingq 7y agoA sales pitch accompanied by a tragic photo is in poor taste also.
- blakesterz 7y agoCalling that photo of the starving kid "tragic" is a bit of an understatement. Who the hell that was a good idea?!
- _rpd 7y agoThe Guardian has been using this technique intensively, and is now profitable, so I think we can expect to see a lot more of this.
- OneWordSoln 7y agoYeah, but the Guardian is, by my estimation, a truly bad-ass journalistic institution devoted to speaking truth to power.
- kylek 7y agoShould've gone with Jimmy-Wales-puppy-dog-eyes instead. That's my go-to for heart strings.
- jontaydev 7y agoThe thing about subscribing the New York Times - is that you still have to deal with a tremendous number of ads, seemingly every other paragraph. The solution is simple, just install an ad-blocker. But then why not use that ad-blocker to just bock cookies and bypass the paywall, since I’m gaming the system anyways? I guess I could consider my subscription a donation because I’m going to use an ad-blocker either way. But why can’t I pay to have a great experience? I considered subscribing through the iOS app, but of course there is no way to block ads. So unfortunately, I don’t receive any breaking news notifications. The browser experience is ok with an ad-blocker. But why not reward your subscribers with a great reading experience? Remove the ads, focus on good typography, etc, and I would pay whatever you ask. Preferably through an app. Edit: I’ve been a subscriber for years, and I’m willing to pay regardless. I just think they could improve by making the subscription meaningful to a generation that doesn’t want to see ads.
- blakesterz 7y agoI can only guess... when you buy the actual paper there's still ads. In the end they are an advertising company. They write things to increase circulation (hits and copies) so they can get more people to see more ads. That's how it's always worked. That "subscribe and you won't see ads" probably makes no sense at all to company that spent decades selling paying subscribers printed ads. People spend money to buy print ads, why wouldn't they mind paying money to see ads on their electronic device as well? They (The Times) and most subscribers probably don't think it's any big deal to pay to see more ads.
- moneil971 7y agoFor most publications, the newsstand sales are a minuscule amount of income - subscriptions are a bit more (and help them plan budgets), but ads is how they keep the lights on. But it’s harder and harder to do that bc no one wants to pay for quality reporting and fact checking when they can get rumors and opinions for free on any clickbait website that pays writers pennies and has fired their fact checkers and copy editors. If you truly want quality journalism, pick the publications you don’t want to lose and subscribe - and know that the ads are what keep the cost low enough for the average person to get reliable news.
- NoblePublius 7y agoIf the Sulzbergers or Jeff Bezos were interested in journalism, and not propaganda, they would endow their papers as non-profits and walk away.
- SmellyGeekBoy 7y agoThey're probably more interested in making money tbh
- NoblePublius 7y agoExactly! Anyone else horrified that the concept of non profit journalism is being downvoted by this community?
- organsnyder 7y agoNo one is downvoting non-profit journalism. They are downvoting the claim that non-profit journalism is the only ethically acceptable model.
- NoblePublius 7y agoPlease explain how profit motive makes better journalism and holding the powerful to account.
- radcon 7y agoWow, this is a new low for the New York times. Using dead and starving children as props to collect our personal information? I was on the fence after their horrific 2016 election coverage and the Sarah Jeong scandal, but this just proves they'll never learn from their mistakes.
- GiorgioG 7y agoI can't read/watch any news outlet anymore. It's become utter trash (regardless of your political leanings.) Half the time I feel like I'm reading a tabloid publication instead of a news site.
- skilled 7y agoClickbait has changed a lot of the landscape. But this is good news for self-aware people. It encourages to look for alternative and down to earth news sources.
- wycy 7y agoTrash reporting plagues the alternative news sources too.
- SmellyGeekBoy 7y agoSadly self-aware people seem to be few and far between...
- skilled 7y agoTrue that...
- irrational 7y agoSadly down to earth news sources seem to be few and far between...
- Cthulhu_ 7y agoNot even the sources a lot of the tabloid type newspapers use, like Reuters?
- Angostura 7y agoI suggest you actually buy a good quality newspaper and read it, rather that reading their web site. You may be pleasantly surprised.
- OneWordSoln 7y agoThe NYT employs enough disingenuous obfuscators that I will never pay them a penny, nor will I let them collect my information. Beyond that, what they don't realize is that other news sites will simply report on what is reported in the NYT, and those sites will forever be free. From time to time I will copypaste a NYT url to a single-use non-private FF instance to read (and then immediately clear history) whereby I invariably find that the article only has a few bits that expanded my knowledge. Most of the articles are those few bits of new info followed by summaries of days or months old information that I am already fully aware of. And the same goes for the WaPo. I understand that we need to support good journalism and I will when I find some really good journalism, without auto-play vids and ridiculous amounts of ad content and making sure the readership on "both sides" is fairly represented. The WaPo has potential but Bezos' quest for all the dollars is ruining it. What they don't get is that they can't control the information and that information has no intrinsic price, for our primary advantage as human beings is our ability to spread ideas and information from person to person. Their information is going to get aggregated and there's not a damn thing they can do about it, and I'm willing to wait 12 hours for it to get to me secondhand. The MBAs are digging their own graves every single day and they don't have anyone to blame but themselves. That they have gone all in on the advertisers is only hastening their demise.
- Angostura 7y ago>The NYT employs enough disingenuous obfuscators Examples?
- OneWordSoln 7y agoMaggie Haberman and one other guy whose name I forget. And their editorial page has problems aplenty, which are evidence of who their owners really support. Finally, one of these days, someone is going to have to call Trump precisely what he is: an inveterate liar.
- scrollaway 7y agoI think by "examples" GP meant examples of "obfuscation" as you call it, rather than just names.
- radcon 7y agoUsing pictures of starving children as props to collect our personal information is a new low for them. I can't believe this made it through any sort of approval process.
- 420codebro 7y agoI hope more kids starve.
- duxup 7y agoI subscribed to the NYT and a few other places. Hell if my subscription made it possible for others to read it for free and that was sustainable, i'd be 100% ok with that. That's how it works for public radio and public TV, I feel like they're a thing I want to support, but at the same time share as much as support.
- Wowfunhappy 7y agoThe thing that makes this a bit weird to me is that the New York Times is a for-profit organization. If you purely want to fund journalism, your dollars may go further with a nonprofit like ProPublica. I'm absolutely in favor of supporting great papers like the Times as well, so I'm not sure what my point is here. But it seems misguided to compare news corporations to public institutions.
- duxup 7y agoI think of it as any other product type situation on the surface. I'm willing to pay for content. Beyond that there is an element of wanting to support an industry that I think is important to maintaining a healthy democracy, thus I don't care so much how much anyone else is paying.
- Wowfunhappy 7y agoBut if the New York Times removed their paywall (and didn't introduce some other subscriber-only benefit), you wouldn't really be paying for their content anymore, right? Because you could get that content anyway. A payment that doesn't directly benefit you is a donation.
- duxup 7y agoI don't mind calling it a donation when it is appropriate, or a subscription when appropriate. I'm willing to do both.
- 7y ago
- ineedasername 7y agoI like the NY Times, and I'm not saying it should be free, but this seems a self-contradictory stunt. In recognizing the importance of access to a free press, they take down the roadblock to accessing their own content. But only for 3 days. If this were something like Earth Day, a company vowing to recycle it's waste, but only for a day, would immediately seem just as ridiculous as this does after brief reflection.
- melling 7y agoIt’s not free press as in zero cost, it’s press freedom.
- ineedasername 7y agoYes, I get that, but by recognizing press freedom (free as in speech) they are providing free press (free as in beer), which rather conflates the two. By implicitly recognizing that the two are intertwined, it's a contradiction of their support of press freedom to charge the rest of the year. The conflict would be resolved if they kept the paywall and said something like "remaining solvent is a necessary requirement for press freedom. In honer of World Press Freedom Day, we will do X instead." Where X might be something like sponsoring independent journalists in areas of the world where press freedom is much more of an issue.
- SilasX 7y agoAlso, it’s a different meaning of free from the one in “press freedom”. But I’m not one to look a horse in the mouth if it was given as a gift.
- bookofjoe 7y ago3 days
- ineedasername 7y agoThanks, Fixed
- return1 7y agoNytimes seems to lean more on the one side since they erected a paywall. It is inherent to subscriptions that they create a selfreinforcing bubble by telling subscribers what they want to hear, but other publications are doing better (ft, wsj)
- aphextim 7y agoFunny how they are doing this on "World Press Freedom Day" while at the same time covering deplatforming of news outlets. https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/02/technology/facebook-alex-jones-louis-farrakhan-ban.html https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/02/technology/facebook-alex-... Now I get they are using platforms which can indiscriminately ban whoever they want. Fine lets say infowars makes their own platform. Doing okay on their own platform when all of a sudden... Now common payment processors ban them from being able to receive funding through traditional methods. When all banks ban you where do you go? Crypto currency of course. When all common outlets ban you at the same time it doesn't seem much like "World Press Freedom Day" it is more like "Globalization Freedom Day" where you talk against the mainstream opinions and will be silenced. No freedom for you! Just my 2 cents, not that I endorse infowars I just believe in true and honest discourse and to let the idiots keep talking to be able to show how stupid they are. Banning them only reinforces their audience and empowers them to be more fringe.
- diminoten 7y agoThe problem isn't that Infowars has content against the mainstream, it's that there is a clear, solid line from Infowars to physical harm being done to others in the real world. You can express all the counterculture views you want, right up until you start to harm people with those views, then the conversation shifts. No one is trying to take out the time cube guy, for example...
- aphextim 7y agoAnd CNN calling out Covington kids essentially doxxing them on live T.V.? Jussie Smollett fake hate crime to instill more divisiveness? Both of those I see doing harm to others in the real world yet they get a free pass?
- diminoten 7y agoFree pass? No. Is it the primary source of their traffic? Hardly. Infowars peddles in hate. CNN comes by it occasionally. There is a difference, and it's huge.
- ekanes 7y agoUpdate: After a few articles, you need to register to continue reading.