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Incognito no more: Publishers close loopholes as paywall blockers emerge
- a3n 7y agoI wonder if paywall bypass tools will one day be treated as burglary tools.
- CriticalCathed 7y agoProbably no different than a crack.
- akersten 7y agoWhy? The webserver chose to provide the browser with content. If they're comfortable serving the article to any browser that whispers the secret passphrase "I'm visiting you from Google.com" - well, that's their prerogative.
- sincerely 7y agohttps://ansuz.sooke.bc.ca/entry/23 https://ansuz.sooke.bc.ca/entry/23
- a3n 7y agoIf a guy can be convicted for traversing a URL ... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weev https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weev ... then just about anything can be prosecuted if the "victim" and prosecutor are determined enough and the perpetrator is unlikable enough. His conviction was overturned on incorrect venue, not because of a problem with the charge.
- akersten 7y agoYep, I know of Weev's case and think it was a heinous miscarriage of justice. Companies outsourcing the consequences of their misconfigured servers as externalities to the legal system is how we wind up with massive data breaches that firms simply brush off and consider business as usual. But that's a whole 'nother soapbox.
- apple4ever 7y agoI have not read a Washington Post article in a long time since they made it harder to bypass their paywall. Anytime it comes up, I just close the tab. I don’t mind supporting journalism (and I pay for two local papers) but I do not like the heavy handed tactics of this bigger sites.
- bryanrasmussen 7y agook I do the same thing but it isn't because if they let me read the articles for free then I would pay them.
- lixtra 7y agoI tipped for the guardian in the past and their sales are up[1]. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19799893 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19799893
- winningcontinue 7y agoWashington Post and NYT are what the President of the United States says is fake news. At the same time, they're limiting the audience of their coverage to subscribers only beyond a few free articles a month. I wonder how ordinary people who can't/won't pay for subscriptions will receive their information to make up their minds after this retreat.
- educationdata 7y agoMost people read title to make up their minds. Unfortunately.
- mr_toad 7y ago> I wonder how ordinary people who can't/won't pay for subscriptions will receive their information to make up their minds after this retreat. Don’t we already know the answer to that? They’ll get their “news” from their “friends” on Facebook.
- inapis 7y agoThe way it was done historically? Pay for one or two publications which instead of arriving at your doorstep every morning will be delivered to your phone every morning. The people who couldn't or wouldn't pay for good journalism would not receive any - at that point you'd be deriving your information from discourse with other people.
- Raphael 7y agoA lot of freebie newspapers summarize the original stories.
- ProfessorLayton 7y agoTangentially related, but I find it pretty frustrating that websites can detect private browsing to begin with, when all I really wanted is to not have a browsing session leave a trace on my phone/computer when I'm done. It doesn't help that on iOS, deleting browser data is 4 menus deep, and there's a bug that keeps surfacing allows this to happen: https://video.twimg.com/ext_tw_video/1128887578541797376/pu/vid/590x1280/VoOHN21RzB_U47ZC.mp4?tag=9 https://video.twimg.com/ext_tw_video/1128887578541797376/pu/... Worse, deleting browser data turns off private browsing if you previously had it enabled.
- suspectdoubloon 7y agoI guess for test on iOS would be to see if you could store something to localStorage as that doesn't work in safari would be one way to tell of your in incognito mode.
- 0xADEADBEE 7y agoIt would be nice if there were an app like CookieAutoDelete [0] for mobile Safari (or desktop Safari if Mozilla keep misbehaving!). You can disable cookies but that's trivially detectable. I guess it's trivial to detect, but it needn't be; something akin to Mozilla's Containers [1] on mobile Safari would be a step in the right direction. [0] - https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/cookie-autodelete/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/cookie-autode... [1] - https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/multi-account-containers/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/multi-account...
- 0xADEADBEE 7y agoI had no idea that this was the case; thank you for highlighting it. I also have no idea what would posses the Safari team to think settings I have enabled aren't distinct from data foisted onto me by websites I visit but that is a question for keener intellects than mine. I wish mobile browsing was as good as Desktop. It's such a shame that various restrictions don't afford the granularity of laptop browsing.
- NoblePublius 7y agoIf I can’t use incognito mode to read to NYT, NYT shouldn’t use incognito mode sources.
- scanny 7y agoSome ~large~ sites are still quite far behind tech wise in stopping free reading. What do these bigger papers use? My national site just had a `class="premium-content"` that you needed to delete to bypass it. They upgraded, and now all you have to do is take the `class="QUnWjUZnTonf"` for each paragraph, and remove it. (e.g. https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=12231625 https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&object... ) I wonder who is in charge of these sorts of things, you would think that if you are going to block people off you would put more effort into things.
- 0xADEADBEE 7y agoI've worked in a few NZ dev shops and rigor isn't in my experience, high on the agenda! I also had no idea NZ Herald even had a subscription model, so thank you.
- winningcontinue 7y agoIt's good enough that for the average consumer, they'd never decide to look in to the source code, edit it and then reload the page with the changes. However this type of stuff just allows someone to easily come along with a counterforce app and scale the paywall.
- hamilyon2 7y agoWait, what? Is content shadowing now ok with Google? I always thought that content presented to Google bot should be very very close to what user see when they click link. And if not, Google penalize website hard. Has that changed? I mean, if rule still stands, than news websites will show up in search results with keywords "subscription" and "article". Instead of "USA" and "brexit". If content shadowing is ok now, that gives spammers a free ride.
- jacquesm 7y agoThis hasn't been the case for years if you're a big name. Small fry lives by different rules than the Washington Post or the San Francisco Chronicle.
- lysp 7y agoIt is a constant annoyance to me when my mobile google app suggests "interesting stories" to me which end up being paywall locked.
- akersten 7y ago> Wait, what? Is content shadowing now ok with Google? It goes by a different name, but yes - the policy ended according to the article: > Google’s ending of first-click free now means that subscription publishers can still appear in Google search results without offering access. Kind of a shame. I remember my frustrations in the mid-2000's of search results riddled with this dark pattern in the form of ExpertsExchange and Quora results.
- kranner 7y ago
- keyle 7y agoThis is just getting worse. The internet has been sold out and now it's just pathetic. I imagine in a not-so-far away future, it will be illegal to bypass paywalls and fines will apply.
- TurningCanadian 7y agoThe only way to have free content is if the user is the product being sold. That's detrimental to both the user and to the society that they live in if it affects how they make decisions. (Which is an integral part of news) I simply don't understand how anyone could be frustrated with a publication making it harder to get content for free. It's what we must accept if we don't want the government to provide the news.
- tomc1985 7y agoThat attitude practically erases the entire foundation upon which the web was born and grew popular. There was an entire culture of gifting, information freedom, and passion projects and capitalism has swallowed it whole. These capitalist fucks can take their "user is the product" BS and shove it up their collective ass. The internet should belong to nerds, not moneypigs
- headsoup 7y agoThis is because of the modern idea that we should be most interested in ourselves and what profit we can generate rather than what is good for our community (i.e. open, independent and shared journalism). Also, if the user is not to be the product, then the company must demonstrate the value of the product that we should be paying for. If the perceived value is not there, why would anyone want to pay?
- LoSboccacc 7y agothe point is not free Vs paid, the point is the bait and switch of presenting the content as free to crawlers and then wall it to users that's the annoying part.
- door5 7y ago> The only way to have free content is if the user is the product being sold. Or we could provide robust public funding, like the BBC > It's what we must accept if we don't want the government to provide the news. Public funding of media does not make it "government news". In fact, it's subject to far more scrutiny than private media. You would rather Jeff Bezos and friends control the news rather than a transparent & highly regulated independent publicly funded organization?
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- arthurfm 7y agoAre we going to end up in a situation where the only news sites without a paywall are those filled with sensationalist and/or inaccurate articles and Z-list celeb gossip like the Daily Mail [1]? [1] https://www.dailymail.co.uk/ https://www.dailymail.co.uk/
- headsoup 7y agoI think the business model associated with these paywalls is what is flawed. I'm not going to subscribe to a site just because I viewed a number of articles if I didn't perceive them to be high value. They must demonstrate value for money, and this problem seems to present evidence that the perceived value isn't there.
- Haga 7y agoNext stage.. Piracy prevention as one copies articles and republished.. Every incapable Industrie from movies to music dies the same insane way.
- 0xADEADBEE 7y agoIt's an interesting development because the amount of people who actively seek to bypass paywalls must be negligible. While it's mostly second nature to a large swathe of the HN crowd, devtools/private browsing/Google-refe[r]rer plays aren't exactly typical browsing tricks for the average person. I can only extrapolate that it's either it's either a) a bid to be seen to be doing something to higher-ups or b) an attempt to garner subscriptions from the tech crowd with the nous to bypass a paywall ue to low numbers [0]. The latter seems unlikely on account of actual conversions and the former seems myopic. I'd love to be a fly on the wall at some of these meetings! [0] - https://www.nytimes.com/2018/11/01/business/media/new-york-times-earnings-subscribers.html https://www.nytimes.com/2018/11/01/business/media/new-york-t...
- wyclif 7y agoWhat are your favourite paywall blocking software and extensions?
- AlexCoventry 7y agoIncognito mode is still working fine for WaPo, in my hands (chromium/ubuntu 16.04.) There are people in the HN thread she links to substantiate the claim, which also report it's working fine for them.
- millstone 7y agoI came here to make the point that there was too much friction in subscribing and logins across devices. To prove it I checked a major publisher and - wow, ApplePay, TouchID, done. Five seconds and I'm a subscriber, $8 a month. And iCloud sent the password from my MBP to my iPhone, probably Google-users get the same or better. I checked a second publisher and it has slightly more friction, asking for my name, but still makes payment much easier than before. There was a time where digital was about upselling print, but to my surprise publishers seem to be doing things right. I just now got two subscriptions, it feels good to support journalism.
- docker_up 7y agoIs there a way to remove publications from Google News sources? If I can't read the article for free, then I don't want to see their links ever.
- systemcluster 7y agoYou could use the uBlacklist browser extension.
- ac29 7y ago"Sources and topics you see less of" in Settings can block sources.
- atemerev 7y agoThe problem and the solution look obvious: there are many news sources, everybody wants to get paid, people don’t want to pay for all of them, yet still not content from getting the news from a single source. We have solved this problem for music and movies already, Spotify and Netflix are Silicon Valley poster children. Now we just need to build a news / text media aggregator along the same lines.
- tortasaur 7y agoI'm not convinced the problem will remain solved for music, and video certainly isn't solved. Gone are the days when everything was on Netflix; now it's fragmented, split amongst the big players in the space. I can see Spotify losing their dominance just as easily.
- atemerev 7y agoThere are issues, but it is still more convenient than it was before Netflix and Spotify. In fact, I don’t use Spotify, I use Apple Music (as I travel a lot and live in two countries, and they are less picky about that) — the same music is still available there.
- inapis 7y ago>there are many news sources, everybody wants to get paid, people don’t want to pay for all of them, yet still not content from getting the news from a single source. Don't pay for all of them and BE CONTENT with getting news/information from a small set of outlets you want. Abundance of choice doesn't mean that you have to try out everything under the sun. This is consumer expectations being irrational after an era of free ad-sponsored internet articles. Given a median US income of 60k, most people within this group can definitely budget for 3-4 publications annually. Go lower and people can pay for 2-3 publications. Go lower and you probably don't have time for reading news and have more pressing matters in life. We are no longer primed to pay for content so even paying 10 USD a month is jarring experience for most. The problem is less of the market and more of the consumer. We went from a lack of information to information overabundance with the advent of internet, google and free articles. Now we want to read/watch/listen to everything which is physically impossible. We think we want to read a couple of articles from every other site but most of us (HN/reddit may be vocal exceptions) end up reading a decent chunk of articles from a small number of sites. I am not pulling these numbers out of thin hair. I am building a much more powerful alternative to pocket/instapaper and these trends are coming from the first set of beta users (albeit small but for which I have no reason to believe also doesn't pan out at significant numbers) from finance, tech and other industries. Even I was surprised when I ran my own set of links and saw that 95% of them were coming from a set of 5-6 publishers at best whose combined annual subscriptions were north of just 200 USD - something I'm happy to and already do pay for.
- 40acres 7y agoPublishing is in a similar position to streaming, but I find that I can be satisfied with one publication subscription as opposed to streaming where I have 3-4 subscriptions. You can remain very much in the loop by getting a subscription at one of the major 'centrist' general newspapers (NYT, WaPo).
- bubblethink 7y agonytimes routinely publishes filler articles on improving privacy, security etc. And yet, if you open nytimes in something like firefox focus/klar, it will block your view with a giant "You are in private mode; sign in" banner. Yeah, no shit nytimes. If I wanted to sign in, I wouldn't be in private mode. To anyone who still wants to persist on mobile, firefox with ublock origin works. It runs like a dog though, partly because of firefox on mobile and partly because of nytimes' bloat. This is also why amp isn't going away anywhere. Real news just fails on many levels. For a paid product, they really punish their users in so many ways.
- breakingcups 7y agoFirefox Mobile with uBlock origin runs fast on my cellphone, faster than Chrome without adblock.
- astazangasta 7y agoNews content should be bundled like streaming services. I am never going to pay $1 to each news site i read. I would pay $8 to read any news site.
- joegahona 7y agoApple News kinda does this, and they have a Free and + version.
- iamnothere 7y agoThis trend has been great for my productivity. Any time one of these comes up, I just close the tab. So far I haven't felt like I've missed out on anything important! If you manage to find a trustworthy news source, support it with cash to make sure it sticks around. If they break your trust, revoke your cash (and be sure to let them know why). That's the only way things will improve.
- terrycody 7y agoAnyone know how to bypass the "Medium" pay wall?? Help!