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CEO of Scroll here. Glad you're a fan of The Correspondent, we love them too. Also hear you on the privacy concerns. The publisher contracts with Scroll require

CEO of Scroll here. Glad you're a fan of The Correspondent, we love them too. Also hear you on the privacy concerns. The publisher contracts with Scroll require that they remove third-party trackers 'that share information with parties other than Publisher or have a commercial purpose other than improving user experience.' It's always going to be a negotiation when you're trying to work with sites rather than unilaterally act against them, but we're genuinely trying to get them to a place where they're living up to the privacy promise that a consumer would want.

fbelzile 7y ago
I actually had this concept in my Trello list of good business ideas. I wasn't going to pursue it since I like running one person businesses, but I'm glad you're working on it! Good job, keep it up and good luck!
- arctictony 7y ago
  Thank you! I really appreciate that
gcb0 7y ago
isn't scroll a tracker on itself? Not saying what is done or not, but what is technically possible. The proposed product is very much 100% identical to facebook/google login buttons on 3rd party sites. The provider (in this case scroll) have access to the full browsing history, what is accessed at what time. Isn't this tracking (even if only in possibility) diametrically opposed to promoting an internet without ads/trackers? I mean, Scroll will have to track users to divide the contributions per-access back to the sites.
akkartik 7y ago
Does Scroll work if I block third-party cookies? Update 10 minutes later: It isn't working for me on theatlantic.com; I got the "free articles" drawers and then got blocked after they counted down to 0. So perhaps the answer to my question is "no". I can whitelist third-party cookies on specific sites, but I don't think I can whitelist a single cookie across all sites. This seems unfortunate. Update 30 minutes later: I tried disabling both cookie- and tracker-blocking in Firefox and still saw no sign of it working on theatlantic.com
- mirimir 7y ago
  Huh, maybe that's why it didn't work for me. I allow third-party cookies, but only from sites that I've visited during the current browser session. And all cookies are deleted when I close Firefox.
- arctictony 7y ago
  If you whitelist [*.]scroll.com in Chrome for example, Scroll should work. Important to note it doesn't get you past paywalls. The economics would make the price insanely high for that.
  - andai 7y ago
    Ahh, this is an important note. My first thought seeing this post was, "finally, a Spotify for the news!"
    - arctictony 7y ago
      Would love to do it, but for a publisher the economics get super hard at this time. The number of new consumers has to be large enough to offset the drop in ARPU that a bundle would represent and publishers are super wary that there are enough people out there who want to get past paywalls to make that happen. This is the reason why even Apple News+ had such trouble convincing anyone to join. I do think that over time more opportunities for, at first, skinny bundles will emerge but the world isn't there yet at the scale you'd want.
      - jacques_chester 7y ago
        In theory we might be competitors, but I'd rather the world sucked less than feel smug. So here's my argument: You don't charge enough money. It's the same mistake literally everyone ahead of you has already made before failing. Charge more money. Charge what seems like an absurd amount of money. Because you need a large pool to get people through the door. It's easier to cut prices than to raise them. Charge more damn money. More selfishly: I can help you with the paywalls thing without cookies. jacques@robojar.com.

fbelzile 7y ago

I actually had this concept in my Trello list of good business ideas. I wasn't going to pursue it since I like running one person businesses, but I'm glad you're working on it! Good job, keep it up and good luck!

arctictony 7y ago
Thank you! I really appreciate that

gcb0 7y ago

isn't scroll a tracker on itself? Not saying what is done or not, but what is technically possible. The proposed product is very much 100% identical to facebook/google login buttons on 3rd party sites. The provider (in this case scroll) have access to the full browsing history, what is accessed at what time. Isn't this tracking (even if only in possibility) diametrically opposed to promoting an internet without ads/trackers? I mean, Scroll will have to track users to divide the contributions per-access back to the sites.

akkartik 7y ago

Does Scroll work if I block third-party cookies? Update 10 minutes later: It isn't working for me on theatlantic.com; I got the "free articles" drawers and then got blocked after they counted down to 0. So perhaps the answer to my question is "no". I can whitelist third-party cookies on specific sites, but I don't think I can whitelist a single cookie across all sites. This seems unfortunate. Update 30 minutes later: I tried disabling both cookie- and tracker-blocking in Firefox and still saw no sign of it working on theatlantic.com

mirimir 7y ago
Huh, maybe that's why it didn't work for me. I allow third-party cookies, but only from sites that I've visited during the current browser session. And all cookies are deleted when I close Firefox.
arctictony 7y ago
If you whitelist [*.]scroll.com in Chrome for example, Scroll should work. Important to note it doesn't get you past paywalls. The economics would make the price insanely high for that.
- andai 7y ago
  Ahh, this is an important note. My first thought seeing this post was, "finally, a Spotify for the news!"
  - arctictony 7y ago
    Would love to do it, but for a publisher the economics get super hard at this time. The number of new consumers has to be large enough to offset the drop in ARPU that a bundle would represent and publishers are super wary that there are enough people out there who want to get past paywalls to make that happen. This is the reason why even Apple News+ had such trouble convincing anyone to join. I do think that over time more opportunities for, at first, skinny bundles will emerge but the world isn't there yet at the scale you'd want.
    - jacques_chester 7y ago
      In theory we might be competitors, but I'd rather the world sucked less than feel smug. So here's my argument: You don't charge enough money. It's the same mistake literally everyone ahead of you has already made before failing. Charge more money. Charge what seems like an absurd amount of money. Because you need a large pool to get people through the door. It's easier to cut prices than to raise them. Charge more damn money. More selfishly: I can help you with the paywalls thing without cookies. jacques@robojar.com.