4 ms·

I HATE clicking on a Google link and discovering that it's paywalled. I don't care about the newspapers "survival" problem, I personally do not derive any bene

I HATE clicking on a Google link and discovering that it's paywalled. I don't care about the newspapers "survival" problem, I personally do not derive any benefits from them. I just want my Google/DDG results clean and actually be able to read them. If a link is paywalled, it should be ranked way lower. Google cache trick doesn't work all the time.

platz 5y ago
Pay up.
- syshum 5y ago
  They need to make the price reasonable, and $9.99 month for a single paper is not reasonable IMO. For $9.99 I month I can access to a library of thousands of hours of videos (netflix, prime, discovery+, etc) , thousands of hours of music (spofity, prime music, etc) , or thousands of hours of PC Games (Xbox Game Pass) Sorry but the USA Today is not as valuable as these services... maybe $2.99 but more likely something like $9.99 a YEAR at most $1.99 a mo would be a price point I would consider.
  - CubsFan1060 5y ago
    Those are interesting comparisons. None of your comparisons get you actual, recent news. Do you see this all as simply entertainment?
    - syshum 5y ago
      In many ways yes. News competes for the same time and budget as entertainment. These are both activities that people spend their disposable time / income on. They are not Food, Shelter, etc. Nor will someone refuse to go to their kids ball game because they need to read the USA Today.. No news like a movie or a tv show is something to pass the time when you have nothing else to do. Also keep in mind Trust in news is at a all time low, in part because the news themselves treat it as entertainment by sensationalizing everything, "if if bleeds it leads" and other High Drama "news"
  - memling 5y ago
    > For $9.99 I month I cant access to a library of thousands of hours of videos (netflix, prime, discovery+, etc) , thousands of hours of music (spofity, prime music, etc) , or thousands of hours of PC Games (Xbox Game Pass) Do you think it'd be worth it if you had archival access to the paper? It'd be interesting to be able to read NYT from its inception in 1851, for example. I know there are some papers that have done digital archiving, but I wonder if a research pass would be a way to generate revenue, too...
    - faeyanpiraat 5y ago
      It’s like walmart throwing some expired food after you for free. It could be good for some use cases, but not for the primary one which is getting fresh food for consumption.
      - memling 5y ago
        hence the research pass. I could actually see that as valuable for a subset of people if it were searchable. I find the historical value of news generally higher than the current value but of course that's not why people read the paper. I might be inclined to subscribe to the times if I could read contemporaneous perspectives of historical periods I'm interested in. as it is, I sometimes feel like Chesterton, who snarkily opined he would be impressed if the news could get the past right, to say nothing of their guesses about the future. even so I think there's a need for deeply reported careful work...and that takes money. archives might work. I also like the git diff idea in a sibling comment.
    - syshum 5y ago
      It could be, Only if it was a full, complete, uncensored, unedited archive. Which is highly unlikely. Another valuable feature would be to have access to a git style record of all edits... which no newspaper would ever do either
    - tomjen3 5y ago
      It might be interesting to read the newspapers for september 10 2001 or read the stories for the days before a big event, but other than that? It has very little value.
  - ameister14 5y ago
    I'm willing to support honest, well done journalism and thoughtful editorial for $5 bucks a month and expect about 4 articles for that.
the__alchemist 5y ago
I built a search engine based on Bing's API. One of the core features is ranking paywalled sites lower, making their text grey (eg Hacker news), and putting a moneybag char in the link. My reasoning is the same as yours - there's nothing wrong with Paywalls, but they're no good in search results, since chances are, a given user doesn't have an account with an arbitrary paywalled site that shows up in search.
xoa 5y ago
>I personally do not derive any benefits from them >I want to be able to read them Uh? Being able to read is deriving a benefit. I don't disagree that the current situation is a complete mess, and that subs everywhere is ridiculous. It's perfectly possible to imagine technical/business solutions that would match reasonable budget/month for news to what people read and valued. And it's also easy to see real collective action problems, incentive issues and so on that might make that impossible. All tied together with advertising, privacy, public education issues and so on as well. But claiming you derive no benefit from newspapers at all would be a stretch even if you didn't want to read them, but claiming you don't while one sentence later saying you do want to read them? That doesn't seem quite reasonable.
- deadalus 5y ago
  >I personally do not derive any benefits from them Any article is plastered all over the internet in hundreds of websites. Same topic, different headline. >I want to be able to read them I want to be able to read ANY of those "free non-paywalled" articles instead of the one that's paywalled. I have no loyalty to NYT, USA Today or The Blaze.
  - CubsFan1060 5y ago
    So you want the news, and you don't want anyone to earn any money from spending the time to produce that news?
    - deadalus 5y ago
      I will prefer reading the same news from a website that does not paywall content. Websites pay-walling content is not the issue here. The issue is Google ranking paywalled sites higher even though the same content is available elsewhere for free. Those non pay-walled websites must also survive.
      - JumpCrisscross 5y ago
        > issue is Google ranking paywalled sites higher even though the same content is available elsewhere for free It's almost like it's not the same content. Something breaking on the Times and then being summarized elsewhere are not interchangeable, which is why Google ranks its results as it does.
dejj 5y ago
HTTP status 402, Payment Required may be the one for you https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/HTTP/Status/402 https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/HTTP/Status/402
newsyyswen 5y ago
One issue is that the newspapers believe that they are providing a service by allowing search engines to link to their page. From the perspective of the search engine (and us readers), it feels like a bait-and-switch to present the full article to a crawler robot in exchange for a better search ranking, only to hide it and demand payment from a human. But over in Australia, old media organizations have successfully lobbied for a "link tax" which allows them to demand payment from search providers who link to them. We've still got a long way to go before we reach a consensus on the independence of search platforms and the idea that human viewers should be served the same content as web spiders.
ferdowsi 5y ago
Google actively encourages hard paywalling in lieu of other ways of gating media (like incognito detection) . https://www.blog.google/outreach-initiatives/google-news-initiative/protecting-private-browsing-chrome/ https://www.blog.google/outreach-initiatives/google-news-ini... Also strange that some people would care more about a clean search result than the survival of media being consumed.
kin 5y ago
If we want quality content then these news sources need to be incentivized somehow. When it comes to SEO, the content is all there but the paywalls are usually client side so it’s harder for crawlers to dock down paywalls. Overall I agree that paywalls are annoying. But I do want quality publications to survive else we are going to be stuck with content like USA Today
etc-hosts 5y ago
Do you deposit your paychecks in the bank or do you send them back to your employer ?

platz 5y ago

Pay up.

syshum 5y ago
They need to make the price reasonable, and $9.99 month for a single paper is not reasonable IMO. For $9.99 I month I can access to a library of thousands of hours of videos (netflix, prime, discovery+, etc) , thousands of hours of music (spofity, prime music, etc) , or thousands of hours of PC Games (Xbox Game Pass) Sorry but the USA Today is not as valuable as these services... maybe $2.99 but more likely something like $9.99 a YEAR at most $1.99 a mo would be a price point I would consider.
- CubsFan1060 5y ago
  Those are interesting comparisons. None of your comparisons get you actual, recent news. Do you see this all as simply entertainment?
  - syshum 5y ago
    In many ways yes. News competes for the same time and budget as entertainment. These are both activities that people spend their disposable time / income on. They are not Food, Shelter, etc. Nor will someone refuse to go to their kids ball game because they need to read the USA Today.. No news like a movie or a tv show is something to pass the time when you have nothing else to do. Also keep in mind Trust in news is at a all time low, in part because the news themselves treat it as entertainment by sensationalizing everything, "if if bleeds it leads" and other High Drama "news"
- memling 5y ago
  > For $9.99 I month I cant access to a library of thousands of hours of videos (netflix, prime, discovery+, etc) , thousands of hours of music (spofity, prime music, etc) , or thousands of hours of PC Games (Xbox Game Pass) Do you think it'd be worth it if you had archival access to the paper? It'd be interesting to be able to read NYT from its inception in 1851, for example. I know there are some papers that have done digital archiving, but I wonder if a research pass would be a way to generate revenue, too...
  - faeyanpiraat 5y ago
    It’s like walmart throwing some expired food after you for free. It could be good for some use cases, but not for the primary one which is getting fresh food for consumption.
    - memling 5y ago
      hence the research pass. I could actually see that as valuable for a subset of people if it were searchable. I find the historical value of news generally higher than the current value but of course that's not why people read the paper. I might be inclined to subscribe to the times if I could read contemporaneous perspectives of historical periods I'm interested in. as it is, I sometimes feel like Chesterton, who snarkily opined he would be impressed if the news could get the past right, to say nothing of their guesses about the future. even so I think there's a need for deeply reported careful work...and that takes money. archives might work. I also like the git diff idea in a sibling comment.
  - syshum 5y ago
    It could be, Only if it was a full, complete, uncensored, unedited archive. Which is highly unlikely. Another valuable feature would be to have access to a git style record of all edits... which no newspaper would ever do either
  - tomjen3 5y ago
    It might be interesting to read the newspapers for september 10 2001 or read the stories for the days before a big event, but other than that? It has very little value.
- ameister14 5y ago
  I'm willing to support honest, well done journalism and thoughtful editorial for $5 bucks a month and expect about 4 articles for that.

the__alchemist 5y ago

I built a search engine based on Bing's API. One of the core features is ranking paywalled sites lower, making their text grey (eg Hacker news), and putting a moneybag char in the link. My reasoning is the same as yours - there's nothing wrong with Paywalls, but they're no good in search results, since chances are, a given user doesn't have an account with an arbitrary paywalled site that shows up in search.

xoa 5y ago

>I personally do not derive any benefits from them >I want to be able to read them Uh? Being able to read is deriving a benefit. I don't disagree that the current situation is a complete mess, and that subs everywhere is ridiculous. It's perfectly possible to imagine technical/business solutions that would match reasonable budget/month for news to what people read and valued. And it's also easy to see real collective action problems, incentive issues and so on that might make that impossible. All tied together with advertising, privacy, public education issues and so on as well. But claiming you derive no benefit from newspapers at all would be a stretch even if you didn't want to read them, but claiming you don't while one sentence later saying you do want to read them? That doesn't seem quite reasonable.

deadalus 5y ago
>I personally do not derive any benefits from them Any article is plastered all over the internet in hundreds of websites. Same topic, different headline. >I want to be able to read them I want to be able to read ANY of those "free non-paywalled" articles instead of the one that's paywalled. I have no loyalty to NYT, USA Today or The Blaze.
- CubsFan1060 5y ago
  So you want the news, and you don't want anyone to earn any money from spending the time to produce that news?
  - deadalus 5y ago
    I will prefer reading the same news from a website that does not paywall content. Websites pay-walling content is not the issue here. The issue is Google ranking paywalled sites higher even though the same content is available elsewhere for free. Those non pay-walled websites must also survive.
    - JumpCrisscross 5y ago
      > issue is Google ranking paywalled sites higher even though the same content is available elsewhere for free It's almost like it's not the same content. Something breaking on the Times and then being summarized elsewhere are not interchangeable, which is why Google ranks its results as it does.

dejj 5y ago

HTTP status 402, Payment Required may be the one for you https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/HTTP/Status/402 https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/HTTP/Status/402

newsyyswen 5y ago

One issue is that the newspapers believe that they are providing a service by allowing search engines to link to their page. From the perspective of the search engine (and us readers), it feels like a bait-and-switch to present the full article to a crawler robot in exchange for a better search ranking, only to hide it and demand payment from a human. But over in Australia, old media organizations have successfully lobbied for a "link tax" which allows them to demand payment from search providers who link to them. We've still got a long way to go before we reach a consensus on the independence of search platforms and the idea that human viewers should be served the same content as web spiders.

ferdowsi 5y ago

Google actively encourages hard paywalling in lieu of other ways of gating media (like incognito detection) . https://www.blog.google/outreach-initiatives/google-news-initiative/protecting-private-browsing-chrome/ https://www.blog.google/outreach-initiatives/google-news-ini... Also strange that some people would care more about a clean search result than the survival of media being consumed.

kin 5y ago

If we want quality content then these news sources need to be incentivized somehow. When it comes to SEO, the content is all there but the paywalls are usually client side so it’s harder for crawlers to dock down paywalls. Overall I agree that paywalls are annoying. But I do want quality publications to survive else we are going to be stuck with content like USA Today

etc-hosts 5y ago

Do you deposit your paychecks in the bank or do you send them back to your employer ?