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> A dark pattern all too common these days. I hate the modern web. This is a belief I strongly disagree with that has become pervasive on HN: "I don't like thi

> A dark pattern all too common these days. I hate the modern web. This is a belief I strongly disagree with that has become pervasive on HN: "I don't like this thing so it is a dark pattern/is toxic, etc." People will, on the one hand, decry the current state of news media and bemoan how Google and/or Facebook have destroyed or perversely mutated it, while, on the other hand, decry the efforts of the news media to monetize (aka get paid) for their efforts. There is no free lunch. Journalism isn't free. Labor isn't free. We certainly aren't entitled to the free use of the products of each other's labor.

dec0dedab0de 4y ago
There is no free lunch. Journalism isn't free. Labor isn't free. We certainly aren't entitled to the free use of the products of each other's labor. Sure, but it's rude to present something and then take it away. Google used to downrank sites who did this, anyone remember how awful experts exchange was? If they want to have a paywall then they should have a paywall.
- thinkmassive 4y ago
  Exactly, this is a dark pattern because it uses up the visitor’s bandwidth before dropping a paywall in front. On a similar note it’s using unnecessary power (quite possibly from a battery of limited capacity) rendering a paywall with an effect nobody wants to see, except probably the people who made it. There’s an easy solution: HTTP response 402: payment required
  - seanw444 4y ago
    Websites forgo 402, because it's not mandatory, and of course they want your eyes to land on the page first. Gotta get that marketing in.
  - throw10920 4y ago
    HTTP 402 is like Hashcash[1] - greatly underrated and/or unknown, and yet extremely effective in solving its target problem. In 402's case, if it was, say, legislated by the government, then the following would happen: (1) Users wouldn't be bait-and-switch'ed by a paywall that revealed part of the content before appearing (2) Companies would need to band together to implement a micropayments framework (3) Lasseiz-faire maximalists wouldn't be able to complain because the only requirement would be that paywalls be signalled by an HTTP status code The only potential downside is that companies might, instead of making a common micropayments API, instead just use Google, or even worse, not use any common platform and instead make consumers sign up for a new account for each site. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hashcash https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hashcash
    - thinkmassive 4y ago
      Agree 100% on the effectiveness and it being underrated. Lightning Service Authentication Tokens[1] (LSATs) provide a standard that’s usable today. With a Lightning Network browser integration like Alby[2] you can access paywalled content behind a proxy like Aperture[3], and it’s a very smooth process already. [1] https://lsat.tech https://lsat.tech [2] https://getalby.com/ https://getalby.com/ [3] https://github.com/lightninglabs/aperture https://github.com/lightninglabs/aperture
- Root_Denied 4y ago
  Experts exchange was the site that finally got me to install a chrome extension that would let me blacklist domains in my search results.
jchw 4y ago
Understood. However, it’s also not my problem to solve. That’s a problem for Wired to solve. How I feel about these UX patterns and business models is not negotiable; it’s an honest reaction. How Wired makes money and deals with free use is negotiable. The internet has not been kind to many business models, particularly, it has been rough on paying for content. That’s just what happens when copying costs basically $0. You can pirate almost anything and people definitely do. Many people will immediately hop on archive.is if they hit one of these patterns. Personally I often just don’t read the article and leave. In the end, it isn’t my problem if people don’t like my attitude. Wired is trying to sell to me, so it is absolutely their problem if I don’t like this pattern. And guess what? I am, in fact, a former Wired subscriber. Maybe they make more money now that they paywall, but I don’t even care. I’m still going to hate them for it. Likewise, I will never like or respect being forced into advertisements. If I like something enough, I will pay for it. I pay for YouTube and it feels like a win/win for me.
- syndacks 4y ago
  >That’s a problem for Wired to solve. Yea, they solve it with a paywall that results in X% conversion.
  - jchw 4y ago
    That’s not a solution to the problem of people loathing your business model, that’s just a repeated statement of the business model. If it works for them today, good for them. It works for some big publications. Let’s see how that continues to pan out as subscription fatigue increases and publications close up content almost entirely.
- rchaud 4y ago
  Wired is not trying to sell to you. You clicked a link to a Wired article that someone posted on Hacker News. Wired was not involved. Digital properties aren't going to be groomed to meet your precise tastes. This is doubly so for general interest publications like Wired that have to appeal to a broad base of viewers and can't charge more than a few bucks for a subscription. If the article is valuable but paywalled, there are ways to get around that. Try turning off Javascript or accessing the page in an incognito browser. archive.ph can also work.
Bancakes 4y ago
So throw your hands up and close the office. It's a win-win. No wasted effort on their part, and no flow of garbage websites on our part.
notreallyserio 4y ago
IMO the dark pattern here is that they ask for money and also show ads. I assume they still show ads to subscribers given their magazine roots (they don't list "no ads" as a benefit). I'm willing to pay for services but not if they still attempt to show me ads.
oauea 4y ago
Go back to the early 2000s and admire all the work people put out for free on the net because they enjoyed doing it. This was thriving, but then people with dollar signs for eyes took over and now we're stuck with them.
- next_xibalba 4y ago
  True, but also, newspapers were still very financially stable. The number of gainfully employed journalists throughout the U.S. was far greater. Regional and city newspapers thrived. Now, many are dead and many of the survivors are slowly dying. Print news is now looking like a power law: a handful flourish (NYT, WSJ, WaPo, etc.) and a long tail struggles to stay afloat. These outcomes are, in part, created by people's perception that the information generated by news organizations is a both a commodity and is free. Neither is actually true.
  - bigDinosaur 4y ago
    Surely the newspapers are partly to blame for this perception going back more than one hundred years: $2 (or whatever) was never the actual cost to fund the news.
- Tempest1981 4y ago
  During the dot-com-bubble, it was a race for users/eyeballs, with hopes of later profits. It wasn't sustainable. But it was definitely fun while it lasted.
  - oauea 4y ago
    That's the rise of the dollar symbols for eyeballs period. There were plenty of people making things with 0 regard to profit. Think back to all the random little websites or flash games people put countless hours into.
ls15 4y ago
> There is no free lunch. Journalism isn't free. Labor isn't free. We certainly aren't entitled to the free use of the products of each other's labor. So non-free stories should not get any free promotion on HN then. Non-free outlets are not entitled to get their free share of my attention. Where can I send the bill for the occasions where they managed to fly under the radar and grab a bit of my attention without paying (me) for it?
- cowpig 4y ago
  > free promotion on HN I think you've got that backwards
titzer 4y ago
> There is no free lunch. It's just a bait and switch. These journalists want all the benefits of the web: free indexing and archiving, free global distribution and rendering, virtual word-of-mouth advertising; a huge and easy revenue generation model. Their production and design costs are nothing compared to two decades ago. They don't own printing presses. The internet pretty much bends over backwards to throw traffic at them, and on top of that, they rip the rug out under your feet as soon as you land there! Like you can't even read the words that they wrote unless you agree to more bother, and they've already made a few cents off you just from the ads that were served! And to boot, the whole show shoved megabytes of crap in your face, which actually costs you money, and they follow you around the internet like an unimaginable creep. It's like they feel entitled to all this free stuff and the one thing they offer of value they pull back at the last second. Shitty.
- _Algernon_ 4y ago
  >they've already made a few cents off you just from the ads that were served A few cents, for one page load?! lol
  - rstupek 4y ago
    Yeah that's generously high for an ad view
- passivate 4y ago
  >It's like they feel entitled to all this free stuff and the one thing they offer of value they pull back at the last second. Shitty. FTE salaries, healthcare, equipment, business expenses, travel costs, legal fees, etc, etc versus...few cents? Maybe it would help the conversation if you can you quantify what you think they're actually earning from all the "free stuff" as you claim.
- throw10920 4y ago
  What? There's no bait and switch - the site tells you as soon as you load that you need a subscription. > These journalists want all the benefits of the web Where's this coming from? Where's this "want"? Most of the stuff that you listed is either explicitly paid for or just comes with the web automatically. > free indexing Yes, Google offers free indexing because they get search engine ad revenue as a result. There's no "stealing" here. > archiving Hosting costs money. Journalists pay for that themselves. There's nothing "free" about it. The end. > free global distribution They're also paying bandwidth costs. > and rendering There's no way to view a page on the internet without rendering it on your computer. That's not something that journalists are taking advantage of - it's how the internet works. Also, publishers pay for hosting costs, too... > virtual word-of-mouth advertising Word-of-mouth is completely unrelated to the internet. > a huge and easy revenue generation model Please don't tell me that you're complaining about publishers trying to recoup costs of the journaling process. Who's going to pay for the salaries of writers? Infrastructure costs? Distribution? Web development? > Their production and design costs are nothing compared to two decades ago. ...and yet, the costs are still there. Publishing is not free, especially if you want content to publish, and especially if you want quality content. > It's like they feel entitled to all this free stuff and the one thing they offer of value they pull back at the last second. The only entitlement here is you feeling entitled to the work of journalists. This is a rant with little substance behind it, predicated on the false assumption that publishers and journalists have no costs.
denton-scratch 4y ago
> Journalism isn't free. So print newspapers, and sell them. I regard the worldwide web as free to use; I treat sites that don't share my view as not being part of the worldwide web. The world is full of interesting websites. If a website doesn't want me to read it, that's fine, I'll move on.
- gaius_baltar 4y ago
  Better yet: as readers, we can buy a paper in that nearby news-stand and be sure we can read it safely. Print papers do not come with spies that follow us as we walk through the city nor start playing loud voice ads once we turn a particular page, etc.

dec0dedab0de 4y ago

There is no free lunch. Journalism isn't free. Labor isn't free. We certainly aren't entitled to the free use of the products of each other's labor. Sure, but it's rude to present something and then take it away. Google used to downrank sites who did this, anyone remember how awful experts exchange was? If they want to have a paywall then they should have a paywall.

thinkmassive 4y ago
Exactly, this is a dark pattern because it uses up the visitor’s bandwidth before dropping a paywall in front. On a similar note it’s using unnecessary power (quite possibly from a battery of limited capacity) rendering a paywall with an effect nobody wants to see, except probably the people who made it. There’s an easy solution: HTTP response 402: payment required
- seanw444 4y ago
  Websites forgo 402, because it's not mandatory, and of course they want your eyes to land on the page first. Gotta get that marketing in.
- throw10920 4y ago
  HTTP 402 is like Hashcash[1] - greatly underrated and/or unknown, and yet extremely effective in solving its target problem. In 402's case, if it was, say, legislated by the government, then the following would happen: (1) Users wouldn't be bait-and-switch'ed by a paywall that revealed part of the content before appearing (2) Companies would need to band together to implement a micropayments framework (3) Lasseiz-faire maximalists wouldn't be able to complain because the only requirement would be that paywalls be signalled by an HTTP status code The only potential downside is that companies might, instead of making a common micropayments API, instead just use Google, or even worse, not use any common platform and instead make consumers sign up for a new account for each site. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hashcash https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hashcash
  - thinkmassive 4y ago
    Agree 100% on the effectiveness and it being underrated. Lightning Service Authentication Tokens[1] (LSATs) provide a standard that’s usable today. With a Lightning Network browser integration like Alby[2] you can access paywalled content behind a proxy like Aperture[3], and it’s a very smooth process already. [1] https://lsat.tech https://lsat.tech [2] https://getalby.com/ https://getalby.com/ [3] https://github.com/lightninglabs/aperture https://github.com/lightninglabs/aperture
Root_Denied 4y ago
Experts exchange was the site that finally got me to install a chrome extension that would let me blacklist domains in my search results.

jchw 4y ago

Understood. However, it’s also not my problem to solve. That’s a problem for Wired to solve. How I feel about these UX patterns and business models is not negotiable; it’s an honest reaction. How Wired makes money and deals with free use is negotiable. The internet has not been kind to many business models, particularly, it has been rough on paying for content. That’s just what happens when copying costs basically $0. You can pirate almost anything and people definitely do. Many people will immediately hop on archive.is if they hit one of these patterns. Personally I often just don’t read the article and leave. In the end, it isn’t my problem if people don’t like my attitude. Wired is trying to sell to me, so it is absolutely their problem if I don’t like this pattern. And guess what? I am, in fact, a former Wired subscriber. Maybe they make more money now that they paywall, but I don’t even care. I’m still going to hate them for it. Likewise, I will never like or respect being forced into advertisements. If I like something enough, I will pay for it. I pay for YouTube and it feels like a win/win for me.

syndacks 4y ago
>That’s a problem for Wired to solve. Yea, they solve it with a paywall that results in X% conversion.
- jchw 4y ago
  That’s not a solution to the problem of people loathing your business model, that’s just a repeated statement of the business model. If it works for them today, good for them. It works for some big publications. Let’s see how that continues to pan out as subscription fatigue increases and publications close up content almost entirely.
rchaud 4y ago
Wired is not trying to sell to you. You clicked a link to a Wired article that someone posted on Hacker News. Wired was not involved. Digital properties aren't going to be groomed to meet your precise tastes. This is doubly so for general interest publications like Wired that have to appeal to a broad base of viewers and can't charge more than a few bucks for a subscription. If the article is valuable but paywalled, there are ways to get around that. Try turning off Javascript or accessing the page in an incognito browser. archive.ph can also work.

Bancakes 4y ago

So throw your hands up and close the office. It's a win-win. No wasted effort on their part, and no flow of garbage websites on our part.

notreallyserio 4y ago

IMO the dark pattern here is that they ask for money and also show ads. I assume they still show ads to subscribers given their magazine roots (they don't list "no ads" as a benefit). I'm willing to pay for services but not if they still attempt to show me ads.

oauea 4y ago

Go back to the early 2000s and admire all the work people put out for free on the net because they enjoyed doing it. This was thriving, but then people with dollar signs for eyes took over and now we're stuck with them.

next_xibalba 4y ago
True, but also, newspapers were still very financially stable. The number of gainfully employed journalists throughout the U.S. was far greater. Regional and city newspapers thrived. Now, many are dead and many of the survivors are slowly dying. Print news is now looking like a power law: a handful flourish (NYT, WSJ, WaPo, etc.) and a long tail struggles to stay afloat. These outcomes are, in part, created by people's perception that the information generated by news organizations is a both a commodity and is free. Neither is actually true.
- bigDinosaur 4y ago
  Surely the newspapers are partly to blame for this perception going back more than one hundred years: $2 (or whatever) was never the actual cost to fund the news.
Tempest1981 4y ago
During the dot-com-bubble, it was a race for users/eyeballs, with hopes of later profits. It wasn't sustainable. But it was definitely fun while it lasted.
- oauea 4y ago
  That's the rise of the dollar symbols for eyeballs period. There were plenty of people making things with 0 regard to profit. Think back to all the random little websites or flash games people put countless hours into.

ls15 4y ago

> There is no free lunch. Journalism isn't free. Labor isn't free. We certainly aren't entitled to the free use of the products of each other's labor. So non-free stories should not get any free promotion on HN then. Non-free outlets are not entitled to get their free share of my attention. Where can I send the bill for the occasions where they managed to fly under the radar and grab a bit of my attention without paying (me) for it?

cowpig 4y ago
> free promotion on HN I think you've got that backwards

titzer 4y ago

> There is no free lunch. It's just a bait and switch. These journalists want all the benefits of the web: free indexing and archiving, free global distribution and rendering, virtual word-of-mouth advertising; a huge and easy revenue generation model. Their production and design costs are nothing compared to two decades ago. They don't own printing presses. The internet pretty much bends over backwards to throw traffic at them, and on top of that, they rip the rug out under your feet as soon as you land there! Like you can't even read the words that they wrote unless you agree to more bother, and they've already made a few cents off you just from the ads that were served! And to boot, the whole show shoved megabytes of crap in your face, which actually costs you money, and they follow you around the internet like an unimaginable creep. It's like they feel entitled to all this free stuff and the one thing they offer of value they pull back at the last second. Shitty.

_Algernon_ 4y ago
>they've already made a few cents off you just from the ads that were served A few cents, for one page load?! lol
- rstupek 4y ago
  Yeah that's generously high for an ad view
passivate 4y ago
>It's like they feel entitled to all this free stuff and the one thing they offer of value they pull back at the last second. Shitty. FTE salaries, healthcare, equipment, business expenses, travel costs, legal fees, etc, etc versus...few cents? Maybe it would help the conversation if you can you quantify what you think they're actually earning from all the "free stuff" as you claim.
throw10920 4y ago
What? There's no bait and switch - the site tells you as soon as you load that you need a subscription. > These journalists want all the benefits of the web Where's this coming from? Where's this "want"? Most of the stuff that you listed is either explicitly paid for or just comes with the web automatically. > free indexing Yes, Google offers free indexing because they get search engine ad revenue as a result. There's no "stealing" here. > archiving Hosting costs money. Journalists pay for that themselves. There's nothing "free" about it. The end. > free global distribution They're also paying bandwidth costs. > and rendering There's no way to view a page on the internet without rendering it on your computer. That's not something that journalists are taking advantage of - it's how the internet works. Also, publishers pay for hosting costs, too... > virtual word-of-mouth advertising Word-of-mouth is completely unrelated to the internet. > a huge and easy revenue generation model Please don't tell me that you're complaining about publishers trying to recoup costs of the journaling process. Who's going to pay for the salaries of writers? Infrastructure costs? Distribution? Web development? > Their production and design costs are nothing compared to two decades ago. ...and yet, the costs are still there. Publishing is not free, especially if you want content to publish, and especially if you want quality content. > It's like they feel entitled to all this free stuff and the one thing they offer of value they pull back at the last second. The only entitlement here is you feeling entitled to the work of journalists. This is a rant with little substance behind it, predicated on the false assumption that publishers and journalists have no costs.

denton-scratch 4y ago

> Journalism isn't free. So print newspapers, and sell them. I regard the worldwide web as free to use; I treat sites that don't share my view as not being part of the worldwide web. The world is full of interesting websites. If a website doesn't want me to read it, that's fine, I'll move on.

gaius_baltar 4y ago
Better yet: as readers, we can buy a paper in that nearby news-stand and be sure we can read it safely. Print papers do not come with spies that follow us as we walk through the city nor start playing loud voice ads once we turn a particular page, etc.