3 ms·

Advertising is killing Tech Journalism

9 points by harryvederci 4y ago

PaulHoule 4y ago
Woulda upvoted this if it wasn't for the substack dark patterns.
- sdsd 4y ago
  As a huge Substack fan, I'm curious, what do you dislike? My only complaint is that sometimes the best content costs money, but that's actually also what I think makes the platform good imo!
  - PaulHoule 4y ago
    I'm not against the model where people subscribe to see some of the content. In fact I prefer the substack model where you are choosing to pay for an author that really connects with you opposed to Medium where you are paying money to eat at a buffet of trash. I am against the idea of email newsletters though because the last thing I need is another email subscription. Everybody and his brother and his sister and fifteen cousins wants to send me email, I don't want anymore. For instance I used to like hearing about offers at Best Buy because they used to have good sales and I found shopping fun, but they sent me an email every day and I have neither the energy or money to buy something every day... And then the pandemic came and they quit discounting. I see it as a problem that a web site pop up anything that covers the content be it apologizing for cookies or asking for my email address. Substack loses points for the "let me read it first" language that suggests that it's not legitimate for me to just read articles I like online instead of subscribing. A medium article loses a lot of points for being on medium. It has to be really exceptional for me to want to promote it. A substack article loses a few points relative to a blog, it's nowhere near as bad as medium, but still it is annoying as hell to nag me every day about an email subscription that I'm never going to create.
- harryvederci 4y ago
  Yeah the fact that you can't "click" the "let me read it first" button (on the newletter popup) without a mouse was almost a deal breaker for me, but hitting the escape button did the trick.
Ancalagon 4y ago
Advertisement - and Tech Journalism - is killing Tech Journalism. Seriously, between the ads and the bloated, fluffed-up articles my willingness to start and finish most online articles has rapidly gone away.

9 points by harryvederci 4y ago

PaulHoule 4y ago

Woulda upvoted this if it wasn't for the substack dark patterns.

sdsd 4y ago
As a huge Substack fan, I'm curious, what do you dislike? My only complaint is that sometimes the best content costs money, but that's actually also what I think makes the platform good imo!
- PaulHoule 4y ago
  I'm not against the model where people subscribe to see some of the content. In fact I prefer the substack model where you are choosing to pay for an author that really connects with you opposed to Medium where you are paying money to eat at a buffet of trash. I am against the idea of email newsletters though because the last thing I need is another email subscription. Everybody and his brother and his sister and fifteen cousins wants to send me email, I don't want anymore. For instance I used to like hearing about offers at Best Buy because they used to have good sales and I found shopping fun, but they sent me an email every day and I have neither the energy or money to buy something every day... And then the pandemic came and they quit discounting. I see it as a problem that a web site pop up anything that covers the content be it apologizing for cookies or asking for my email address. Substack loses points for the "let me read it first" language that suggests that it's not legitimate for me to just read articles I like online instead of subscribing. A medium article loses a lot of points for being on medium. It has to be really exceptional for me to want to promote it. A substack article loses a few points relative to a blog, it's nowhere near as bad as medium, but still it is annoying as hell to nag me every day about an email subscription that I'm never going to create.
harryvederci 4y ago
Yeah the fact that you can't "click" the "let me read it first" button (on the newletter popup) without a mouse was almost a deal breaker for me, but hitting the escape button did the trick.

Ancalagon 4y ago

Advertisement - and Tech Journalism - is killing Tech Journalism. Seriously, between the ads and the bloated, fluffed-up articles my willingness to start and finish most online articles has rapidly gone away.