4 ms·

The paywall situation on Hacker News is really getting out of hand.

siva7 3y ago
Some newspapers are even starting to annoy me after i payed for a subscription to buy another subscription just to remove the ads.
- prepend 3y ago
  I learned this rule early in the internet, “paying doesn’t solve the problem.” I first tried to pay as I wanted to support. But it just let to more ads and more upsell and more bother. It was a more pleasant experience to not pay and see the basic ads than paying and getting bombarded with “dear prepend, buy a longer subscription/gift a subscription/change your password/do you love us/etc” Once the algorithms learned that the most likely buyer is a previous buyer and how to increase incremental revenue it started sucking more.
  - sagaro 3y ago
    This is so true in this world of A/B testing everything. When A/B tests are poorly designed and results are interpreted for a short time frame, in my experience it always leads to poor decisions which impact long term.
  - siva7 3y ago
    > Once the algorithms learned that the most likely buyer is a previous buyer and how to increase incremental revenue it started sucking more. That's why no subscription model will work in favour of the paying customer for newspapers, dating apps and so on. It was never a distribution problem as much as that once the money rolls in, the next question will always be the same: How do we increase revenue?
    - prepend 3y ago
      If there’s a dedicated decision maker they can fend off “how much more” by sticking to some design aesthetic of “build good thing, be happy with 60% margin.” But that’s pretty rare and hard to know as there’s also lots of single owner 4hourworkweekers trying to wring extra money out of subscribers and selling $3 shirts for $50 or whatever.
lvass 3y ago
Enabling firefox reader mode as soon as page loads fixes this one, as well as the vast majority of paywalled articles posted here.

Some newspapers are even starting to annoy me after i payed for a subscription to buy another subscription just to remove the ads.

prepend 3y ago
I learned this rule early in the internet, “paying doesn’t solve the problem.” I first tried to pay as I wanted to support. But it just let to more ads and more upsell and more bother. It was a more pleasant experience to not pay and see the basic ads than paying and getting bombarded with “dear prepend, buy a longer subscription/gift a subscription/change your password/do you love us/etc” Once the algorithms learned that the most likely buyer is a previous buyer and how to increase incremental revenue it started sucking more.
- sagaro 3y ago
  This is so true in this world of A/B testing everything. When A/B tests are poorly designed and results are interpreted for a short time frame, in my experience it always leads to poor decisions which impact long term.
- siva7 3y ago
  > Once the algorithms learned that the most likely buyer is a previous buyer and how to increase incremental revenue it started sucking more. That's why no subscription model will work in favour of the paying customer for newspapers, dating apps and so on. It was never a distribution problem as much as that once the money rolls in, the next question will always be the same: How do we increase revenue?
  - prepend 3y ago
    If there’s a dedicated decision maker they can fend off “how much more” by sticking to some design aesthetic of “build good thing, be happy with 60% margin.” But that’s pretty rare and hard to know as there’s also lots of single owner 4hourworkweekers trying to wring extra money out of subscribers and selling $3 shirts for $50 or whatever.

lvass 3y ago

Enabling firefox reader mode as soon as page loads fixes this one, as well as the vast majority of paywalled articles posted here.