3 ms·

This is getting totally out of hand. Nobody can pay a subscription for every single news site. If they were smart they would do a Netflix of news where you sub

by pogue 6mo ago

This is getting totally out of hand. Nobody can pay a subscription for every single news site. If they were smart they would do a Netflix of news where you subscribe to one service and it gives you access to a ton of different subscription news sites. I've tried a dozen different paywall bypass services including bpc & archive.today and I can't get it to bypass this. I think the Google Rich Text trick might work but I'm on mobile atm.

jimjimjim 6mo ago
Every newspaper had a price. People were happy with this.
- etchalon 6mo ago
  People demand access to everything.
  - pogue 6mo ago
    We're talking about a news provider that is one of the 3 original broadcast systems licensed in the US (NBC, CBS, & ABC). They've been provided public journalism since the dawn of radio & TV. They've been offering access to all their articles on their news websites without a paywall since at least the 1990s. It's just shocking when you see media company after media company go completely behind a paywall out of the blue when last week I was reading it with advertisements.
    - raw_anon_1111 6mo ago
      And CBS might as well be state controlled media and ABC just bribed Trump and very much kowtows to the administration. Advertisers are moving away from broadcast along with eyeballs.
    - jimjimjim 6mo ago
      With a TV there was no easy way to block ads. Sure you could change the channel or get up and do something else but people didn't bother. Now with news websites most people are running ad blockers. What are the news sites meant to do? Their employees are working, and they expect to be paid for that work. just like I expect to be paid for my job. Where is the money going to come from?
    - etchalon 6mo ago
      Advertising doesn't cover the bills anymore/ever.
deleted 6mo ago
[deleted]
sssilver 6mo ago
> If they were smart they would do a Netflix of news where you subscribe to one service and it gives you access to a ton of different subscription news sites Isn’t this exactly what Apple News[1] is? — [1] https://www.apple.com/apple-news/ https://www.apple.com/apple-news/
- badc0ffee 6mo ago
  Except it doesn't work with links, which is usually how I find news stories. I have Apple One (which includes News), but If I click on a link to the WSJ, I get the paywall. To read the article, I have to copy the article title or headline (if I can find it!), and paste it into the News app to read it.
  - chewmieser 6mo ago
    Use the share menu and select the News app and it’ll open the story in it. Not as easy as those app banners but still not too difficult.
    - nozzlegear 6mo ago
      TIL, thanks for the tip!
    - badc0ffee 6mo ago
      Thanks. I never would have thought to do that - the News app wasn't even one of the default targets for me.
- dwb 6mo ago
  It serves ads even if you pay, so for me, no.
  - chewmieser 6mo ago
    The ads are less intrusive than paid subscriptions from the providers IMO. Not a fan of the double-dip either though.
goosejuice 6mo ago
I'd rather have paywalls than the privacy shit storm ads on the internet brought us. Paying for content is totally fine. You paid to read a book. You paid for the paper. You paid to see a movie. Yeah they had/have ads but not ones that retarget and manipulate you. Think of how much more sane the world would be if you had to pay for Instagram and Facebook. I say bring on the paywall.
- adrian_b 6mo ago
  I would like paywalls, but only if they had been extremely different from the current paywalls. First, I almost never find subscriptions acceptable, but I would happily pay for downloading anything that I am interested in, after seeing a preview that would convince me that the content is worth it. Second, the procedure for paying would have to be very simple and more importantly, the prices would have to be very low, e.g in most cases not significantly bigger than $1. I can easily read many hundreds of articles per month, or even per day. A price of e.g. $30 per article is not feasible, except in very rare occasions, for something unusually valuable. In most cases even $10 would be too much for a single article. I actually subscribe to a few paywalled libraries, but I frequently prefer to take the content that I am paying for from some pirate sites, because those have much faster content searching and instant downloading, while if I go on the sites for which I pay dearly, I waste a lot of time with inferior searching and especially with various slow and annoying steps for authorization.
- eviks 6mo ago
  But you didn't pay for ten books just to check a couple of pages in each!
  - goosejuice 6mo ago
    It forces you to decide what's important to you.
- JKCalhoun 6mo ago
  I understood that ads paid for newspapers. The nominal fee they charged was probably for pulp and barrels of ink. (If the papers were completely free people would just grab armloads to line their bird cages.) When the physical paper is gone and delivery is over the wire, free should in fact be doable. Perhaps the local news fucked up by accepting Google ads. Had each regional, metropolitan area put together their own ad agency they could have served up local ads and likely kept something closer to their previous business model—likely reaped more dosh?
somat 6mo ago
Even netflix suffers from this, for a while they were great, pay them watch anything. but then the traditional publishing houses started cutting their works off from netflix in favor of running their own streaming. which had two results, a balkanization of streaming video (you can't just go to one place anymore) and netflix investing into making their own content so they have something to stream.
QuantumGood 6mo ago
You can copy/paste (or share to, if you set that up) what is visible before the paywall into Perplexity or similar service to see if the article is syndicated elsewhere paywall free, or find similar sources, e.g. https://www.perplexity.ai/search/apple-privately-threatened-to-6cJwJg1PTkuw1fqGKC8j_Q https://www.perplexity.ai/search/apple-privately-threatened-... If you have Apple news you can share to that in a similar way.

by pogue 6mo ago

jimjimjim 6mo ago

Every newspaper had a price. People were happy with this.

etchalon 6mo ago
People demand access to everything.
- pogue 6mo ago
  We're talking about a news provider that is one of the 3 original broadcast systems licensed in the US (NBC, CBS, & ABC). They've been provided public journalism since the dawn of radio & TV. They've been offering access to all their articles on their news websites without a paywall since at least the 1990s. It's just shocking when you see media company after media company go completely behind a paywall out of the blue when last week I was reading it with advertisements.
  - raw_anon_1111 6mo ago
    And CBS might as well be state controlled media and ABC just bribed Trump and very much kowtows to the administration. Advertisers are moving away from broadcast along with eyeballs.
  - jimjimjim 6mo ago
    With a TV there was no easy way to block ads. Sure you could change the channel or get up and do something else but people didn't bother. Now with news websites most people are running ad blockers. What are the news sites meant to do? Their employees are working, and they expect to be paid for that work. just like I expect to be paid for my job. Where is the money going to come from?
  - etchalon 6mo ago
    Advertising doesn't cover the bills anymore/ever.

deleted 6mo ago

[deleted]

sssilver 6mo ago

> If they were smart they would do a Netflix of news where you subscribe to one service and it gives you access to a ton of different subscription news sites Isn’t this exactly what Apple News[1] is? — [1] https://www.apple.com/apple-news/ https://www.apple.com/apple-news/

badc0ffee 6mo ago
Except it doesn't work with links, which is usually how I find news stories. I have Apple One (which includes News), but If I click on a link to the WSJ, I get the paywall. To read the article, I have to copy the article title or headline (if I can find it!), and paste it into the News app to read it.
- chewmieser 6mo ago
  Use the share menu and select the News app and it’ll open the story in it. Not as easy as those app banners but still not too difficult.
  - nozzlegear 6mo ago
    TIL, thanks for the tip!
  - badc0ffee 6mo ago
    Thanks. I never would have thought to do that - the News app wasn't even one of the default targets for me.
dwb 6mo ago
It serves ads even if you pay, so for me, no.
- chewmieser 6mo ago
  The ads are less intrusive than paid subscriptions from the providers IMO. Not a fan of the double-dip either though.

goosejuice 6mo ago

I'd rather have paywalls than the privacy shit storm ads on the internet brought us. Paying for content is totally fine. You paid to read a book. You paid for the paper. You paid to see a movie. Yeah they had/have ads but not ones that retarget and manipulate you. Think of how much more sane the world would be if you had to pay for Instagram and Facebook. I say bring on the paywall.

adrian_b 6mo ago
I would like paywalls, but only if they had been extremely different from the current paywalls. First, I almost never find subscriptions acceptable, but I would happily pay for downloading anything that I am interested in, after seeing a preview that would convince me that the content is worth it. Second, the procedure for paying would have to be very simple and more importantly, the prices would have to be very low, e.g in most cases not significantly bigger than $1. I can easily read many hundreds of articles per month, or even per day. A price of e.g. $30 per article is not feasible, except in very rare occasions, for something unusually valuable. In most cases even $10 would be too much for a single article. I actually subscribe to a few paywalled libraries, but I frequently prefer to take the content that I am paying for from some pirate sites, because those have much faster content searching and instant downloading, while if I go on the sites for which I pay dearly, I waste a lot of time with inferior searching and especially with various slow and annoying steps for authorization.
eviks 6mo ago
But you didn't pay for ten books just to check a couple of pages in each!
- goosejuice 6mo ago
  It forces you to decide what's important to you.
JKCalhoun 6mo ago
I understood that ads paid for newspapers. The nominal fee they charged was probably for pulp and barrels of ink. (If the papers were completely free people would just grab armloads to line their bird cages.) When the physical paper is gone and delivery is over the wire, free should in fact be doable. Perhaps the local news fucked up by accepting Google ads. Had each regional, metropolitan area put together their own ad agency they could have served up local ads and likely kept something closer to their previous business model—likely reaped more dosh?

somat 6mo ago

Even netflix suffers from this, for a while they were great, pay them watch anything. but then the traditional publishing houses started cutting their works off from netflix in favor of running their own streaming. which had two results, a balkanization of streaming video (you can't just go to one place anymore) and netflix investing into making their own content so they have something to stream.

QuantumGood 6mo ago

You can copy/paste (or share to, if you set that up) what is visible before the paywall into Perplexity or similar service to see if the article is syndicated elsewhere paywall free, or find similar sources, e.g. https://www.perplexity.ai/search/apple-privately-threatened-to-6cJwJg1PTkuw1fqGKC8j_Q https://www.perplexity.ai/search/apple-privately-threatened-... If you have Apple news you can share to that in a similar way.