5 ms·
NYTimes is predatory on subscriptions. Over my long lifetime I've subscribed twice, and regretted it both times with intensity. Any place that allows easy inst
by epistasis 5mo ago
NYTimes is predatory on subscriptions. Over my long lifetime I've subscribed twice, and regretted it both times with intensity.
Any place that allows easy instantaneous subscription by a simple web form, but makes you call and talk to a person during limited business hours for cancellation, is a toxic place. I've been told they have stopped this predatory practice due to some newly passed laws or something, but they did not stop their predation due to their own values.
I urge everyone reading to unsubscribe instantaneously from the NYTimes for their business practices. Do not do business with unethical companies.
- vjvjvjvjghv 5mo agoI don’t remember how it worked but I did a one year subscription last year because of a discount and had no problems cancelling.
- no_no_no_yes 5mo agoYou can subscribe with your library card and get access to all NYTimes (games/crosswords too). One caveat is the subscription "rental" is for only a 3 day period, so you have "renew" your subscription every 3 days. This only takes 2 clicks though. For San Francisco public library: https://ezproxy.sfpl.org/login/nyt https://ezproxy.sfpl.org/login/nyt.
- bakul 5mo agoIt’s now one day only, at least through my library.
- ceejayoz 5mo agoI just bookmarked the apply-code page. Changes every 6-12 months, but that's easy to update.
- no_no_no_yes 5mo agoIt's 3 days through mine. What's your library's page? I have a few library cards so I'm curious as to which ones have better or worse terms.
- bakul 5mo agohttps://sccld.org/nyt-online/ https://sccld.org/nyt-online/ It used to be 3 days until some time last year.
- devilbunny 5mo agoAssuming you have a public library that offers these things, of course. Much like people talking about how great Libby is; you can get it through my library, but the selection is extremely limited. And very few libraries offer a good set of options, even for a substantial fee, to non-locals. I can’t promise I would pay $300/yr to access a great public library, but I would like the option to try it. My in-laws have a decent (not great, but decent) one in their city, and for sure they will never use it, but they aren’t going to drag the documentation up there and get cards just for me.
- _fs 5mo agoif (and a BIG if) you are california, you can get a library card to any in state library, regardless of where in the state you live. Between San Francisco, LA, and San Diego, I think I have pretty much the full suite of anything I can borrow from the eLibrary system.
- devilbunny 5mo agoYes, NY has similar policies. Many of us do not have that option.
- delecti 5mo agoAren't the games free? I hear that people pay for the games, but I've done Wordle daily since before NYT bought it, Connections whenever I've watched enough Hank Green videos to forget how much I hate it, and Tiles when I remember it exists, and I've never needed to pay for any of them.
- pastel8739 5mo agoOnly the free ones are free. Crossword, even mini crossword now I think, are paid. And some features like playing archived days are also only available with a paid subscription
- hoppyhoppy2 5mo agoMy US public library doesn't offer that. I'm glad yours does, though.
- dieselgate 5mo agoI respect your opinion but am grateful for and find tremendous value in my NYT subscription. I share it with my SO and read their articles constantly. Prior to getting a subscription I was a "turn js off" kind of person - which is fine I suppose and still do it for other sites. I do not maintain any streaming or other subscriptions outside of Deezer (and a Garmin GPS FWIW). I would like a Bloomberg subscription but to only read Matt Levine cannot justify the cost. To supplement other news sources am always reading Apnews, Reuters, Al Jazeera and The Stranger (local to Seattle). NYT is just not a hill I'm willing to die on re: marketing etc.
- ProjectArcturis 5mo agoFYI you can get Money Stuff delivered by email without a Bloomberg subscription.
- dieselgate 5mo agoThanks for that! I have been on Levine's website recently and for some reason thought they may deviate in content or something. But will try it out. It's a daily newsletter which is kind of high volume for me (which is why I hadn't subscribed prior) but will check it out. I actually may have been sub'd previously and had to check out because the push-model was slightly too much; would kind of prefer a pull model.
- toomuchtodo 5mo agoIf you prefer pull, subscribe to it with https://www.kill-the-newsletter.com/ https://www.kill-the-newsletter.com/ (I subscribe to Bloomberg, and send their emails to feeds which end up in a https://karakeep.app/ https://karakeep.app/ instance for consumption)
- dieselgate 5mo agoGreat idea and thanks, will check it out!
- 5mo ago
- brokencode 5mo ago“unsubscribe instantaneously” Oh the irony of telling somebody to instantaneously unsubscribe from something notoriously hard to unsubscribe from. Me personally, I just go on the web chat every once in a while and say I want to cancel, and they give me a nice discount.
- darepublic 5mo agolets not throw out the baby with the bathwater
- convolvatron 5mo agoI think we need more babies. I would be ecstatic to pay for an alternative source of national US journalism that actually has some analysis and decent writing. NYT is a shadow of its former self, apnews reads to me like USnews. international helps round it out, but it's not super in depth for the US.
- cwillu 5mo agoThe NYT is not a baby. At _best_ they're a pail of dirt that occasionally has some flecks of gold mixed in with the mud.
- Ekaros 5mo agoOnly thing business understand is money. And they should be punished for their past malicious actions. Maybe in 100 or 200 years we might consider some forgiveness.
- nortlov 5mo agoI jumped into a NY Times games sub for a year; couldn’t find the cancel button after a couple minutes of fiddling and ended up doing a CC chargeback in 60 seconds.
- filoleg 5mo agoAgreed, I made the same mistake once by subbing on their website. Dealing with the eventual cancelation was an absolute pain. Years later, I wanted to sub again, and this time I did it through the iOS app. Best decision ever, as now it just sits alongside my other App Store subscriptions and is easily cancelable in a single click.
- notsydonia 5mo agoI love this simple but excellent suggestion, thank you.
- lostlogin 5mo agoThe NYT frequently offer price deals which make it cheaper to directly subscribe. But unsubscribe hell remains (or did in January this year). I’m not in the US.
- hsbauauvhabzb 5mo agoAssuming they are both the same price this also speaks directly to NTY: people will give Apple a 30% cut just to not deal with their shitty practices.
- beAbU 5mo agoNo it doesn't, because the price is the same. If the Apple Pay route was 30% expensiver, then I reckon most would not opt for that option.
- hsbauauvhabzb 5mo agoI think you misinterpret: people use the apple route which means NYT lose money, and seeing people unsubscribe to their direct service only to immediately subscribe to Apple would’ve obvious.
- failuser 5mo agoAnd it’s not just them, many businesses force you to call to unsubscribe, this should be illegal. I managed to unsubscribe via their chatbot. Maybe because I’m in California where it’s actually illegal.
- brightball 5mo agoUsing services that will let you generate single use credit card numbers for subscriptions are great for this type of thing. You just disable the card number.
- JumpCrisscross 5mo ago> makes you call and talk to a person during limited business hours I unsubscribed a couple years ago. It was a click on the website. (Just checked. Cancelling online without talking to anyone is still an option.)
- alephnerd 5mo agoDepends on the jurisdiction you are in.
- JumpCrisscross 5mo agoI’m in Wyoming. There is zero chance we have any consumer protection laws around this.
- mikestew 5mo agoNo, it doesn't. I live in WA, with no such consumer protections, and it was a few clicks.
- jrflo 5mo agoI unsubscribed ~7 years ago and was forced to call a person. It depends on where you live, I remember reading at the time that California residents could unsubscribe online, but everyone else was forced to call. They then forced you to convince a phone operator that you really wanted to cancel. They may have changed it due to changing legislation, or maybe you live in an area with better laws.
- epistasis 5mo agoIf you read one more sentence further: > I've been told they have stopped this predatory practice due to some newly passed laws or something, but they did not stop their predation due to their own values.
- OkayPhysicist 5mo agoThe fact that they have an online unsubscribe option that's only available for California users is seriously scummy.
- mikestew 5mo agoThat isn't a fact. Plenty of folks under the OG comment that don't live in CA have said they cancelled online, myself included.
- eduction 5mo agoYou can usually get a web cancel option by changing your address, because some states, including California[1], have laws requiring it be as easy to cancel as it was to sign up. WSJ offered me an online cancel option after I moved (cough) to California. It was a digital subscription by the way - usually they have your address on file anyway because you used it to verify your credit card. [1]https://oag.ca.gov/news/press-releases/attorney-general-bonta-issues-consumer-alert-california%E2%80%99s-automatic-renewal-law https://oag.ca.gov/news/press-releases/attorney-general-bont...
- deleted 5mo ago[deleted]
- tobinfricke 5mo agoAny place that allows easy instantaneous subscription by a simple web form, but makes you call and talk to a person during limited business hours, is a toxic place. Happily, this practice is illegal in California. Sometimes consumer-protection laws work ... and are necessary. (As a hackaround, try using a VPN to make it appear as if you are connecting from California...)
- jjtheblunt 5mo ago> Happily, this practice is illegal in California. that's totally irrelevant: Conde Nast for Wired is a shameless offender, for example. took me hours to cancel some autorenewing subscription i never subscribed for, perhaps enabled years ago through some dark pattern in iOS, but i genuinely don't know, and am not easily tricked.
- ceejayoz 5mo agoWired once sent my dad to collections for an automatic renewal that wasn't even due yet.
- jjtheblunt 5mo agoit's disgusting these scammers just get to keep on scamming with no consequences
- dyauspitr 5mo agoWhat a load of crap. You can just cancel your subscription from the app or on your account on the desktop.
- jsbisviewtiful 5mo ago> I urge everyone reading to unsubscribe instantaneously from the NYTimes for their business practices. If people stopped buying from unethical businesses it would be practically impossible to function in the modern day. Not only is it extremely difficult to know what businesses are “ethical”, but it’s becoming increasingly easy to assume no business is truly ethical. e.g. Environmentally friendly clothing brand Everlane just sold to SHEIN of all places.
- Tistron 5mo agoI've been close to subscribing to The Economist a couple of times, but when I do a web search I find a lot of people complaining about their similar practice of making it difficult to unsubscribe, so I've refrained. I guess there are more people who give up on unsubscribing than who refrain from subscribing?
- jbonatakis 5mo agoUnsubscribing from The Economist was one of the most frustrating corporate interactions I've ever had. Honestly if it was easier to unsubscribe I'd probably have an on and off again subscription, but I'll never subscribe again because I don't want to jump through those hoops to unsubscribe.
- garethsprice 5mo agoIt's hard to calculate the number of people who don't subscribe at all, but you can calculate the number of recovered subscriptions from a retention process. FWIW, as a subscriber to both, I have more often found myself manually renewing lapsed subscriptions than going through painful cancellation processes to get out of them. I get the Economist through DiscountMags.com where it is often available with a discount.
- mikestew 5mo agoAny place that allows easy instantaneous subscription by a simple web form, but makes you call and talk to a person during limited business hours That hasn't been true for, what, almost ten years? When I cancelled three months ago, it was about three or four clicks through the beg screens, and done. No, I don't live in CA.
- epistasis 5mo agoI live in California, cancelled about five years ago, and they forced me to talk to a person who demanded a reason for my cancellation, and then argued with me about wanting to cancel. Do not subscribe to the NYTimes. Use your library card, if one must read it, and unfortunately as the undeserved "paper of record" one must often read it to be kept aware of what others are being fed. There's no baby here to throw out with the bath water, I find other places have far better coverage for all the topics I care intensely about. For example, their Ukraine coverage is basically Russia-lite, and extremely anti-Ukrainian, I haven't seen such biased coverage anywhere else except for far-right rags.
- radley 5mo ago> I live in California, cancelled about five years ago, and they forced me to talk to a person who demanded a reason for my cancellation, and then argued with me about wanting to cancel. That was 5 years ago. California's "click-to-cancel" law was amended in 2024, effective July 1, 2025.
- queenkjuul 5mo agoSee, you've made a fundamental mistake: NYT is a far-right rag in sheep's clothing
- bandofthehawk 5mo ago> their Ukraine coverage is basically Russia-lite, and extremely anti-Ukrainian This is very surprising to me, I thought they were kind of pro Ukraine biased. I asked an AI and it came back with this: > The New York Times' coverage of the war is overwhelmingly pro-Ukraine in its framing, tone, and attribution of responsibility, though critics argue this manifests as omission of context regarding NATO expansion and US intelligence involvement rather than direct support for Russia.
- dataflow 5mo agoWhat a fascinating hill to (with some assumptions about your political leanings) choose to die on. Does the logic go something like "the country may be dying while owing over $100,000 of debt on my behalf, but I'm not gonna let scummy newspapers get in the way with O($100) from my wallet?
- godshatter 5mo agoIt's possible to care about more than one thing at a time.
- dataflow 5mo agoIt's also possible to exercise some strategic discretion in acting on instances of the things you care about, no? There are so many similar hills to die on. It's not like there's a shortage of scummy companies you can retaliate against, if you that's the crusade you enjoy.
- spelk 5mo ago.I urge everyone reading to unsubscribe instantaneously from the NYTimes for their business practices. Do not do business with unethical companies. You are not wrong for thinking that, but I encourage people to consider that generally the business and editorial areas are largely independent of each other because of the value of editorial independence in case they think that the lack of ethics applies to their journalism too.
- epistasis 5mo agoWell I would also encourage people to unsubscribe for their editorial practices, and this was the incident that prompted my second unsubscription: https://www.theguardian.com/media/2020/jun/05/new-york-times-says-tom-cotton-opinion-piece-did-not-meet-editorial-standards https://www.theguardian.com/media/2020/jun/05/new-york-times... They have predilection for defense of elites, including Trump, and have not challenged his corruption to the degree that they have challenged, say Clinton's accusations of corruption. Their defense of the elite in their coverage that launched the war in Iraq, the outright corruption of their own reporters and editors, is not reflected in the overall reputation of the NYTimes. Holding them up as the beacon of good journalism results in poor judgements on what's happening with current affairs, because they are often quite biased in very disastrous ways that have resulted in the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people and trillions of wasted defense spending. More recently, the circling of the wagons of those considered "in-group" like Olivia Nuzzi has also been despicable, but definitely descriptive of the general editorial choices at the NYTimes. However I don't expect as many people to agree with me that the NYTimes has an undeserved reputation for journalistic excellence, so I focus mostly on their bad business practices.
- dualvariable 5mo agoI haven't had a NYTimes subscription since around 1991. This thread has a whole bunch of Charlie Browns in it who are "shocked, shocked" to find that Lucy has pulled away the football once again...
- cwillu 5mo agoHave they issued a retraction for the biologically impossible “dog rape” claims yet?
- stronglikedan 5mo ago> Do not do business with unethical companies. If they got what I want, I don't care about ethics, I care about value. I've just never seen value in NYT.
- gspr 5mo ago[flagged]
- micromacrofoot 5mo agoThe FTC did away with the "call to cancel" after subscribing online, fortunately. You have to allow cancellation using the same method as subscription. So they can no longer do this. https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/news/press-releases/2024/10/federal-trade-commission-announces-final-click-cancel-rule-making-it-easier-consumers-end-recurring https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/news/press-releases/2024/10/...
- nobodyandproud 5mo agoI heard this, but I cancelled without fuss during the worst of cancel culture. A couple of years later resubscribed. I also subscribe to the WSJ to make sure I receive a more balanced viewpoint.
- xeeeeeeeeeeenu 5mo agoThat's why it's best not to give companies your credit card number. If you subscribe through PayPal, you can cancel through PayPal.
- chasd00 5mo agoyou can do a merchant block on your CC then it doesn't matter what they claim, no more payments issued to that merchant (NYT in these examples).
- deleted 5mo ago[deleted]
- aj7 5mo agoI like the system. Every single time I talked to the human, and explained that the Times wasn’t worth the “regular” price, back came a much lower one.
- regnull 5mo agoUnsubscribe? And then miss out on all that excellent "There is another thing you should be worried about" content?
- danudey 5mo agoWhat, you don't appreciate opinion pieces like "Donald Trump is a convicted felon, serial liar, serial business bankrupter, Russian asset, dementia victim, alleged pedophile, and racist, sure, but what if Kamala was worse somehow? That would be awful, so I encourage everyone not to vote for her."
- tshaddox 5mo agoI had the same experience after subscribing for crosswords around 10 years ago, but I think at that time they did let you ask nicely for cancellation via a support chat bot. I think they might have only supported this in California due to California state law.
- couchdb_ouchdb 5mo agoRespectfully disagree that it's toxic or predatory. Very easy to cancel via chat as well. New York times is an incredible jewel of a company. I am fine with some marketing tactics that aren't incredibly heavy handed. They are far far far from unethical.
- johnvanommen 5mo ago> Any place that allows easy instantaneous subscription by a simple web form, but makes you call and talk to a person during limited business hours for cancellation I moved into a new home. I kept the old one for a few weeks extra. Needed time to move out. I signed up for CenturyLink at my new home. After six weeks, I tried to turn off internet at my old house. * I can’t. * CenturyLink wouldn’t let me cancel, without waiting on hold for an hour or more * I work overnight * CenturyLink is open when I’m asleep So I’m paying for two plans with the same company. Thanks CenturyLink.
- daveshistory 5mo agoCertified mail? I know it's old-fashioned but then you could hold their feet to the fire if they kept charging you.
- ericpauley 5mo agoA certified letter never fails in my experience.
- fletchowns 5mo agoCopy/paste this to your local news organization and your representative in congress.
- beAbU 5mo agoThis is a good argument for local brick and mortar representation for the critical services we consume. My bank, mobile and fibre providers all have branches/offices/shops in the town closest to where I live (15km drive). At each of these locations there is one or more necks that can be wrung if something goes wrong with my services I know it's not really a solution for your nocturnal proclivities, but I think the argument holds. If you had to sacrifice a couple of your sleeping hours but you know you can sort your problem, then you migt be inclined to do so?
- daveshistory 5mo agoIf all else fails resort to old-fashioned letter. As long as it's certified you will have proof of delivery. And then, if they continue to make unauthorized charges, it is your credit card company's problem. They are awake during business hours, and they WILL sort it out.
- Henchman21 5mo ago> Do not do business with unethical companies. Sure name one who is ethical and successful.
- sixtyj 5mo agoThe people working in (traditional) media are lagging behind the online world. Twenty years ago - back in 2005–2006, when the world was just going massive online - they had to explain to newspaper owners what the internet was… and some of them simply fell behind. In general, we should value all “traditional” media, because what passes for news today are flash-in-the-pans that may not be here in 10–20 years - it has generally been found that links have an average lifespan of 10 years, which means that “today’s new, great, free, independent” news may not be here with us in 10–15 years. (I’ve been doing really small b2b media for 25 years, so I know how it hurts when a PR agency comes to me - having been paid by a client - and “begs” me to publish their article for free.)
- pandaman 5mo agoWhen I moved to the US, one surprising thing was the "telemarketing" and, at that time, half of the spam calls I've got were selling NYT subs. I had no idea what kind of newspaper it was at the time but I figured it's not very good if someone is paid to call random people at home to move those subs.
- AbstractH24 5mo agoI only subscribe in the summer to the in print version. And actually I find they are quite foolish about it. Every year I get offered the intro rate again of maybe $5/week. then cancel when it gets too cold to sit outside and read. Might cost them more to print and deliver it.
- comfysocks 5mo agoI hate this kind of thing too, but realistically this is every newspaper/digital that I’ve subscribed to ever. In a way, I get it. The new media landscape has put traditional news organizations in an existential crisis. I would hate to see world where the only way they could exist is under someone like bezos.