[HN Gopher] You've Read Your Last Free Article, Such Is the Natu...
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You've Read Your Last Free Article, Such Is the Nature of Mortality
Author : ohjeez
Score : 110 points
Date : 2024-06-15 18:34 UTC (4 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.mcsweeneys.net)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.mcsweeneys.net)
| ReadCarlBarks wrote:
| Most sites use simple cookies or a localStorage entry to limit
| how many articles you can read in a month. You can bypass this
| with a private tab or by disabling JavaScript with uBlock Origin:
|
| * https://addons.mozilla.org/addon/open-in-temp-container/
|
| * https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock/wiki/Per-site-switches#no-...
|
| * https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock/wiki/Blocking-mode:-medium...
| itsoktocry wrote:
| I mean, yeah? This entirely misses the point of the article. In
| fact, it couldn't have been a worse shot.
|
| I don't know enough about the economics of this stuff, but I'm
| willing to pay for good online writing. I have a national paper
| subscription, two magazines and a handful of substacks I
| subscribe to.
|
| But this feel like a price point issue for me. Why is
| everything $9.99/month (close to $15/month CAD)? Where are all
| the $2.50 or $5.00 subs? I feel like we anchor to $10 because
| it's a nice easy number, but the average person just can't
| afford very many of these, and no single subscription is good
| enough. So we sustain our desire to not pay for anything.
| rectang wrote:
| I'm willing to sign up for some cheap subscriptions through
| Apple that I'd be unlikely to make directly because I don't
| have the energy to scrutinize individual vendors regarding
| hidden charges, dark patterns, data collection, security
| breaches, etc.
|
| I agree that the difference between $2.50 and $10.00 is
| significant, but addressing all the trust issues is too.
| dandandan wrote:
| Apple News+ helps there a lot. $13/mo for articles from a
| ton of paid outlets. It's not everything on those sites,
| but I find that most of the popular articles are available.
| paulddraper wrote:
| It went the same way as a $5 lunch.
| red_admiral wrote:
| Blogger siderea has talked about this a lot in relation to
| patreon, and the challenges for any platform wanting to
| replace it.
|
| EDIT: https://siderea.dreamwidth.org/1824441.html and
| https://siderea.dreamwidth.org/1371510.html
|
| Apparently it comes down to how card processing fees work, as
| long as there's a constant fixed cost per payment (whether or
| not there is also a percentage fee), "microtransactions"
| become uneconomic for the platform.
|
| Apparently the problem with letting people pay say $10 into
| an account and then dispense $1 a time to read articles is
| that makes you a "payment processor" in some states which
| comes with strict regulations and extra costs.
|
| EDIT2: and yes, we've already tried blockchain for that too.
| exe34 wrote:
| i suppose you could make a $10 donation to the site and
| they could give you free coupons for articles.
| adolph wrote:
| The coupons could be on a cryptographic ledger so you
| have access to it from mobile/desktop/family members and
| any article could ask for payment from it or maybe
| different pricing for different sales funnel entry
| points. I think this is what Brave browser has set up,
| but I havnt been motivated enough to inquire.
| lxgr wrote:
| Or they could just be... in a regular old database of the
| issuer, who is the one that will validate them anyway
| when you redeem them for articles?
| lxgr wrote:
| If the articles are still free for everyone, sure! If
| not, that's not a donation, but rather a regular payment
| for goods and services.
| ToucanLoucan wrote:
| I think most places get around this by having you pay for
| so many months at a go, instead of each month. Less
| flexible but I don't mind it.
| fragmede wrote:
| > EDIT2: and yes, we've already tried blockchain for that
| too.
|
| We've not already tried blockchain for this. The rails are
| there, just a small matter of implementation. Everyone's
| too busy building shovel factories and not enough people
| are mining for gold to make a web3 micropayments product.
|
| I can, right now, buy $5 of solana on Coinbase, give you
| $0.05, with an inconsequential fee of $0.001 or so using
| Solana, and with enough $0.05 payments, you can cash it out
| via Coinbase. It works on web on desktop via a chrome
| extension, I'm still working out a solution for mobile.
|
| I'd love to have an Internet reading budget for the month
| and have that automatically get disbursed to the writer if
| I read past a certain point in the article. The rails are
| all there, just a small matter of code and then getting
| adoption.
| bsder wrote:
| > Why is everything $9.99/month (close to $15/month CAD)?
|
| Money handling is _expensive_.
|
| Rampant fraud is the big problem. Even if you don't ship
| physical objects, your system will get used to test out
| stolen credit cards, for example.
|
| As such, anyone with two brain cells to rub together will
| immediately outsource money handling, which means that your
| minimum price is now limited by how much your processor
| charges.
| erkt wrote:
| Or some sort of system to pay per article. I'd toss a quarter
| here and there for content.
| lstamour wrote:
| It's like cheap Canadian cellphone or internet plans - you
| have to wait until a news org offers a deal, then sign up for
| it. Managed to get cheap NYT and WSJ subs from it. You have
| to cancel when the price goes up and then accept the offer at
| cancellation to keep your low price for one more year,
| forever.
|
| Honestly, if my local library offered more online news
| subscriptions, I would much prefer that. How we ended up in
| this scenario where everyone, even Medium, shows me a paywall
| with high subscription fees to bypass it is not sustainable
| worldwide in the long run. I don't mind paying for content,
| but keep it reasonable!
| p3rls wrote:
| I chose to go with a $3 subscription model myself, at that
| cheap it's just a waste of time to go through the unsub
| process. Cha Ching.
| paulcole wrote:
| > You can bypass this with a private tab or by disabling
| JavaScript with uBlock Origin
|
| Dang and this whole time I've been deciding which content I
| value and then paying for it.
| a2128 wrote:
| I learned once of a quick workaround that's baffling - putting
| a dot at the end of the domain name (example.com/page becomes
| example.com./page)
|
| Apparently this usually still resolves to the same page but the
| browser treats it as a different domain with separate cookies
| and localStorage, so it would bypass the limit, but if you kept
| doing it then it'd probably accumulate free articles still and
| stop working
| airstrike wrote:
| > so it would bypass the limit, but if you kept doing it then
| it'd probably accumulate free articles still and stop working
|
| at which point one could perhaps try visiting
| example.com../page
| bqmjjx0kac wrote:
| The reason the trailing dot works is that it represents the
| implicit root DNS node. Browsers do the dumb thing and
| consider it a different domain, but AFAIK there's no good
| reason not to canonicalize the domain name.
|
| All that to say, no, you sadly can't add another trailing
| dot.
| jonhohle wrote:
| I had never thought about having a local search domain so
| something like google.com.mynetwork. would resolve (the
| tailing dot prevents search domain lookups). Would a
| browser allow that internal site to access google.com
| cookies (since the lookup would be for google.com, no
| trailing dot). I suppose that would only work for
| unsecured traffic anyway so maybe not a huge attack
| vector.
|
| Edit to add: if you have web services that are resolved
| via DNS, it may be a performance advantage to configure
| clients with the trailing dot. A lifetime ago we ran into
| intermittent latency issues when some DNS resolvers would
| try to search before checking the canonical entry.
| cortesoft wrote:
| That wouldn't work because Google would not return the
| proper content, since the host header would not match
| google.com. HTTPS would not work either, like you said,
| because the cert would not match the new domain.
|
| If they didn't check host headers, then no, the browser
| would not send the cookies for google.com, since the
| browser has no idea about your DNS changes and is only
| looking at the domain name itself.
| WarOnPrivacy wrote:
| > Browsers do the dumb thing
|
| I could use more browser dumb things like this.
|
| Like when the browser won't ever forget that you once
| visited an HSTS server at this domain and now+forever
| won't let you visit the http server (at the same domain).
| sunshowers wrote:
| There's a string you can type in blind that bypasses
| HSTS. Works on Chromium browsers. I don't want to make to
| too easy to find so I won't say it here but you can look
| for it.
| cortesoft wrote:
| You really think HN readers can't find the interstitial
| bypass keyword? It shows up in the very first Google
| search for it, I am not sure who you think you are
| protecting.
|
| I also find it goes against the ethos of HN to try to
| prevent a user from controlling their own hardware... if
| I want to MITM myself, I should be able to.
| WarOnPrivacy wrote:
| > Works on Chromium browsers.
|
| Saw that a few days ago but I don't do Chromium browsers.
| Cest la vie.
|
| Appreciate the attempt.
| 1vuio0pswjnm7 wrote:
| One can also disable Javascript for individual sites ("site
| settings").
|
| Or use a client that does not implement cookies, localStorage
| or Javascript, like the original www browsers. I have been
| using these for decades.
|
| When I have to use a popular, graphical browser on a network I
| do not control, which is relatively rare, I use Javascript site
| settings and/or UBlock Origin. But that is far more
| complicated, more resource intensive and slower compared to
| using a simpler client and a localhost-bound forward proxy.
| Plus I am at the mercy of third parties: 1. the advertising-
| supported company distributing the browser and 2. the "browser
| extension" developer.
| akira2501 wrote:
| > You'll have to say to them gently, softly, "To be honest, I
| have no fucking clue. I was out of free articles."
|
| You can't copyright facts and journalism belongs to the people
| not to the institutions that are capable of publishing editorials
| at scale.
| remoquete wrote:
| Quality journalism, and, even more importantly, free journalism
| (as in neutral or unbiased), costs money. I think a
| subscription is a very low effort compared to the kind of risks
| and hard work top reporters go through.
|
| Another angle: prose and code describe facts using slightly
| different languages, but would you say that code (or
| institutions capable of publishing code at scale) shouldn't
| exist or that they should "belong to people" (what does that
| mean anyway?)
| akira2501 wrote:
| Journalism does not cost money. Running a company that is
| attempting to profit off of publishing costs money. Or have
| you never read anything produced at no benefit to the author
| that has ever informed you? I think you're putting the cart
| before the horse, and advertising supported journalism has
| always existed, and these companies would rather collect CPM
| from google than do legitimate placement of ads in their own
| content, which would be unblockable.
|
| No, what I'm saying is, the existence of institutions that
| can publish at scale has no impact on whether individuals can
| do it or not. I can write code whether Google exists or
| doesn't. In that sense it belongs to individuals.
| lxgr wrote:
| Of course journalism costs money.
|
| Sometimes it's just not directly paid (most commonly: ad-
| supported journalism), or even paid for by the journalist
| with their time and opportunity cost of not selling it to
| somebody that does charge for it (blogs etc.)
|
| If none of these are applicable, chances are it's PR, not
| journalism.
| WarOnPrivacy wrote:
| > Of course journalism costs money.
|
| Absolutely. Journalism takes time. Good journalism takes
| a lot of time.
|
| I would agree that it takes very little time to parrot
| LEO/Gov/Corp press releases.
|
| It takes much more time to vet that PR for accuracy,
| truthfulness and historical context - and then chase down
| all the rabbit holes that get turned up and compile
| enough info to craft an understandable story.
|
| It does suck that the first option gets chosen like 100-1
| over the 2nd.
| doubloon wrote:
| the difference between new york times and a independent
| creator journalism is that the NYT can fund a huge legal
| department to defend free speech inside the court system.
| Its why the major free speech cases like NYT v Sullivan
| have the NYT in the name.
|
| There is never, ever going to be an equivalent case with
| big tech ("Google V Sullivan") because Google does care
| what happens to youtube creators, and they are not liable
| because thanks to section 230 they are not a publisher.
| Google do not care if any youtuber get sued out of
| existence by the government or the powerful. Same for
| Wikipedia, Wikipedia is never going to be involved in a
| major free speech case because thanks to section 230 they
| have no legal liability for what others post on their site.
| Same for Facebook, Twitch, Twitter, all of them. Big Tech
| media has absolutely zero protections for any of the
| journalism done on them.
|
| That is why big cases like Weinstein are still done by the
| NYT and The New Yorker.
| syndicatedjelly wrote:
| When I ask older family members where they were or how they
| reacted when some important event happened, they usually say
| something like, busy with real life. Being glued to the news is a
| modern phenomenon, it's not the required state of being
| akulbe wrote:
| I stopped watching and reading the news, in general. I have
| some friends who balked at the idea when I mentioned it. They'd
| say, "Oh, but how do you keep up on important news?"
|
| I don't.
|
| My life is better for letting it go. If something is
| _genuinely_ important, and I really need to know - I always end
| up finding out somehow.
| TheAceOfHearts wrote:
| I think a reasonable barometer for a lot of news is: will
| this be important or relevant in 1 month? If the answer is
| "no", then it's probably more entertainment than anything
| else.
|
| However if I were to try and steelman the opposition for your
| position, I'd probably explore the argument that you could be
| living a very privileged life which might be part of the
| reason for why you're able to ignore the news. For certain
| vulnerable groups, keeping up to date with politics and the
| news might have a tangible impact in their everyday life.
|
| With that being said, I generally don't keep up with the news
| either.
| majormajor wrote:
| Slicing economically (oversimplifying here and ignoring
| other certain types of vulnerable or feeling-under-attack
| groups) the people at the bottom and the people at the top
| don't generally need to worry about the news. The ones at
| the top will be fine either way. The ones at the bottom
| will continue to have to scrap along either way. It's the
| people in the middle who's level of comfort day-to-day
| could be most affected by political changes, for whom a
| change in tax rate or inflation or social subsidies could
| shift comfort into precariousness or vice versa.
| bsder wrote:
| > However if I were to try and steelman the opposition for
| your position, I'd probably explore the argument that you
| could be living a very privileged life which might be part
| of the reason for why you're able to ignore the news.
|
| Well, the other issue is that people pay too much attention
| to national news and _waaaay_ to little attention to local
| news.
|
| That fracking site that just opened up next to your farm
| should probably occupy your attention. The four slobs
| trying to bring fiber to your town need your support. The
| fact that your local sheriff's office is swinging around
| with military gear might be a bit of a concern. etc.
|
| Sure, you want to make sure you are paying attention to
| whether the fascists are trying to take over nationally,
| however, those same people can do _a lot more direct damage
| to you_ by taking over local control.
| amelius wrote:
| And yet, here you are, on HN.
| rightbyte wrote:
| It is usually better to read about stuff like months later
| when the dust have settled. Watching CNN lazer focus on some
| "developing story" with almost nothing to talk about but
| gossip makes my head hurt.
|
| If the local bridge is closed due to X people tell you.
| bqmjjx0kac wrote:
| Have you found a good place to read about slightly less
| current events? I feel like most articles are little salami
| slices of events as they occur, without context.
| rightbyte wrote:
| Not really, not on the internet, sadly.
|
| On paper there are some semimonthly environmentalist
| magazines my wife subscribe to, and the news coverage in
| those is quite settled and nice in that way. I guess
| magazines would be the place to look, but those seem to
| be dying off or are losing quality...
| wizzwizz4 wrote:
| There's https://tedium.co/what-is-tedium, but that's just
| one site.
| WarOnPrivacy wrote:
| Wikipedia has a few spread over several countries https:/
| /en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slow_journalism#Slow_journalis...
|
| Techdirt does analysis
| https://news.ycombinator.com/from?site=techdirt.com
|
| Prospect Magazine does yesterday's journalism
| https://www.prospectmagazine.co.uk/
|
| RetroReport does event postmortem videos
| https://retroreport.org/
|
| For particularly brilliant writers (ex:
| https://duck.com/?q=Kashmir+Hill
| https://duck.com/?q=Zeynep+Tufekci), I'll see where else
| they're writing. Sometimes that turns up mags I don't
| know about.
| hn_version_0023 wrote:
| Real news has always traveled by word-of-mouth very rapidly.
| I am also trying to give it up-- it's definitely a difficult
| battle missing out on that dopamine fix (or whatever it is
| )-- but I continue to struggle!
| kthejoker2 wrote:
| It goes hand in hand with the always connected lifestyle.
|
| Work Slack at 10pm.
|
| Your kids having phones at school 'just in case.'
|
| People upset you didn't text them back for last minute dinner
| plans.
|
| Something beyond first world problems at this point. Things I'm
| not even allowed to reject or resist. (I do resist.)
| m463 wrote:
| I remember exactly where I was when challenger exploded. And
| when the twin towers came down. (both of them involved seeing a
| television)
|
| nowadays it seems we are notified when sitting in front of a
| computer.
| WarOnPrivacy wrote:
| My wife didn't know about Sept11 attacks until I brought the
| kids home in the early evening. No TV and she didn't like
| commercial radio.
|
| I didn't find out about OK City until the following Monday,
| driving back to classes.
|
| I was playing hookey from something and watching the
| Challenger launch at home. So I caught that one.
| zem wrote:
| wow, they nailed the "vague feeling of doom" tone. I continue to
| be impressed by the sheer quality of writing mcsweeneys puts out.
| hodgesrm wrote:
| This one was poetry itself, down to the verse-like meter and
| the repeated refrain: "This is your last free article."
|
| We are not worthy.
| thinkingkong wrote:
| Its so wild to me that the business models of newspapers and
| journalism in general just dont translate well to the web. Like I
| get that people expect content online to be free and the
| alternative sources of information are freely available but its
| just so tragic. There are so few journalists who do investigative
| journalism in countries that are smaller because the ad revenue
| just isnt there.
|
| For example, there are a few youtubers who do a great job but
| their appeal is global - or at least the entire english speaking
| population. The scope of focus is "interesting conspiracies that
| are true" or "some product everyone wants". Not a serious
| investigation into the misallocated funds in the local county.
| paulddraper wrote:
| (1) The web offers a plethora of choices, and one subscription
| doesn't cover that. Like, pre-internet if you wanted National
| Geographic-type info, you could only get that with a hard copy
| of National Geographic.
|
| (2) People psychologically struggle with paying for something
| non tangible.
| ajb wrote:
| The business model is journalism was advertising and it
| translated fine to the web. The problem is, it turned out that
| advertising didn't need journalism. Google ate the newspapers'
| lunch.
| majormajor wrote:
| The business model was dual revenue streams: subscription (or
| a la carte day-by-day or month-by-month) + ad revenue, with a
| few exceptions like broadcast TV (where the coverage tended
| to be more shallow and lowest-common-denominator compared to
| the early days of cable TV news).
|
| The online advertising merchants realized they could "curate"
| and "summarize" the articles, resulting in far fewer ad
| impressions than if someone had to find things purely through
| the publication newspaper, and bring the ads forward to their
| portal instead of solely on the content itself.
|
| AND they capitalized on an early reluctance to charge for
| things online to push the "ew, who wants to pay" mindset
| globally.
| throwaway237289 wrote:
| Is it surprising that the audience for "serious investigation
| into misallocated funds in local county" is extremely small? Is
| it really wild that you don't see this is a niche, that most
| people don't care enough to pay for someone to do that work?
|
| It's not the web. It's democratization. And unfortunately,
| people would rather watch dancing cats then pay someone to tell
| them what their local county is doing. That's called consumer
| choice and fighting it is like fighting nature.
| meristohm wrote:
| The public libraries in the USA that I'm familiar with have
| thousands of periodicals accessible on Libby. That's one way to
| slightly fund the authors of the essays and other features in
| those magazines.
| yegle wrote:
| I was a happy user of
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Contributor until it got
| shutdown.
|
| The pricing was surprisingly low, $5/month can eliminate ads on
| most of the websites that I view, while the owner will not have a
| reduced ads revenue.
| notRobot wrote:
| I never knew that was a thing! Of course they killed it. I wish
| they still had it. I would definitely subscribe.
| neilv wrote:
| Don't worry, HN will almost instantly post archive.is pirate
| links.
| c64d81744074dfa wrote:
| For some reason, when I read this I heard it in the voice of
| GlaDOS.
|
| "All your other friends couldn't come either because you don't
| have any other friends. Because of how unlikable you are."
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