But they started spamming my mailbox immediately with stupid stuff like cooking apps. And they ask all sorts of stuff about my interests. I don't want any of that. But once they know who I am it opens the door to their marketeers to try and extract more money from me.
It's better if I visit the site not logged in with all adblockers active. I do have to agree to tracking then but the adblocker blocks most of that.
It's just weird that I have a better experience if I don't pay than if I do. And it's really expensive, the promotional thing is 6€, and that's a limited time only, the normal price is 12€. I don't read it that much, I just like their take on things sometimes. I read the front page a couple times a week maybe. And sometimes open up an article.
I'll probably cancel when the 6€ thing stops. To be honest I hate reading the news these days anyway. I'd rather not keep up.
not if you look from the POV of an advertiser.
If you don't pay, chances are you would not have money to spend on goods being advertised. But if you are rich enough to afford to be a subscriber, chances are you'd be rich enough to buy those goods being advertised!
Therefore, a subscriber is a much more valuable advertising target, which means the guardian can sell you for a higher price than a free user. Given limited real-estate and resources, they'd target a higher value person than a low value person to send the spam.
For example: On the guardian website when I created my account it defaulted me to on for sending me communications my post, phone and SMS about their products and services and for marketing research. I find that unacceptable.
They offer an "Unsubscribe from all email" button but this is only available in their online settings, if you click on an unwanted email and unsubscribe there, the above settings remain on.
And it was just an example. It's just every time I sign up for something it's not just that, I also have to unsubscribe for a bunch of mailing lists and surveys I never asked for. And go through all the privacy settings and turn off all the crap where they use my information. Sometimes even periodically like on LinkedIn where they keep adding new settings that default to on.
I subscribed out of a general desire to support good journalism, but it did nothing to reduce the deluge of online ads.
I can't entirely fault them though. They might not have had enough market info at the time to justify making a reduced-ads variant of their website for subscribers.
Weird, I also subscribed and got nothing like that. Are you sure you're not reading it wrong/subscribed via a rentseeking third party?
It seems to me that rich people (and some other powerful groups) are paying far more to own media companies (X, WaPo, etc.) than can be justified by those companies' revenue. It's not hard to imagine what they get in return.
Both the US and UK feel free to show me ads even when I've paid a bomb in terms of subscription costs. Not subtle ads of their own products! Top banner ads, middle-of-page scrolling ads, and the like, of whichever fancy watch or lifestyle destination has paid the most money to them. And then they have the gall to write opinion pieces on how ad-based AI and streaming channels are the bane of the world. Plus they feel free to subscribe me to a bunch of their newsletters and podcasts which I have to manually unsubscribe from. One of them actually pedals courses on how to write good.
The Indian news sites have no barrier on what is a paid piece and what is actually news. Promoted pieces occupy the same slots as paid ones. I've seen blatant advertisements masquerading as actual reporting.
I understand that news has been gutted by tech. But there is a need to be honest to a paying customer; if not, they deserve whatever has come to them.
Well, actual news are 1% of the "news". The rest is opinion pieces, propaganda and paid articles. Those who benefit from opinion pieces, propaganda and paid articles shall pay for it.
Just like open source didn't destroy quality software, maybe there an alternative model for journalism lying somewhere?
Basically, people need to evaluate news as a utility, not a service or something that will just reach them. Definitely not entertainment. That means you need to evaluate the accuracy, and vote with your wallet. Any free, or publicly available option, will be compermised, because they're not aligned with your interests.
- “Breaking” news directly relevant to your life: spreads through other channels
- Lessons on how the world works (systems etc.) that you can apply locally: in practice, embarrassingly most news sources omit key facts and are light on details, and push a narrative which is misleading, so the implicit lessons you’d form are counter-productive. This is inevitable because accurate news is more boring than exaggerated outrage narratives; companies doing the former are out-competed, not just economically, but in popularity (so don’t blame Capitalism, because even if they have sustainable income, they’re outranked in social media feeds). Moreover, events and their context become clearer long after they occur, so “news”, even from the most ideal source, can never be the best way to learn systems.
Most people actually read the news because it’s cheap dopamine, so in a way, news sources adding paywalls are doing their readers a favor.
- They seem less sensationalist, I guess because they don't depend on clicks to survive - They tell a more complete, less dumbed down story than free sources - They are more boring than free sources
If you want to be informed, the "pay for journalists" model is much better than "hope that advertisers or billionaires pay for you" model.
You can argue that being informed is pointless, but I would argue that independent people working to get informed and then questioning issues is a vital point in a democracy. One model for this is journalists, even if you're not actually reading it.
I don’t really need to hear about an event or problem happening across the globe, although it could have an important lesson, but I really don’t need to hear about it in a misleading, sensationalist way.
propaganda?
press releases?
paid "editorials"?
wall to wall adds for shit?
pay me!
Teachers don't know what to do while ChatGPT took over universities.
