Hilariously, the New York times tries both: you get five or so article reads (with shitloads of tracking), and then you have to pay to read more per month.
But if you're paying, the pages don't load any different. You're paying to be mined.
But if you're paying, the pages don't load any different. You're paying to be mined.
The difference is the tracking. I don’t think ads are really the problem. It’s the tracking that bloats pages and intrudes on privacy, and the tracking doesn’t need to be there because other media have ads without tracking and manage just fine.
There’s a race to the bottom here. Tracking earns more revenue, so to be competitive you have to do it. Most sites won’t stop tracking until forced to by either the basic infrastructure of the web or legal requirements. I hope GDPR will lead to the disappearance of tracking, but so far most sites seem to pretend tracking is compatible with GDPR.
I'm not saying I like it that way, but you're conflating two unrelated things.
What you are paying for is a broader choice in the filler between the commercials.
It should be noted that traditional newspapers include ads alongside news content and no one complains. In fact people used to sift through the Sunday NYT simply for the ads.
Given the lack of popularity and commercial support, combined with the complexity to connect a client with an available server (compared with downloading an app from the store), I'd expect that they are populated mostly by old tech people or passers-by from universities; and any special interest group would have small user base coming from that demographic profile. Are my assumptions correct?
Or you can just visit it, I suppose.
It's really the ultimate condemnation of modern web design that this feature is so useful.
Edit: won't help the data-consumption though, as I believe it can only be enabled after the page has loaded
Called Newshound, it let you set up to face sets of keywords (in the basic $5/month subscription), and it would email you the plain text of every article that matched the criteria, whether generated within the publisher network or from wire services.
But I guess you could say that you are paying for delivery instead.
That's called "native advertisement" and it's supposed to trick you into thinking you're reading a genuine article instead of an ad. I actively avoid sites that do this.
> In fact people used to sift through the Sunday NYT simply for the ads.
Back when people couldn't google for stuff, and the ads were useful because they mostly came from local businesses you actually needed once in a while.