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Comment by undreren | Hacker News Reader

> One criticism of New York Times that I've read online is that they won't allow you to cancel your digital subscription through their website. They force you to call them. I'm not sure if that has changed recently, but that's a pretty questionable dark pattern.

This is illegal in Europe. By law, it has to be at least as easy to cancel subscriptions, as it is to buy them.

I love Europe. :)

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It's also illegal in California, too, so I expect NYTimes will ultimately have to change their behavior: http://www.niemanlab.org/2018/07/thanks-to-california-a-news...

>> One criticism of New York Times that I've read online is that they won't allow you to cancel your digital subscription through their website. They force you to call them. I'm not sure if that has changed recently, but that's a pretty questionable dark pattern.

FWIW, I have a "cancel subscription" link in my profile.

Same, I canceled easily via the web app recently when they decided to doubled down on being another partisan rag like WaPo, feeding off the outrage culture which does well on social media these days.

I see it's paid off commercially, no doubt, as it's seemed to have attracted a new wider user base as the lower quality comment sections now reflects on every political article. Including the NYT selected preferred comments which I used to find held a basic level of neutrality and civililty.

Business is business though, and it's always hard to balance scale with quality.

Even the Financial Time is starting to drift in that direction...

I’m not alone then. I moved my subscription from the NYT to FT looking for a less politically slanted product but the tone at the FT is definitely going in the same direction. Any suggestions?

P.s I have to phone the FT to cancel my subscription apparently.

Well it is only starting to move in that direction, they are clearly running campaigns on certain topics (like feminism), and I skip any article on Trump, Brexit or Boris Johnson. But outside of that it’s still OK.

I’d say the most neutral news will come from news agencies (reuters, afp, etc). There you get the raw material (what happened) without the comments. For business news bloomberg is the (expensive) equivalent. But occasionally there is important original content in the FT so I am not contemplating cancelling my subscription for the time being.

Yes, perhaps partially, but would you not agree that the amount of outrage-worthy news has also increased? Perhaps the issue is not the lens, but the reality...

I really like Axios - less content, but shorter, with great newsletters, and fully ad supported (for now, I think they're really VC supported)

I like Wall Street Journal. It's more business-focused, and definitely has a conservative bend, with occasional editorials that are much more out there (the benefits of prayer in school or something), but since I'm left-leaning, it feels pretty good on balance.

The wall Street Journal lost my support after they came out with a shitty hit piece [0] against PewDiePie. I read some of their arguments, but found em to be pretty damn shallow.

Although they came out against him, if you actually watch the source videos I don't think they had a strong case. This was one of the key posts that made me lose trust in WSJ as an organization.

[0] https://www.wsj.com/articles/disney-severs-ties-with-youtube...

The still didn't hire an openly racist/sexist woman to their board.

The Economist is good.

I use WSJ personally.

  they decided to doubled down on being another partisan rag like WaPo, feeding off the outrage culture

is it really a decision when the other option is financial ruin? Thoughtful, calm, reasoned posts don't stand a chance in the context of online media. The system we've ended up with fundamentally requires outrage/fear/clickbait to stand a chance of being heard among the noise.

Did you try to click on it? I had the same button last year when I cancelled. When I clicked, it took me to a page where I'm asked to call them?

I don't know of the legality but it is a common practice in Europe too.

Really? Where?

From my personal experience, just about everywhere. Just yesterday I wanted to cancel my AA membership (the motoring organisation, that is) and there was no other option but to phone.

Pertinent to this thread I had a subscription with The Times and the only cancellation option was by phone.

Anecdotally, it's very common with phone and utility providers too.

I recently tried to cancel my mcfit gym membership in Germany which was much more difficult than signing up. In this case you actually had to mail them a letter by post to cancel, where signing up was done on-site in 10minutes. Maybe you are referring to online subscriptions?

I don't know about the legality, but it is certainly common place over here even with periodicals that seem reputable (I recently cancelled New Scientist: sign-up was done easily any time online, cancellation has to be done by phone call inside office hours).

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