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Comment by wcoenen | Hacker News Reader

> it's just that I don't want to add another 10-20EUR subscription for the 1/2 articles I'd want to skim

I've also been thinking about this, with all the paywalls I've been running into. I don't mind paying for quality news, but I'd prefer to pay one entity for a certain article/month limit for all (or at least most) paywalled news sources. The one entity could distribute my subscription money to the news providers pro rata, according to my consumption.

The current system of paying for one news source doesn't work for me, because I want to read articles from all over. I don't consume enough from one source to justify the subscription cost.

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Interesting. This probably exists already in one form or another, but it could also be good opportunity for a major startup. "Netflix for news" - premium access to the best articles from the best newspapers and news agencies, with sophisticated A.I. powered recommendation system, custom content subscriptions, instant access wherever you are.

Alternatively, some news organisations should get together and set up an independent non-profit organisation to do that before some corporation gets a monopoly and starts taking a 90% cut while implementing political bias and censorship as a compulsory extra.

This service exists, it is called Blendle.

I signed up to try it, but it really doesn't seem to be what I'm looking for.

The first problem is that they seem to have decided based on my IP that I only want to read news in the Dutch language. No setting to change that. They also seem to act as a portal that I need to go through to read the articles that they are suggesting to me.

There's a search function (only in the app, not on the website), but I'm not sure which news sources it searches. I can find articles from a big Flemish newspaper, but not the ones currently on that newspaper's homepage.

Paying for Blendle also doesn't seem to help me to get past the paywalls of bloomberg or the new york times.

I think it's only available in Netherlands. I checked it out now and I get the same, even though I'm in another country.

I gather that's how Brave browser and Patreon-like (though not Patreon I don't think) work - but of course the problem is exactly what you hint at:

> for all (or at least most) paywalled news sources

They only work where they work.

The only way I can ever see it happening is with an IETF standard that browsers pick up (perhaps using it as an opportunity to be the one entity you pay, and collect a fee) gradually convincing publishers to support this modern web standard.

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