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Comment by winkelwagen | Hacker News Reader

It’s strange. Part of me thinks this is a great idea, but some of the websites are also the worst offenders of what the site is trying to combat. Looking at Gizmodo and the verge, the crazy amount of 3rd party cookies, unable to really opt out at all. While writing pieces about how horrible google and Facebook are for all the privacy evasive stuff they are doing. I’d rather support content that aim for quality and differ it kind of business model then rewarding some of these sites for being so horrible that this service is even needed. Like https://decorrespondent.nl/ or specific patreons

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CEO of Scroll here. Glad you're a fan of The Correspondent, we love them too. Also hear you on the privacy concerns. The publisher contracts with Scroll require that they remove third-party trackers 'that share information with parties other than Publisher or have a commercial purpose other than improving user experience.'

It's always going to be a negotiation when you're trying to work with sites rather than unilaterally act against them, but we're genuinely trying to get them to a place where they're living up to the privacy promise that a consumer would want.

I actually had this concept in my Trello list of good business ideas. I wasn't going to pursue it since I like running one person businesses, but I'm glad you're working on it! Good job, keep it up and good luck!

Thank you! I really appreciate that

Does Scroll work if I block third-party cookies?

Update 10 minutes later: It isn't working for me on theatlantic.com; I got the "free articles" drawers and then got blocked after they counted down to 0. So perhaps the answer to my question is "no".

I can whitelist third-party cookies on specific sites, but I don't think I can whitelist a single cookie across all sites. This seems unfortunate.

Update 30 minutes later: I tried disabling both cookie- and tracker-blocking in Firefox and still saw no sign of it working on theatlantic.com

Huh, maybe that's why it didn't work for me. I allow third-party cookies, but only from sites that I've visited during the current browser session. And all cookies are deleted when I close Firefox.

If you whitelist [*.]scroll.com in Chrome for example, Scroll should work. Important to note it doesn't get you past paywalls. The economics would make the price insanely high for that.

Ahh, this is an important note. My first thought seeing this post was, "finally, a Spotify for the news!"

Would love to do it, but for a publisher the economics get super hard at this time. The number of new consumers has to be large enough to offset the drop in ARPU that a bundle would represent and publishers are super wary that there are enough people out there who want to get past paywalls to make that happen. This is the reason why even Apple News+ had such trouble convincing anyone to join.

I do think that over time more opportunities for, at first, skinny bundles will emerge but the world isn't there yet at the scale you'd want.

In theory we might be competitors, but I'd rather the world sucked less than feel smug.

So here's my argument: You don't charge enough money. It's the same mistake literally everyone ahead of you has already made before failing. Charge more money. Charge what seems like an absurd amount of money. Because you need a large pool to get people through the door. It's easier to cut prices than to raise them. Charge more damn money.

More selfishly: I can help you with the paywalls thing without cookies. jacques@robojar.com.

You're being lenient. All of these websites either have crazy amount of trackers, actively engage in accusing others of what they're doing, or just write clickbait articles with little substance.

You may not get ads but everything you do in the sites is sold. Why would I pay for this?

Totally agree. Specifically the verge and other sites that actually promote products without disclosure. Why would anyone want to pay for infomercials? Tech coverage and reviews of this type, if they’re of interest, would be from real users with real world experience and no vested interest.

> Specifically the verge [which] actually promote[s] products without disclosure.

Huh? What are you referring to?

Change has to start somewhere

I've said it before but verge is long form and sophisticated tabloid with sensational articles and a deliberate attempt to go against the consensus or prevailing view, only to come across as edgy.

Business Insider too is one of the worst offenders of interstitial ads, and their content is basically a clickbait farm at this point.

So I'm unsure about the incentives going on here. Make your site even worse for normal visitors to incentivize paying up to "fix" it?

Seems pretty gross.

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