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Comment by bastard_op | Hacker News Reader

I used to get really annoyed with links posted to HN behind paywalls, then I found paywall bypasser browser plugins that made my life less annoying. I would never go back now and like what, actually pay for news? No, I'll just go find another creative workaround or stop reading news here.

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The nerve of people not willing to work for free.

I really only pay for WSJ, I don't want to pay hundreds of dollars every month just for news which I rarely consume. I did some research as to what sort of bias every news source had, and it seemed like WSJ was trusted the most by "both sides" which caught my attention. I wish news didn't lean one way or the other, it's really tiresome. I just want raw facts. Too many a time I see a crazy headline, people losing their minds, only to pull up the source video or what have you, and discover that they jumped the gun and didn't vet anything.

On the right, there are two “sides”, your traditional business oriented conservatives/libertarians and your “populists”/“religious conservatives”. The second group does not trust the WSJ at all and it is considered to be part of the “lamestream media”.

I find the WSJs news articles (which I get through Apple News), to be relatively even handed. Now the op ed is a different story.

For political news, “The Hill” seems to be even handed.

The problem with news and raw facts, is that the incentive to embellish or leave out the raw facts one way or another to drive some narrative is just too damn high. Ignorance is bliss sometimes.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Propaganda_model

I would genuinely consider paying double if not more what I pay for WSJ if I got news that had rich citations and raw sources linked and archived so you can never go "oh darn where did that video go?" and have total certainty that I can look at raw sources and make a more informed decision.

Lol yep. I mean I enjoy free articles here and there but I don't see Mozilla being wrong here

The problem that there's no good way to pay for a single article. People don't want a subscription for the occasional article on an aggregator.

Sort of: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Contributor

I bet if nyt charged 1 half cent a read versus subscriptions, they'd make more money.

This has been argument since the 90s.

Once you get over the hurdle of getting someone to pay anything, it’s a lot easier to get them to pay more. Besides, you want the people who aspirational will use your service and don’t. You don’t want them to think about.

What’s the cost of acquisition of a customer who is willing to pay a half a cent? What’s the lifetime value of the customer?

Now compare that to a subscription. I would posit that the cost of acquisition is the same for both types of customers and the lifetime value of the latter is a lot lower.

This is like business development 101. The average Shark Tank participant can do this analysis

I think it's rude for people to submit links to articles on HN and for people to vote them to the front page without a warning that the article is paywalled. HN tags PDFs, video submissions. Is it so wrong to ask for notice that a submission is paywalled?

Agreed. People used to post it in the comments but no longer. Tagging it would be nice. The ability to filter them out even more.

How rude! What also really grinds my gears are reading restaurant reviews. Several times I have gone to a restaurant after reading a recommendation and once there they have the nerve to ask me to pay.

this is not at all what's happening here

That's a good initial relevance filter, actually. Unless the writer is zealous enough to invest his time and money in order to convince me of his opinion, the topic probably isn't very important.

The nerve of people not wanting to get stuck in predatory subscription models. Do these outlets still demand an international call at ungodly hours to cancel subscriptions?

Well, I don’t have a habit of doing business with companies I find have an objectionable business model.

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