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Comment by alpinisme | Hacker News Reader

What does playing fair mean in this context? It would be one thing if you were a paid subscriber complaining that even paying sucks so you left, but it sounds like you’re not.

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It is strange to hear these threats about avoiding websites from people who are not subscribers and also definitely using an ad blocker.

News sites aren’t publishing their content for the warm fuzzy feeling of seeing their visitor count go up. They’re running businesses. If you’re dead set on not paying and not seeing ads, it’s actually better for them that you don’t visit the site at all.

'Running a business' is not carte blanche to do whatever you like to get money, and it does not silence valid criticism. Businesses still exist in society and have to act accordingly. A primary mechanism that society has to enforce rules is criticism and shame.

Have you ever entertained that maybe consumers should act accordingly too?

That website is loaded with too many ads, I left it and am not going back.

Not

That website has too many ads, I'm getting an ad blocker and going back.

A business is not entitled to make people look at their ads. If they offer something in a publicly accessible place and they get ad eyeballs, good for them. If they don't, sucks for them. If they don't like it there are plenty of other markets they can do business in.

You're not entitled to any webpage except your own...

If they want to charge users with ad-blockers under the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act for unauthorized access for viewing non-protected pages then they should do that. Otherwise, you are wrong.

That’s confusing a webpage that’s rendered by the user with a pdf

You're right, it means nothing. But it cuts two ways. These sites are sending me bytes and I choose which bytes I visualize (via an ad blocker). Any expectation the website has about how I consume the content has no meaning and it's entirely their problem.

I am a paid subscriber to NYT and have been reading it paper / internet for 30+ years. It is an Enshittification winner in terms tracking and click bait. It doesn't feel like a serious news outlet anymore, feels like Huff Post or similar.

Yes this, I was a subscriber for about a decade even back then an adblocker was required for sane reading even with a subscription. I cant imagine what it looks like without an adblocker these days.

I'd like to answer that in detail but it's impractical to do so here as it'd take pages. As a starter though begin with them not violating users' privacy.

Another quick point: my observation is that the worse the ad problem the lower quality the content is. Cory Doctorow's "enshitification" encapsulates the problems in a nutshell.

If you have enough detail for a blog post I'd heartily encourage you to submit it.

I actually had one a while back but it became too taxing to keep it up to date. I've covered much of this stuff on HN though.

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