E
cobweb 2026 editionI’m so sorry to inform you, news sites, but when you tell me it’s not a paywall but you won’t let me read the thing without entering my email address… it’s a paywall. I’m paying you with my personal contact information. Actually I’m not paying you, I generally just close the tab.
MATAK79
Eric Lawton
Noa@cobweb I always add fake emails like [email protected]
Nazo@cobweb Can't pretend it's free while gathering our personal info...
Yes an e-mail address is personal info. Darned identifying really...
(And inb4, yeah, we can use some disposable throwaway, but the news sites don't like that and try their best to block it. Almost as if it's not actually about stopping bots and etc as they claim. You know, bots that could just gather login tokens and use those.)
Janko Roettgers
Aria <3 
@ariarhythmic @cobweb How is trying to make a living a bullshit excuse?
@ariarhythmic @cobweb No, I'm honestly curious what your solution for indie publishers looks like. You don't want them to collect email addresses ... so I imagine you want ad-supported sites, and don't use an ad blocker?
@jank0 @ariarhythmic idk man, I’m struggling to monetize my own labor right now. I’m sure there’s a sustainable ethical model for online publishing out there somewhere, but extractive approaches towards private data ain’t it.
@ariarhythmic @cobweb idk ... "I don't want ads, and I also don't want to register anywhere" sounds like entitlement to me.
But I'm happy for suggestions if you have a magic formula on how to finance a functioning media ecosystem that somehow no one else has thought about ...
@ariarhythmic @cobweb still waiting for you to suggest an alternative. but sure, complaining is always easier ...
@ariarhythmic that guy suuucked lol
Quasit
MostlyTato@cobweb
This is really difficult. No-one wants to give out their private info, but news sites are trying to make money and don't want to give away their content for free.
Why should they employ an entire newsroom to research and report only to give it away for free? If you don't want to subscribe then you have to pay for advertising or no-one is going to pay for the service and it won't exist.
But...I get around this, I don't subscribe or pay, why should I pay when I can get around it?
This is really difficult. No-one wants to give out their private info, but news sites are trying to make money and don't want to give away their content for free.
Why should they employ an entire newsroom to research and report only to give it away for free? If you don't want to subscribe then you have to pay for advertising or no-one is going to pay for the service and it won't exist.
But...I get around this, I don't subscribe or pay, why should I pay when I can get around it?
@cobweb
The issue here is that news services have across the board failed to understand how to make their services worth the money that they are asking for with a subscription, because they belong to the old world of newspapers that have comprehensively failed to adapt to the internet.
They need to provide a better service that is actually worth paying for without exploiting private info.
And that will never happen. So the game continies.
The issue here is that news services have across the board failed to understand how to make their services worth the money that they are asking for with a subscription, because they belong to the old world of newspapers that have comprehensively failed to adapt to the internet.
They need to provide a better service that is actually worth paying for without exploiting private info.
And that will never happen. So the game continies.
Ellie 🏴🏳️⚧️@MostlyTato the problem, I think, isn't that their work isn't worth paying for, the problem is that their job is to speak truth to power, so the people who are supposed to most benefit from their work are also those least likely to be able to afford a newspaper subscription, let alone multiple, let alone the time and energy to read it all.
@31113
In that case, and I'm not arguing that you are incorrect, the entire paradigm collapses.
Which is exactly the problem. News services have to be paid for, no-one wants to, or can pay for them, so you get advertising riddled propaganda.
I don't claim its good or right, just that its how it is.
It's not the job of news services to speak the truth. That may be what we want them to do, but their function is to earn money for their investors. I wish it was otherwise.
In that case, and I'm not arguing that you are incorrect, the entire paradigm collapses.
Which is exactly the problem. News services have to be paid for, no-one wants to, or can pay for them, so you get advertising riddled propaganda.
I don't claim its good or right, just that its how it is.
It's not the job of news services to speak the truth. That may be what we want them to do, but their function is to earn money for their investors. I wish it was otherwise.
Alistair K@MostlyTato @cobweb I'd be quite happy with advertising if it weren't intrusive. I still read the ads in paper newspapers. But I can't even read the article in the on-line ones, even the same newspaper, without blockers.
And then there are the news sites with auto-play videos. What kind of arsehole makes those? Easy answer: the kind whose news I won't read.
@libroraptor @cobweb
Same here. Intrusive advertising and auto play crap force you to use tools that block everything. If they were less aggressive then maybe they wouldn't be blocked so much.
Same here. Intrusive advertising and auto play crap force you to use tools that block everything. If they were less aggressive then maybe they wouldn't be blocked so much.
@MostlyTato @cobweb Random ads are good, too. Much more interesting than targetted ads – randomised ads tell me about things that I don't know about – surely that's the point, rather than driving me to hate companies that I already get stuff from?
(((Klefstadmyr)))@cobweb I just got hit with an article I could only read if I subscribed to their newsletter. Why would I want to subscribe to their newsletter? I'm not generally interested in whatever happens in Manchester, I just wanted to read this one article.
No Way@cobweb I always like to enter a clearly false email with curse words that ends with the sites domain. (GoFu**[email protected])
It doesn't always work but hey why not try.