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Comment by furyg3 | Hacker News Reader

So... they're trusting information provided by the user's browser (referral links, cookies, javascript... whatever) to determine whether or not the article should be displayed to the user....

This makes me want to pat the NYT on the head and tell them how adorable they are.

The fact that they're 1+ years away from implementing this may indicate that they have some knowledge about how technologically stupid this idea is, but are hoping that investors don't figure that out.

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On the other hand, I'm not sure how much they care if they don't get to monetize the audience of people technical enough to forge a referrer (or even use an extension that does it for you). I suspect pretty much no one on HN even remembers what the web looked like pre-AdBlock, but it hasn't actually killed web advertising.

I don't use AdBlock. I use a popup blocker, but I think if I am looking at a website I should at least give them the basic revenue of viewing the advertizing. Sometimes I even click on one if I am feeling generous to the content holder. It's much the same with authors, when buying a book I like to click the link Amazon.com from their website because it maximizes their revenue.

PS: The problem with the newspaper model is it provides so little value. In the old days they survived on advertizing but there are far more locations for advertizing now, so the pay is far lower. Take the Haiti incident, there was a 7.0 earthquake which killed or injured a lot of people and destroyed most of their infrastructure. All the important information in an SMS post and everything after that point is just entertainment.

The problem with many ads is that they are designed to take attention away from the rest of the site. As a result, you get flashing, jiggling, talking ads that make many sites nearly unusable. Sure, you could avoid going to those sites, or you could just use adblock...

> I don't use AdBlock. I use a popup blocker, but I think if I am looking at a website I should at least give them the basic revenue of viewing the advertizing.

I block gifs and Flash. It is moronic to have text on screen and then have something that is moving in the corner of your eye. You simply can't read it (and if you can, it is not enjoyable).

I pretty much agree with you on AdBlock. Except at the moment there are those really horrible teeth whitening ads. I just can't take constantly being shown images of close up yellowing teeth.

It'd be so easy to write an extension or plug-in that just adds a referrer to every request to nytimes.com

hence it being a soft paywall - considering the savvy work arounds is a non-issue because such people are unlikely to convert anyway if stopped.

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