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Comment by poopsmithe | Hacker News Reader

Well this is ironic. Well intentioned developer creates site to bypass paywalls. Site is a popular success, and begins to cost too much money for the developer to maintain. Developer comes up with a solution which is to introduce an optional paywall.

I'm not just poking fun... I actually sympathize because I'm in a similar situation with one of my projects. I've had to reconsider being a 100% ideals-based person and actually set up methods for people to give me money.

I've always appreciated sites offering free content, but now I'm in the unique situation where I'm the one publishing content. It takes a lot of time and energy to put together and my other sources of income can only cover the bills for so long. The harsh reality is that free services require money to operate.

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I made a website for piracy when I was a kid and did the exact same thing; was definitely ironic for people to pay for something to avoid paying.

But I think it always has been and will continue to be more of a UX problem than a "wanting stuff for completely free" problem.

Case in point, a couple hours ago I tried to stream the Super Bowl from the official NFL website, but failed multiple times to finish their checkout process (which was only $0.99, well below what I would've been willing to pay), so instead I... went elsewhere.

The problem I have with news sites is that in-general, news sites are extremely hard to cancel subscriptions to. Even piracy sites that offer "donation benefits" are usually non-recurring or easily-cancelled. Even though I can easily afford to pay for the New York Times or Wall Street Journal, in-practice, I refuse because I know that cancellation is going to be an extremely arduous activity that isn't going to be fun, if I don't like it. Heck, I've seen pirate or sketchy sites (e.g., private forums, book clubs, file hosts) in entirely different languages (e.g., Chinese) that are easier to cancel than old-world journalism.

I've tried to support "traditional journalism gone digital" too! I paid for a subscription to Ars Technica once, but the website kept logging me out, so I needed an ad-blocker anyways. They also said they would send me a free WIRED subscription, but they sent me Sports Illustrated for a year. I tried to subscribe to The Atlantic, and after I paid, I learned I somehow signed up for a digital version that still included ads, because ad-free was a subscription offer that was limited and had to be specifically clicked on (the general site subscription wasn't the same as the ad-free one).

I want to support journalism! I give out $100ish a-month in pixiv fanbox subscriptions and patreon subscriptions. But I'm not going to give any payment information to sketchy sites that just make it impossible to cancel and have terrible experiences. It's not worth paying for the hassle of that.

News publications also still think they're competing with each other. Like, it seems like each newspaper assumes you're going to subscribe to them and then go there every morning like it's the 1990's and get 100% of your news from them, and charge accordingly.

If I'm going to pay for news it's going to have to be an all-you-can-eat deal like the music streaming services. I'll pay if it means that like 70% of the news links I click from Google News, social media or reddit are covered.

Isn't Apple News doing something like that?

And Twitter also has Twitter Blue, where they've done a deal with a bunch of sites so that if you click a link while on Twitter (and are subbed to Twitter Blue) you will have an ad-free experience while browsing the external site.

Yeah Apple News is a good step forward, but it's region-locked and not available where I live. I didn't know what about Twitter Blue, but the fact that you have to go through Twitter seems rather limiting.

At least it seems like some people have identified the market, hopefully it develops from here.

Yeah otherwise you could have an ad blocker blocker unblocker running ads.

I respect far more a site meant to bypass paywalls for shitnews that I probably will find laughable, but want to read.

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