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...if you ever run a news website or a video game blog or something like that, and I ever even once see you hold your content hostage behind a paywall, then just know that I'm going to go out of my way to make sure that I never see your website or blog show up for me again, whether that's in Google searches or in my news app or whatever. It's actually worse when you have it set up to let people read two or three articles/entries for free, before throwing up the paywall. ("FiRsT oNe'S fReE" says the skeevy drug dealer or the scummy casino barker.) Your content is not something I can't do without, so don't even try to act like it is. Your content is not that valuable to me.
(Then again, for the most recent site in question [which I won't even name here, so as to not give them even that much more traffic], I suppose I should have heeded the earlier red flag that was them trying to get me to sign up for a monthly or yearly subscription just because I happened to hit reply on one of the comments under one of their articles to see if I could make a comment without having to make an account [since some rare few websites still let you do that]. Merely having to sign up for something for free is bad enough, and I usually don't bother with even that much. Being faced with an option select for a $7-$99 monthly/$70-$999 yearly subscription is on a whole other level entirely[1] and is a "fuck right off" moment.)
Find less obnoxious, insufferable ways to make money.
[1] - And even for that link there, I had to replace the original one with an archive.is variant, because the original one was, yes, partially behind a paywall.
(Then again, for the most recent site in question [which I won't even name here, so as to not give them even that much more traffic], I suppose I should have heeded the earlier red flag that was them trying to get me to sign up for a monthly or yearly subscription just because I happened to hit reply on one of the comments under one of their articles to see if I could make a comment without having to make an account [since some rare few websites still let you do that]. Merely having to sign up for something for free is bad enough, and I usually don't bother with even that much. Being faced with an option select for a $7-$99 monthly/$70-$999 yearly subscription is on a whole other level entirely[1] and is a "fuck right off" moment.)
Find less obnoxious, insufferable ways to make money.
[1] - And even for that link there, I had to replace the original one with an archive.is variant, because the original one was, yes, partially behind a paywall.
Thoughts
Date: 2025-05-24 05:11 pm (UTC)From:I'm so happy to see someone else pointing out that connection!
Now, I don't believe that paywalls are never okay. If you want to have a private site for your subscribers, that's fine. But then you should have it set up so that it only appears to those people and doesn't get caught up in search engines to bother everyone else. That's what most online tradezines do, for instance, because their content is only for professionals. The problem is the bait-and-switch maneuver that most newsites try where they pretend their content is available, so it appears in searches, but it's really not.
>> them trying to get me to sign up for a monthly or yearly subscription just because I happened to hit reply on one of the comments under one of their articles <<
I hate how much stuff has gone from single purchase to subscription. It runs up the monthly expenses for a household, making it harder to adjust to budget fluctuations like a sudden car repair. It's one thing to sit down and decide your magazine subscriptions for the year, based on your budget at that time, and quite another to be barraged with so many subscription demands that you can't keep track of them all. >_<
Nobody even believed me when I was little and cable TV came out. I warned them that if people starting paying for programs, they'd wind up with a monthly bill AND ads. Nobody believed me. Now here we are with that AND a watermark stamped on shows AND pop-up ads while the show is running!
>>Find less obnoxious, insufferable ways to make money.<<
I wish people cared about that, but most just don't. The free basic / paid premium model works quite well for a product that people like. I mean, with crowdfunding, I learned that giving away some free samples is an effective way to hook people on a character or setting.
You might like this article about hierarchy of trust and why so many websites abuse visitors.
Going back to my crowdfunding example, my readers routinely trust me to handle edgy topics, and often read things by me that they typically don't touch, because they trust that will handle those topics well and make the storytelling worth the risk. That's an example of established trust, and it's easy to achieve because they can read the mountain of previously sponsored material to see if they like my work.
Re: Thoughts
Date: 2025-05-28 07:34 pm (UTC)From:As far as crowdfunding goes... I was into that (as a consumer, at least, as I've never tried to crowdfund something myself) maybe a decade or two ago, when it first got big, and it seemed pretty great, at first. Generally speaking, though, even that has become so incredibly enshittified over the years to the point of being untenable and nigh unusable, at least for me.
And yeah, I'm not even sure where the myth of "cable TV is commercial-free" came from, in the first place, because even from the start, it was never intended to be that, even if the false impression that it was persisted, for whatever reason.
Re: Thoughts
Date: 2025-05-29 05:43 am (UTC)From:I agree that sucks.
>>Generally speaking, though, even that has become so incredibly enshittified over the years to the point of being untenable and nigh unusable, at least for me.<<
Bummer.
My experience as a creator: I ask my readers what they'd like to read, they tell me, I write it, and they buy what they wish. This is massively faster and more accurate than my conventional publishing experiences, also more profitable than most.
If you're curious, you can find my writing in my Poem tag or the My Work tab. Next up will be the Tuesday, June 3 Poetry Fishbowl with a theme of "
I agree that sucks.
>>Generally speaking, though, even that has become so incredibly enshittified over the years to the point of being untenable and nigh unusable, at least for me.<<
Bummer.
My experience as a creator: I ask my readers what they'd like to read, they tell me, I write it, and they buy what they wish. This is massively faster and more accurate than my conventional publishing experiences, also more profitable than most.
If you're curious, you can find my writing in my <a href="https://ysabetwordsmith.dreamwidth.org/tag/poem">Poem tag</a> or the <a href="http://penultimateproductions.weebly.com/my-work.html">My Work tab</a>. Next up will be the Tuesday, June 3 Poetry Fishbowl with a theme of "<a href='https://ysabetwordsmith.dreamwidth.org/14947170.html">Gentleness Is Strength</a>" if you want to drop by and watch the fun -- prompting is free.
<user name="dialecticdreamer"> also does prompt calls on DW. Magpie Monday has a variable theme, Feathering the Nest is always fluff and comfort.
My experience as a sponsor:
Amazon: Here are 20 books just like the one you just read.
Kickstarter: Here is a Neanderthal comic book. Or perhaps you'd prefer an autistic yeti?
Commercialization of books has gotten so bad that I can now walk into a bookstore and not find <i>anything</i> worth buying. It's starting to give the Universe kernel panic attacks. :/
The book I'm currently reading is Anti-Caste Speculative Fiction, and that was another Kickstarter find. Because what normal American publisher is going to translate subversive stories from 6 East Indian languages? I mean hell, I would've thrown them money just to poke a bigot in the eye. I did choose the option to put a second copy in a library.
>>I'm not even sure where the myth of "cable TV is commercial-free" came from, in the first place, because even from the start, it was never intended to be that, even if the false impression that it was persisted, for whatever reason.<<
HBO and Showtime <i>did</i> start out commercial-free. Nothing interrupted the shows; that was the main selling point. In <i>between</i> shows, they ran trailers for other stuff you could watch on their channel, and some rather weird filler bits. But there were no sponsored ads for outside products, and it stayed that way for some years.
At some point enshittification set in, so now you pay for the channel AND have to sit through fucking commercials. >_<
no subject
Date: 2025-05-25 02:01 am (UTC)From:I agree wholeheartedly, except I also extend that to any site that installs an ad-blocker-blocker.
I appreciate that these sites are just trying to make money. And, annoyances notwithstanding, the model they use does seem to be effective in that there's enough people willing to jump through the hoops of bullshit in order for them to make a profit.
I also appreciate that they're under absolutely no obligation to give their shit away for free. Writing good content is work. Heck, writing bad content is work. Expecting to get paid for your work is absolutely fine.
But if you're not willing to give your work out for free, and you want to charge a price that I personally am unwilling to pay for it? Then I won't consume your content. That's how it works. Heck, that's how it's supposed to work. If you want me, personally to consume your content, offer it to me for a price that I, personally am willing to pay.
If you're happy just making money off the mindless droves who are happy to suck this sorta bullshit through a straw, more power to you. But don't give me any of that passive-aggressive "It's your fault, personally, that we can't make money because you won't pay for our content" bullshit when I try to access your site. You're a business, it's your responsibility to run under a viable business model that lets you profit from your content, not my responsibility to just blindly accept whatever terms are most convenient for you.
And as I mentioned above, this includes ads, not just straight-up paywalls. If you want to run a business model that relies on ad revenue, more power to you. But Internet ads have been terrible and abusive and, in many cases, outright dangerous for literally decades, and I run ad-blockers for a fucking reason: It's not my fault they ruined the fucking economy for you and your cute little news blog.
Back in the day, I had no problem whatsoever throwing a loonie at the newsstand and grabbing a paper, often one that was more ad than content, and what content there was was quite frankly barely even worth the dollar. But I was fine to do that because it was just money. And so many news sites seem to think that that's the model that should work on the Internet. What they don't seem to realize (or do realize but don't seem to give a shit) is that tossing a loonie at a newsboy is a zero-strings commitment. And even a newspaper chock-full of ads, there's approximately zero risk of one of them sneaking in malicious software, or tracking my personal information, or uploading my private shopping habits into an online database. I don't have dynamic ads that replace actual content and force me to watch them before I'm allowed to read the funny pages. I don't even have to give the newsboy my credit card if I don't want to, and even if I did he's not keeping it on-hand for "convenience" next time I want to shop. I don't have to commit to a monthly or annual subscription, I don't even have to give my name if I don't want to.
(Tangentially, far too many actual stores now think it's sane to ask for your postal code when you want to buy a pair of fucking pants or some shit.)
So, yeah, you find a way to let me pay for your weak-ass news content that doesn't involve, like, any of that bullshit, and I might consider it. Otherwise, you need to be fucking worth it, or you can go fuck yourself.
no subject
Date: 2025-05-28 07:12 pm (UTC)From:The few sites I've encountered so far that actually did entirely block me from reading their shit just because I was using an ad-blocker, rather than just throwing up an easily dismissible pop-up, have indeed gotten the "go out of my way to make sure that I never see your website or blog show up for me again" treatment.
That said, uBlock Origin combined with NoScript does a fairly decent job of dealing with anti-ad-blockers, so in a lot of cases I'm not even seeing the weepy "oh, woe is us, you're literally killing us by using an ad-blocker" messages. They're not just ad-blockers, they're also anti-anti-ad-blockers. At least on desktop browsers anyway. The browsers and Google News app and such on my phone is a whole other story, since I have not yet found an adequate way of blocking ads system-wide on my phone, aside from setting my phone to use an ad-blocking DNS server, which only hides (some) ads and doesn't deal with the anti-ad-blocking dumbshit at all.
no subject
Date: 2025-05-29 03:36 am (UTC)From:Yeah, I can tolerate the ones that just popup but let me through if I close them, but that passive aggressive bullshit wins them no favours. If you're gonna make a business model out of offering valuable content for free, you don't get to be pissy because people are taking your valuable free content.
That said, I have in the past blocked sites just for being too fucking annoying even if they do technically still let me access their content. That line is very subjective though, and fortunately I haven't seen any sites run afoul of it for many years now, fingers crossed.