kane_magus: (Default)
2025-05-31 01:51 pm
Entry tags:

Another reason paywalls suck.

You know what most people tend to do when they try to read something on a news site or blog, and then that news article or blog entry they were trying to read is hidden behind a paywall? Besides not immediately whipping out their wallet to pay for whatever was hidden, they also leave that site behind entirely and go to another site.

And here's the kicker. It hasn't quite reached this point yet, but... when it ever does reach the point where most or all of the good news/blog sites are locked away behind paywalls, you realize what will be left, right? The shitty, clickbait headline-spewing, fake news-infested, propaganda-infected, AI-written, worse-than-worthless slop sites, that is what will be left. And that's where most people will get their "news," then, because all of the actual news will have been safely protected from view behind paywalls that very few people care to deal with.

Not that there aren't any shitty sites that also do the dogshit paywall thing, but there are so very many more that don't. More than enough so that anyone who doesn't want to pay for the real thing will have their choice of poison to consume for "free."

(Today, aggravatingly, I had to click "Hide all stories from" on Rolling Stone in my Google News app, because when I tapped on one of their articles, like I've done many times in the past, this time, I was able to scroll down only maybe two paragraphs before the text quickly faded away into a paywall. To hell with that horseshit and any site that uses it.)
kane_magus: (Default)
2025-05-24 11:43 am

Just yet another reminder...

...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.
kane_magus: (Default)
2024-10-02 11:21 am
Entry tags:

"CNN launches a digital paywall, charging some users to read articles for the first time"

Mmmhmm, yeah, sure. Good fucking luck with that horseshit.

I haven't been hit with this dogshit yet, but if I ever do get hit with this, it will only ever be the one time. Well, maybe twice, once per platform. If I get with it in the Google News App on my phone, I'll just back out and pick the "Hide all stories from CNN" option. If I get hit with it via a Google link on a desktop browser on my PC, I'll just add CNN to the Personal Blocklist plugin on my browser, which auto-hides results from said sources from showing up in Google search results.

I simply do not truck with websites that use fucking paywalls, at all. Or, if I do, I might try stuff like archive.is or whatever to just bypass the paywall, if possible. Maybe that makes me an asshole or whatever, but if so, then so be it. *shrug* But mostly, I just won't use the offending site anymore for anything, at all, ever.

Find less obnoxious, loathsome, infuriating ways to make money. (See also: ads.)
kane_magus: (Default)
2024-02-07 06:14 pm

"On the Border, Republicans Set a Trap, Then Fell Into It"

"The G.O.P. abandoned a bipartisan border security bill that also aided Ukraine after Democrats called their bluff on immigration, agreeing to tough measures Republicans demanded."

(Just to note: the above link is to a New York Times article, so it might be trapped behind a paywall. If so, just enable NoScript for nytimes.com, and it should become visible. Or, at least, it's visible for me, anyway. [EDIT] Here is a snapshot of the article from archive.is, at least until that dies. To hell with paywalls. [/EDIT])

The gist of the above article: The GQP said they weren't going to support sending more money to Ukraine unless a bunch of draconian border restrictions (which had dick all to do with support for Ukraine) were tacked onto the bill. The GQP was banking on the Democrats to balk and, thus, allow the GQP to prattle about how the Democrats are "weak on the border." (And, I guess, also "weak on helping Ukraine"?) Instead, the Democrats essentially said, sure, okay, and agreed to most of the border shit. And, now, the GQPers are the ones balking and scuttling the bill, because their Lord and Savior Donald Trump would rather "the border" remain an issue, instead of allow it to be fixed[1] under Biden's administration.

The very best thing that could happen for this country would be for every single Trumpublican who is running for election/reelection in November (up to and including, of course, Dumbfuck Jizzstain Trump himself) to be soundly, unquestionably, thoroughly trounced forever. Until Trump is dead and gone, the Republican Party is essentially irredeemable (assuming they ever were redeemable, even before Trump befouled the political process by poking his mushroom-like chode into it all).

Don't get me wrong, the Democrats are still shit, too. But the Democrats are more like the kind of shit you can use for compost, at least, in which useful things could potentially be planted and grown. The GQP, on the other hand, is more like sludge that a sewage treatment plant would filter out as hazardous, toxic waste, in which nothing living could ever grow.

[1] - Depending on one's definition of the word "fixed," of course, since the bill kind of sucked, regardless, in part because the Democrats let the GQP "win" on so many of the things the GQP asked for. And now the GQP is rejecting that very same bill, because American politics is fucking stupid and broken and worse-than-worthless.
kane_magus: (Default)
2023-07-01 06:15 pm
Entry tags:

"YouTube test threatens to block viewers if they continue using ad blockers"

"The experiment is meant to urge users to disable their ad blockers or subscribe to YouTube Premium."

Yeah, and Youtube can eat shit and die, then.

Haven't seen this bullshit myself, yet, but I will be sorely tempted to just straight up delete my account and never use Youtube again, if I ever do get hit with it.

Fuck advertising forever. Fuck marketing forever. Fuck commercials forever. Fuck paywalls forever. It's also because of advertisers that Youtube content creators are becoming so limited, like being forced to not have swears or whatever in the first arbitrary number of minutes of a video or else be demonetized.

Remember when one of the main reasons people switched to cable TV versus regular network over-the-air TV was to get away from commercials? Remember when commercials almost immediately came to cable too, and people switched to online shit like Youtube and streaming to get away from TV commercials? And then when ads came to Youtube and streaming (and the Internet in general), people started using ad blockers? I'm not sure what comes after the attempts to threaten and bully people into not using ad blockers, but I doubt it will be pleasant for anyone involved.

Ads are bullshit. They always have been, and they always will be. Find less obnoxious ways to make money, Internet.
kane_magus: (Default)
2022-07-16 11:28 am

"To hell with news websites that use paywalls" Rerun

The latest victim of this, today, was "Rock, Paper, Shotgun," with their (to paraphrase) "If you want to see the rest of this article, you need to pay for our subscription" horseshit. Somewhat vaguely disappointing... but I'm not too disappointed, because I'm not all that much worse off than I was before. The only reason I even had them in my Google News phone app in the first place was due to sheer, lazy convenience, and now that that convenience has gone away, to the curb they have been kicked. *shrug*

Find less obnoxious ways to make money.
kane_magus: (Default)
2022-01-20 12:03 pm

To hell with news websites that use paywalls

Embedded tweets behind cut )



Addendum not included in the above (obviously): it is actually ridiculously easy to bypass the paywall on the website I'm ranting about above that I won't name here. All you have to do is have NoScript installed on a browser and have it turned on (which, just on general principle, is the default state for pretty much every website I view on my desktop PC, outside of a very rare few). Even so, I would prefer to simply not view said website at all, if I can avoid it, which is why I also have it blocked via Personal Blocklist so that it doesn't even show up in Google search results for me anymore. That's how much I fucking hate total paywalls.