Tell HN: Now Washington Post is asking to turn off Firefox's tracking protection

Re:Tell HN: Now Washington Post is asking to turn off Firefo... by michaelmrose on Thursday October 11, 2018 @11:13PM (#18198902)

Maybe the newspapers entire value is tied to a fraction of the staff and they wonder why we are all collectively disinterested in funding their worthless printing presses, managers, secretaries, and buildings?

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Tell HN: Now Washington Post is asking to turn off Firefo... by munchbunny on Thursday October 11, 2018 @11:20PM (#18198928)

Maybe so, but this discussion usually conflates four sentiments:

1. I do/don't think the content is worth the subscription.

2. I do/don't think advertising should be used to support the business.

3. I have issues with the privacy implications of advertising.

4. I don't want to pay but I also don't want to deal with ads.

Though maybe you're expressing a fifth? "I don't see why they need to spend this much money to make this content."

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Tell HN: Now Washington Post is asking to turn off Firefo... by michaelmrose on Friday October 12, 2018 @02:56AM (#18199784)

I read a broad selection of content and don't necessarily know ahead of time which publications are going to produce the useful/interesting content this month.

I cannot afford to support dozens of publications which still might not include all the content I want to read because article foo is from yet a different publication.

Guessing ahead of time seems both broken and expensive compared to grazing one a continuous stream of interesting data supported by ads consumed by people too stupid to install adblocking.

In theory modest advertising could probably easily pay for the people that actually produce the content, In theory micropayments might work too.

In reality they insist on wasting most of the money they earn and deploying intrusive ads and bullying to try to make me subscribe so they can keep wasting money.

My choices are to either give them a big middle finger or surrender my computer to their nonsense and prop up their poorly thought out business model.

As adblockers become increasingly prevalent and decreasing numbers pay for subscriptions this will obviously be increasingly difficult for content creators but solving their problems isn't my problem.

Since I only control my computer I will just keep doing whats best for me.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Tell HN: Now Washington Post is asking to turn off Firefo... by tomc1985 on Thursday October 11, 2018 @11:54PM (#18199071)

You mean the institutional infrastructure that allows journalists to do their jobs with some measure of job security and editorial integrity?

(not that there's a whole lot of that left... but its still better than getting news from facebook and youtube vloggers)

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Tell HN: Now Washington Post is asking to turn off Firefo... by michaelmrose on Friday October 12, 2018 @02:42AM (#18199722)

The integrity lies in the people and connections between same none of that lies in the building or the dead weight.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Tell HN: Now Washington Post is asking to turn off Firefo... by tomc1985 on Friday October 12, 2018 @12:48PM (#18202718)

By that argument you could say that Silicon Valley and its clustering of technology firms are dead weight. All that matters is the people and their connections right?

The journalism that we aspire to today requires a lot of personnel and material resources. Independent vloggers and Facebook/blog randos simply do not have the resources to report like NYT

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Tell HN: Now Washington Post is asking to turn off Firefo... by marmaduke on Friday October 12, 2018 @04:40AM (#18200108)

sure but that integrity may become a scarcer commodity as it becomes more difficult to earn a living.

[ Parent | on HN ]