When I run into a site that requires me to turn off my ad blocker, I dust off my feet and leave it behind. It isn’t that I’m being petty abut denying the site revenue, it is that I don’t trust ads to not be intrusive, obnoxious, attempt to hijack the browser, and at worst install malware. My ad blockers get turned off for no one.
I subscribe to two print publications that include web access but I seldom use it on either. I pay subscribe to one which has a print edition I don’t get, just the website. I also subscribe to one document access type site (huge though still very incomplete collection of US military unit operational records from WWII, besides stuff more oriented toward people searching out the military service of their relatives). Long ago I contributed to a special interest web board but they later pissed me off and I quit, and I haven’t ever seen a reason to do that anywhere since.
Otherwise, if a news site pops up ‘you’ve used your X free articles for the month’…I’m on to the next site, 100%. I’ll white list my ad blocker to see something maybe 20% of the time if I get such a pop up. I don’t refuse in principal but usually just go elsewhere. Also sometimes the anti-ad blocker pop up has an option to just say ‘continue with ad blocker’. I read CNBC’s site fairly often and their pop up is like that. White listing would just save me that one click each time.
I have online subscriptions to two newspapers, one local and one national. So I’m not opposed to paying for news content; in fact it’s important if we don’t want to lose out on decent reporting (especially investigative work).
I’m not about to pay for access to sites where I might want to read one story a month, or less (looking at you, Washington Post). If a news site has a story I’m interested in and don’t think I’ll find readily elsewhere I don’t especially mind unblocking their ads, at least for the time being. The ad blockers are only there because a couple of websites (looking at you, Straight Dope and Sports Illustrated) had very obnoxious, intrusive ads). Normal ads that don’t pop up blocking my screen, parade across the bottom of it or flash in the background are bearable.
Same here. Plus, it took so long to find a blocker that works well, and actually get it installed, ain’t no way I’m risking fuckin’ it up.
I pay for a New York Times subscription (for now - $1 a month) and a SDMB subscription. Not sure if I’ll keep the NYT subscription, it depends on the price they give me when it’s up.
I whitelist sites that ask that I find reputable, or that I use a lot. It has yet to pose a problem for me (I use AdBlock on Firefox). Looks like I’ve whitelisted such sites as cleveland.com, Jezebel, AccuWeather, AV Club, Jalopnik, etc.
If I follow a link to a random news site that I don’t think I’ll need to come back to, I just back out and try to find the same news story elsewhere. I usually can find something else.
I object to almost all ads, not on principle, but because they are annoying and I don’t like them. Non-tracking ads that are unobtrusive and relatively rare are fine by me.
I don’t mind paying for content (I subscribe to Netflix and I buy books, etc.), but the problem with paying for website content is that there are so many websites and it’s just not feasible to subscribe to very many of them, and even when you do it’s often a hassle to get all your devices logged in.
I’m not sure what the ideal model is. Some kind of complicated privacy-protecting micropayments bundle maybe, but that’s obviously very complicated.
I’m thinking here about the one columnist I read regularly on Bloomberg.com. I read maybe 6 articles of his a month on it. The paywall lets me read 3, so I just find another browser or another machine to read the others. Some months I follow enough links to other articles that I run out of paywall limit * unique browser/machine combos, then I just stop reading stuff on Bloomberg. I wouldn’t mind paying a little bit, but there’s no way I’m going to pay $35/month for a Bloomberg subscription. Even at $1/month, it’s more hassle to manage a login for each site like that than it’s worth. If they tighten their paywall, I’ll just read something else.
You get a digital subscription for a dollar a month? I’m paying them fifteen dollars every four weeks.
For me, it usually goes something like this:
someone posts a link on twitter, facebook, the Dope, etc.
Me: I’d like to read this article. clicks on link
Website: Please log in or subscribe to read this article.
Me: Guess I’m not reading this article.* goes on with my life*
Usually I just move on. For some “regular” sites that have an article limit/month I do things like just open it in a private tab, different browser, or whatever I’m in the mood for.
I’ve figured a few of the ad-blocker blocker sites. Sometimes just the ESC key at the right time during loading does wonders. If it’s just the text I want to read, then opening the source page often works. (But usually I just don’t care and go somewhere else.)
I use chrome as my main browser and if I hit a site that has an ad blocker blocker I use firefox which doesn’t have an ad blocker. I don’t use firefox for anything else though.
Yeah it was a promotion some time last year. That’s why I hopped on it, wouldn’t have done it otherwise.
When I hit a paywall asking that I turn off the ad blocker I close the site. They have the right to restrict their content to those that pay or let them show ads. I have the right not to be one of those people.
But until the streaming digital format became the predominant medium (circa 2000), newspapers were printed… And there were ads in the papers that you couldn’t suppress. The price of the newpaper was not to support the staff, but the cost of printing and distribution - it was the advertising revenue that formed the bulk of the income that paid people to go on location, to write insightful or meaningful summaries or analyses, to take photos, and so on.
And here is the crux of the problem: digital ads are not like ads in the newspaper, which BTW I always get a kick out of reading when I find some old and yellowed relic that had been used as wall insulation in the 1950s, or packing material in a box from 3 or 4 moves ago dating to the late 20th Century.
Digital ads flash or animate to try to get your attention. Digital ads pop up to fill your entire screen against your will. The very worst digital ads autoplay some kind of video, with sound, not caring if you’re in a quiet room, on a train or airplane, or what have you.
Digital ads are not PASSIVE.
And yet, we’ve been trained to expect either low cost news - as from a newspaper -or full-on free news, distributed electronically.
But free digital news means someone is footing the cost of creating the content in the first place. If there’s no money to made any more doing so, who’s doing it? People WITH money, and with an interest in dominating or controlling the news as it’s consumed by the masses.
Hmmm. That sounds like a terrible place to be. If only that were a what-if scenario!
And I harp about news/newspapers in particular, because nobody calls having to pay for Netflix a “paywall”, or complains when a free website like ESPN has a subscription model for “insider content” from writers analyzing teams or players for “more serious fans”. That term is specific to sites that require some kind of subscription cost to read more than a few paragraphs or articles of content that the reader implies they expected to get for free. That is news, either current events or archived content from a headline search.
I contribute a few bucks to a couple of webcomic artists’ Patreons each month; I subscribe to Netflix and the SDMB, used to have a custom title as well. I don’t mind having Adblocker whitelist sites which I really want to visit; there aren’t all that many.
If I can find the same content elsewhere without being bugged for whitelisting or paying, I’ll go there instead.
I subscribe to the SDMB. I will turn-off my adblocker or whitelist sites as needed. That said, it’s not the ad sites that bug me, but the ones that insist on subscriptions to view their content. Yes, I understand the need to do that, and I absolutely understand paying for content. But my problem is that I don’t regularly get all my information from one news source. Sometimes I just want to read a random article from the Walla Walla Watchman or the Kalamazoo Klaxon (not real papers, of course, or at least I don’t think they are.) When I go to such a paper and it spots me in incognito mode and says I can’t look at the content without paying for a subscription, I just say “fuck off” and go somewhere else. What would make sense is for a large swath of papers to get together and have one subscription service fee that would allow access to a wide array of newspapers. That I may very well pay for, but, for my news sources right now, I don’t pay as I don’t use any one single news source consistently enough to justify it.
ETA: Oh, I do have exactly three other subscriptions: one is to the NYTimes Crossword, one to Cooks Illustrated, and one to Saveur Magazine.
Exactly right. I pay for a subscription to the Washington Post and The Athletic because I find them to be quality journalism (one news, one sports) and am happy to support them as a result.
Outside of here – nothing. Not even Prime. Considered it for a few things but in the end I just haven’t felt/had the need yet.
If you should have a Medical emergency, Prime is well worth it. I think I placed 90 some orders for stuff I needed to have NOW this past couple months. Prime killed the shipping costs.
Huh. Looks like one of my fanciful names was a real newspaper. Apparently, the Walla Walla Watchman existed in the 19th century and then became the Walla Walla Journal.