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Why Paywalls Need To Be So Fragile (thestack.com)

Posted by timothy on from the semi-permeable dept.

An anonymous reader writes: Despite the ferment that occurs when yet another digital publisher paywalls a news-site, most paywalls are absurdly easy to circumvent, even using no other software than a web-browser, because of the need to present unrestricted content to the search engines that publicise it. None of the parties involved are considering anyone else's point of view: Google wants free flow of information funded by merit-based advertising revenue; publishers want to restore consumer lock-in in a network environment of story-led consumers who have completely abandoned the concept; and Apple is fine with content-blocking, since it just wants to sell hardware.

51 of 98 comments (clear)

  1. okthxbai by fyngyrz · · Score: 4, Insightful

    I don't mind paywalls. They let me know these sites don't want me as a visitor. I'm good with that. Such things simply generate a reflexive "okthxbai", and that's the end of that.

    --
    I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
    1. Re:okthxbai by gstoddart · · Score: 3, Interesting

      Yup, the back button us my usual response to that.

      While I'm there I add any sites to my ScriptSafe and HTTP Switchboard definitions.

      The rest isn't my problem, and I pose no further burden to the website.

      Everybody is happy.

      --
      Lost at C:>. Found at C.
    2. Re:okthxbai by amicusNYCL · · Score: 1

      If the URL is still for the article, rather than being redirected to a paywall, sometimes I'll just right-click to inspect the element and start deleting stuff from the DOM until I see the content.

      and Apple is fine with content-blocking, since it just wants to sell hardware.

      Haha! Calling advertisements "content". That's funny. The content I am interested in consuming has never been, and never will be, an ad. The ads are the noise, not the signal. I block the ads to get to the content quicker and easier.

      --
      "Our two-party system is like a bowl of shit looking at itself in a mirror." - Lewis Black
    3. Re:okthxbai by 0123456 · · Score: 1

      Paywalls are fine. The problem is when search engines send me to paywalled sites.

  2. Works for me... by Penguinisto · · Score: 1

    Call the paywall a tax on network illiteracy?

    In all seriousness though, it is evolving, albeit slowly. Take for instance the experts-exchange.com website. Up until recently, you just open the Google cached page and scrolled to the bottom, where you saw the entire conversation. That changed sometime last year (two years ago? I forget.)

    But yeah, I'm sure that content-sellers will still by necessity leave a hole open somewhere for a good long time - you just have to figure out where that hole is (usually by mimicking Googlebot, etc) and pop in if you want to see what's inside w/o the need for paying up.

    I am curious as to how the pr0n sites deal with it, though - the curiousity stems from the fact that the competent/popular ones were traditionally at the forefront of anti-circumvention measures.

    --
    Quo usque tandem abutere, Nimbus, patientia nostra?
    1. Re:Works for me... by CastrTroy · · Score: 4, Insightful

      experts-exchange.com is probably the perfect example of an arms race that ended with everybody leaving the site. It used to be relatively easy to get past the paywall. Eventually they started making it harder and harder. Stackoverflow came along, and had no paywall, and actually made things a lot easier to use. They found other ways to make money rather than force people to pay to see answers. Now Stackoverflow has all the users, and most people new to programming haven't even heard of experts-exchange.com

      --

      Anthropic principle: We see the universe the way it is because if it were different we would not be here to see it.
    2. Re:Works for me... by CastrTroy · · Score: 1

      If you go back and listen to the old stackoverflow podcasts from when they were developing it, they specifically refer to experts-exchange.com, or commonly, "the hyphen site", talking about how terrible it is and how their end goal is to make it irrelevant by simply making a better site.

      --

      Anthropic principle: We see the universe the way it is because if it were different we would not be here to see it.
    3. Re:Works for me... by ahadsell · · Score: 1

      Of course, it used to be expertsexchange.com, which always got a giggle from me when I saw it in a URL.

    4. Re:Works for me... by nitehawk214 · · Score: 2

      All of their content was scraped from sites like Stack Overflow, so there was no point in expert sexchange even existing other than to trap users that did not know better.

      --
      I'm a good cook. I'm a fantastic eater. - Steven Brust
    5. Re:Works for me... by JustAnotherOldGuy · · Score: 1

      experts-exchange.com is probably the perfect example of an arms race that ended with everybody leaving the site.

      ^^^ This times about a billion.

      Experts-exchange used to be halfway useful.....and they started trying to hide the content. It went from "okay" to "miserable" to "fuck all" and never got better.

      After a while I just said "screw 'em!" and never went back. That was years ago and frankly I'm surprised they're still there. I used to go there for Oracle info but there are dozens of better sites, some with ads, some without, but no one ever needs to go to experts-exchange for anything these days.

      psoug.org (Oracle stuff and other code snippets) and stack-exchange.com (tons of stuff for every language under the Sun) are the two I hit the most, but there are gobs of lesser ones that have all the info anyone will ever need.

      In closing, "Piss on you, experts-exchange!"

      --
      Just cruising through this digital world at 33 1/3 rpm...
    6. Re:Works for me... by godel_56 · · Score: 1

      There is another site like Stack Overflow (whose name I will NOT mention) that requires one to log in to use it. I decided to never use that site, because my identity is worth more to me than whatever information might be on there.

      Sooooo . . . lie?

    7. Re:Works for me... by bananaquackmoo · · Score: 1

      What? None of their content was scraped. Experts came before Stack Overflow.

    8. Re:Works for me... by gatfirls · · Score: 1

      Actually it's worse than that. They had a lot of contributors and then moved to their insane cash grab model and basically locked out contributors who didn't answer as much as they used to, no grandfathering in long standing members, F-you pay me.

      That EE is alexa ranked 5,000+ and SO is 50+ warms my heart.

    9. Re:Works for me... by nitehawk214 · · Score: 1

      Some time after SO started up they became a scraping site.

      --
      I'm a good cook. I'm a fantastic eater. - Steven Brust
    10. Re:Works for me... by nitehawk214 · · Score: 1

      Yeah, it was the first site I ever blocked from Google search results. I had to check to see if they still existed. Though all I see is a fancy modern web page begging people to sign up and pay them money.

      I can't imagine anyone with access to Google would pay the hyphen site money.

      --
      I'm a good cook. I'm a fantastic eater. - Steven Brust
  3. Consecutive okthxbai by tepples · · Score: 2

    So what happens when the first seven search results for a particular query end up being sites that "generate a reflexive 'okthxbai'"? This happens to me often when I try to search Google for certain linguistics topics: if it's not on Linguistics Stack Exchange, it's paywall, paywall, paywall. I imagine a long string of paywalled results would make web search engines far less convenient to use.

    1. Re:Consecutive okthxbai by fyngyrz · · Score: 3, Interesting

      Might be a good idea to have a list of these, and a browser plugin that colors any link to a paywalled (or obnoxiously overloaded/toxified with ads) in an obvious way. Bright red on black would do it for me. :)

      --
      I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
    2. Re:Consecutive okthxbai by gstoddart · · Score: 1

      Part of the problem is you seem to be looking for domain-specific/academic stuff ... and that stuff seems to be much more likely to be paywalled.

      Unfortunately, the general rule is the more specialized something is, and the harder it is to find elsewhere, the less you can work around such stuff.

      I suspect most people aren't looking for stuff that specialized, and if you are, you probably have an academic/professional reason to be doing so. In which case, Google might not be the best source for those searches.

      That kind of stuff tends to get locked up far more.

      --
      Lost at C:>. Found at C.
    3. Re:Consecutive okthxbai by Opportunist · · Score: 1

      I'd already be happy with a plugin that adds a "-site:$paywallsite [...]" to all google searches.

      --
      We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
    4. Re:Consecutive okthxbai by fyngyrz · · Score: 1

      Nice, but something that catches the URLs themselves would save you on, for instance, Slashdot or Digg when they link to a paywalled site. Dim any image, make the URL visually poisonous. Ok, AND suck it out of Google, lol. Though I don't know if that would work for their ads.

      --
      I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
  4. So is conlang not for hobbyists? by tepples · · Score: 1

    I suspect most people aren't looking for stuff that specialized, and if you are, you probably have an academic/professional reason to be doing so.

    Just trying to rule something out: You didn't mean people should refrain from engaging in the conlang hobby unless they're college students, college faculty, or professional SF writers, did you?

    1. Re:So is conlang not for hobbyists? by gstoddart · · Score: 2

      Of course not.

      What I am saying is you might be looking at increasingly specialized resources, and in my experience the more specialized the field, the less useful Google can be, and the more likely the people who control that information are to lock it down.

      Unfortunately, the more beholden to a source of information you are, the less flexibility you have to say "okthxbai" and just click the back button.

      And then you have to decide which you are more willing to part with, your money or the information you wish you had.

      --
      Lost at C:>. Found at C.
    2. Re:So is conlang not for hobbyists? by orasio · · Score: 1

      "okthxbai" helps you train not to click again on links to that content, so it will eventually rank lower for the search engine.
      Also, in any environment, if enough people take the "okthxbai" route, restricted content will eventually lose popularity, regardless of its inherent value. That is an incentive for other to share their knowledge in a more open way.
      So, "okthxbai" might not give you the piece of info you thought you were accessing, but end up giving you more and better information than you wished for.

  5. The real reason people block ads by Merk42 · · Score: 2

    Ugh, ads are so bad. I only block them for security reasons...honest.
    Oh, what's that? Some sites are using paywalls instead of ads? Hmm.. well those need to be easy to get around too..because of...reasons. Not because I'm self-entitled and gimme gimme gimme. I mean, sites should just go under if I deem they aren't "worth" it, yet somehow they do have some worth since I'm visiting them in the first place. Don't point that out though, I don't want the cognitive dissonance.

    1. Re:The real reason people block ads by Opportunist · · Score: 2

      Sorry, I know that "my way or the highway" usually works in favor of the seller. Doesn't feel too good if you're the one swallowing your own medicine for a change, does it?

      You don't want me to use ad blockers? I close the tab you're in and click the next. You paywall your site? I close the tab you're in and click the next. You can't survive without either. Perish for all I care.

      If you want me to care about your existence, give me something that I cannot get anywhere else. Or die for all I care.

      How does capitalism feel if you're at the receiving end for a change, hmm?

      --
      We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
    2. Re:The real reason people block ads by SvnLyrBrto · · Score: 1

      Not everyone blocks ads, or blocks ads for the same reasons, or bypasses paywalls instead of moving on. But then again, you probably knew that and are just being an ass for the sake of being an ass.

      On the chance that you are legit; I'll say that I'm not offended by advertising in general, or even by targeted advertising. In fact, (well-)targeted advertising has been genuinely useful to me before. I do use adblock. And I whitelist some sites that I do want to support. But what does offend me is advertising that detracts from my growing experience, takes up excessive bandwidth, uses excessive cpu/battery resources, or acts as a vessel for malware.

      So the first time I see any of:
      Pop-ups
      Pop-unders
      Overlays
      Interstitials
      Automatically-playing audio or video
      Various stupid javascript or HTML5 tricks
      Flash
      Java

      ... then the site is off the whitelist, without hesitation or reservation. It's about respect. Respect me, my time, my resources, my security; and I'll offer some respect back for your revenue model. Don't care to offer any respect to me? Well, then to hell with your revenue model.

      --
      Imagine all the people...
    3. Re:The real reason people block ads by Merk42 · · Score: 1

      How does capitalism feel if you're at the receiving end for a change, hmm?

      Fine really.
      My comment was about the sort of people that want to get the content, but don't want to pay for it in any way (ads, subscription, etc). If the publisher doesn't get the income and the visitor doesn't get the content, I see no issue.

    4. Re:The real reason people block ads by ColdWetDog · · Score: 1

      Here is your perfect website.

      Sometimes you get what you pay for.

      --
      Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
    5. Re:The real reason people block ads by Opportunist · · Score: 1

      Well, more likely than not I will get the content eventually, since someone will offer it with near certainty in a form that I deem agreeable.

      If this is not possible I will actually consider paying for it, depending on whether or not I deem the price on par with the usefulness of the information. How much this is depends entirely on how valuable the information is. Information that saves me a few hours of work may well be worth a few 100 bucks, hence paying a few dollars is actually a VERY good deal.

      What is out of the question is paying for information that is neither unique nor important.

      --
      We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
  6. A whole year's subscription for one page by tepples · · Score: 4, Insightful

    It's because viewing one single page on each of ten different sites is not worth a separate $60 per year subscription to each site. This in turn is in part because of the transaction fees that the credit card companies charge.

    1. Re:A whole year's subscription for one page by Merk42 · · Score: 1

      How about pay-per-article, think that would work?

    2. Re:A whole year's subscription for one page by aix+tom · · Score: 1

      I dunno, but it *seems* my local paper has a system that looks like it's working. At least the system is in place for 3-4 years now without a change, and I still like it.

      They basically have ~40% of the articles available for free, maybe 20% have a 2-3 sentences summary and the rest is pay walled, maybe 20% have a "short version of 10-20 sentences that is free, and a pay walled version that is longer and most of the time has more pictures.

      You can either get a monthly print subscription, which includes all the on-line articles too, or a slightly cheaper online-only subscription. Both of those I would never get, since I don't read them that regularly. But they also offer a "day ticket" to access all their content for 24 hours which cost about the same as a printed paper in the news stand. I get that 1-2 times a month when I find some interesting articles I want to read further.

      A few things come together there, I think: It's a good mix of free / paywalled content so it never feels like a "bait and switch" scheme which is a feel that a lot of pay walled sites have. Google only indexes the free stuff, so everybody arriving from Google gets at least the info that was looked for, with sometimes the OPTINON to get additional info. Plus a simple payment process that isn't any hassle.

    3. Re:A whole year's subscription for one page by mrvan · · Score: 4, Interesting

      In the Netherlands we have a site called "blendle", which offers access to paid content on a large variety of news material. This gets rid of the transaction fees, and a lot of people seem to like it.

      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... / www.blendle.com

    4. Re:A whole year's subscription for one page by TechyImmigrant · · Score: 1

      >This in turn is in part because of the transaction fees that the credit card companies charge.

      This.

      If we had overhead-free micropayments, there would be no issue. "This article costs $0.01. Buy? Y/N"

      --
      I should use this sig to advertise my book ISBN-13 : 978-1501515132.
    5. Re:A whole year's subscription for one page by nitehawk214 · · Score: 1

      I spend about %50 a month on Patreon, going mostly to various youtubers. Though I m not about to pay-per-click for most internet content, it is really worth next to nothing.

      --
      I'm a good cook. I'm a fantastic eater. - Steven Brust
    6. Re:A whole year's subscription for one page by Mr.+Slippery · · Score: 1

      If we had overhead-free micropayments, there would be no issue. "This article costs $0.01. Buy? Y/N"

      No, the issue is still there. The issue is that, a few niche cases aside, your content needs to be programmatically accessible to search engines in order to be useful on the web; you want to charge human users; but there isn't a way to distinguish the two, especially since search engines have zero (or negative) motivation to help you restrict content.

      --
      Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | my blog
      You cannot wash away blood with blood
    7. Re:A whole year's subscription for one page by KGIII · · Score: 1

      I didn't investigate this at all but I just, as a lark, clicked the button that claimed I'd disabled AdBlock Plus (I hadn't) and it let me through. I'm not sure if it is intentional or if uMatrix stops the script from loading. I also have the blocker set loaded in ABP. So, who knows, but i did find it interesting.

      --
      "So long and thanks for all the fish."
    8. Re:A whole year's subscription for one page by tepples · · Score: 1

      Make the abstract available to the search engines and to human readers who don't pay, then take a micropayment to unlock the rest of the article. Now figure out the "take a micropayment" step.

  7. Google Encourages It by bill_mcgonigle · · Score: 1

    Google supposedly requires news sites to not show different content to Googlebot than it does to users, at least for three articles a day, or be labeled a "subscription" site, in the News listings. There's even a reporting tool for users to notify Google if such shenanigans is going on.

    Google doesn't actually seem to act on any of those reports, though, so news sites can be paywalled and Google will help drive traffic their direction. But then again, since nobody is playing by the rules, User-Agent-Switcher doesn't seem like such a bad option either.

    --
    My God, it's Full of Source!
    OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
  8. DMCA / TPP to block ad-block no script allow right by Joe_Dragon · · Score: 1

    DMCA / TPP to block
    ad-block
    no script
    allow right click
    and so on

  9. Pay-per-article subject to per-transaction fees by tepples · · Score: 1

    [Pressuring users toward subscriptions] is in part because of the transaction fees that the credit card companies charge.

    How about pay-per-article, think that would work?

    It would not work well, except for very high value articles. That's what I was talking about above. The bank charges the merchant a transaction fee for each payment that it processes, typically a constant amount plus a percentage of gross. It's that constant amount that kills microtransaction business models such as pay-per-article. Even Bitcoin has a transaction fee of 0.0001 BTC (currently 2.5 cents USD) to discourage "dust spam".

    1. Re:Pay-per-article subject to per-transaction fees by nullchar · · Score: 1

      Someone should create pre-paid accounts (funded by credit cart or BTC or whatever) to use for micro-payments. Oh wait, no one has solved micro-payments yet.

  10. Re:DMCA / TPP to block ad-block no script allow ri by Opportunist · · Score: 1

    When it becomes illegal to use the web sensibly, I guess I'll have to ignore the law. And since I'm in for a few dozen years anyway if I dare to break that law, why bother trying with the rest?

    --
    We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
  11. Bottom Line by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    The paywalls are likely to be very ineffective against younger users. That's not a big disadvantage for the sites, however, because the younger users (under 50, perhaps) because they aren't likely to fork over money in any case.

    It's the older users - people more accustomed to paying for newspapers - who are more likely to be affected by paywalls. It's these people that are targeted by paywalls, because they are the ones more likely to make the decision to pay.

  12. Re:DMCA / TPP to block ad-block no script allow ri by behrooz0az · · Score: 1

    they gonna block us from modifying html on the fly too?

    --
    Moderating "-1, Disagree" is simple censorship. Have the guts to post your opinion. -- Spazmania (174582)
  13. Communication Breakdown by tepples · · Score: 2

    It's fitting that the hyphen site's theme song is "Communication Breakdown" by Led Zeppelin.

  14. Re:The IP stack itself does... apk by tepples · · Score: 1

    Browser-based add-ons avoid even the transition from user mode (the browser) to kernel mode (the IP stack) to look up the host. And unlike most operating systems' IP stacks, a browser-based add-on can use an efficient approximate cache for 0.0.0.0 entries.

  15. Re:Can't Even Unblock Ads Anymore by nitehawk214 · · Score: 1

    I use these except for Flashblock. With HTML5 there just isn't a reason to have flash installed on a computer anymore.

    --
    I'm a good cook. I'm a fantastic eater. - Steven Brust
  16. If you're going to use the free account approach.. by Applehu+Akbar · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Then don't make it ridiculously hard to set one up! I'm looking at you, New Scientist. This UK site invites readers to access its premium articles by setting up a free account that requests some demographic information. Fine as a concept, until you get to the point where you choose a password. Acceptable passwords are filtered through a set of complexity rules more appropriate for James Bond 007 License To Kill clearance than a site for socially conscious pop science articles. So far as I'm concerned, a site that won't accept the studiously randomized passwords generated by password managers is not a site I'm interested in accessing.

  17. good old days by cas2000 · · Score: 1

    i remember the good old days when newspaper inspectors used to roam the trains and if they found anyone skipping the ads, they'd inject them with ebola and rip the articles out of the paper.

  18. Why do we need 10,000 news sites repeating shit? by eggstasy · · Score: 1

    People just grab stuff from Reuters and propagate it. Why would this be a real profession? I worked for a radio once, they basically churned through unpaid interns who vaguely retouched the crap they got from Reuters and then read it outloud in the sound room. It's not exactly highly skilled labor. And then half the reporting world is fucking dishonest. Sensationalism, clickbait, etc. ?
    It's not like you need a huge investment to copy information these days. You don't need giant printing presses and distribution chains.
    Can I just get it straight from Reuters without intermediaries? Thanks.