Could y'all please add (paywalled) or ($) or (€) when you post links here to content behind paywalls? It is really annoying to click through several "consent banners" and other popups, thus feeding gazillions of trackers, just to get the "to continue reading, please subscribe" message. #kthxbai
Agree in theory, but I don't always realize it. If I'm browsing a site I've paid for and share a link, sometimes I may not realize its paywalled.
Other times, if you follow a link via social media, the host sometimes allows the article to be viewed based on the meta data saying it came from FB or Twitter --- but Mastodon doesn't add tracking and marketing garbage.
@jwildeboer I like this proposal and will adopt it. Thank you!
I think it'll be easier to get traction for ($) and (€) due to character counts. Maybe we can use ($?) and (€?) for the equivalents (or abbreviations) of (possibly paywalled)?
@jwildeboer My solution is to pick and choose, and alternate throughout the year. Only digital subscriptions for me. About every quarter I unsubscribe and choose another three. It's a real circus. I also find talking to my neighbors gives me a better sense of "polling" than ANY publication. It's changed massively since I moved here 14 years ago.
@jwildeboer@isleofmandan
Attention #nytimes subscribers. Each of you receives 10 “gift” posts per month that are exempt from paywall counting. Selected topics and articles of importance are exempted from paywall.
Each reader is entitled to 10 monthly hops over the paywall for counted content.
I try to use my 10 gifts here as there are few stories worth forwarding.
I feel abused every time that happens. They get all my data, I get nothing. If you add a ($) or (€) you at leat allow me to make a better decision on clicking that link or not.
I've been adding (paywalled) or (possibly paywalled) to my toots for content behind paywalls for this very reason. You should be able to know before you click. I consider that to be common sense by now :)
I want to use the web the way it is IMHO supposed to work. I click on a link, I can read the content. Without obstructions or being spied on. Yes, I am that idealistic. So adding a little ($) or (€) to warn my readers of going to a page with IMHO relevant content that is not following this simple rule is the least I can do. FTR, my blog has no cookies, no trackers, no analytics. It's really just me sharing my thoughts to the world.
@jwildeboer Paywalls change. Some publishers are putting in a paywall after a post gets a certain amount of traffic or after a while. Or you are able to read a few article each month and there are also geo-based paywalls. If you share an article, there is no way to be certain that it won't be behind a paywall for everyone, even if you can access it without one
@mschfr This is why I use (possibly paywalled) quite frequently. Typically news articles that are available freely for the first day but disappear behind a paywall after. There's no perfect solution, but not saying something could be paywalled is, IMHO, tricking my readers into a trap. And that is what I try to avoid.
And also FTR — I have digital subscriptions to the NY Times, Washington Post, Guardian and german Süddeutsche Zeitung. And a library subscription to hundreds of more papers and magazines (best thing ever! Support your library!) but I would never expect my readers to have any subscription. So I always try to deliver the needed context in my toots. But I often see single word toots with a link to paywalled content. Please don’t do that. Is all!
And no, I don’t think this should be automated. It might sound simple to check server-side and add a ($) symbol when posting but that defeats what I try to achieve. That you think and reflect a second before posting.
@jwildeboer It's not always that easy. Often sites give some number of free views and it's not always obvious if they are paywalled in some way. Expecting everyone to research this is really not practical.
@jwildeboer To me that almost feels like a promotion. Also, you have no way to know how many free views anyone might have. I don't buy this idea. No pun intended.
@jwildeboer I’d also add that expecting people to know the difference between a paywalled link, gift link, and open access link is a high bar for the average person. Most users I deal with are from the bottom 1/3 of user sophistication and lots of them even have college degrees. This is a completely foreign world to them.
@jwildeboer definitely. I really appreciate when people do that. I just don’t have my hopes that it’ll move the needle much as a voluntary thing since the norm that most people would follow would remain as is.
@sysop408@jwildeboer Gift links definitely confuse the picture even more, indeed. And there are other confusing factors. For example, the L.A. Public library has an arrangement where patrons can get free online access to the NY Times.
@lauren interesting. Do you mean that by posting gift links it could confuse people that all links work like that or do you mean that some gift links have a certain number of views?
@sysop408@jwildeboer There are all kinds of variations. That's why making the determination is so difficult. Putting a "$" on a link could unnecessarily discourage someone from accessing an important story that they actually could see for free (e.g. gift link, other free views, etc.)
@lauren well this is interesting. Twitter is now highlighting gift articles with a special badge that gets stamped into the social media preview image for the referenced URL. That stamp isn't in the preview image provided by the source. It's added by Twitter after the image is fetched.
I agree wholeheartedly regarding flagging likns that can lead to a pay wall. I also like to point out when a pay wall can be overcome using reader mode as quite a few succumb to this simple "fix".
Point of order, though: GoatCounter provides analytics. For example, the majority of you readers recently have been from Spain, using Chrome on a Windows PC ... 😉 😁
@jwildeboer a lot of "paywalls" do not actually show up if you use GNU IceCat or another Firefox-based browser with LibreJS or NoScript. This is true for quite a few Dutch newspaper sites for instance.
@jwildeboer I understand your point, but I feel that there is a grey area about what is an actual paywall. If I have to pay to get to the content in any case, then it's clearly a paywall. But what about the situation where only users that let there browsers blindly execute all JS that's sent to it observe a paywall? ;)
It already happens sometimes that people posting links were surprised to learn that others faced difficulty as they were simply unaware what JS-running browsers were showing.
@jwildeboer I like the idea and I think adding a monetary sign to such URLs is a good idea. Certainly when the paywall is server-side.
At the same time let's encourage a web where JavaScript is not mandatory to view sites and encourage people to use browsers like IceCat. I install IceCat along Firefox, and explain the differences so that people have an easy option to avoid running JS with anti-features. This is informing and giving people control w.r.t. risks.
@patricus@jwildeboer your website actually works quite well in IceCat, at least much better than most sites! I can only appreciate it works as well as it does without needing complex JS to be executed!! It would be great if more sites would be like yours!!
@patricus@jwildeboer actual programs not running when JS is generally not executed makes a lot of sense :)
Also I would argue that LibreJS's way of determining what JS should be executed has significant flaws. I like the idea that it distinguishes trivial JS from complex JS and still executes trivial JS. The mechanisms to derive whether a free license is associated with a piece of complex JS do not seem robust to me (and essentially easy to fool).
@jschwart@jwildeboer it's gnu, after all, they just try to force people to do libre software although not every piece of my code is libre at all so it may bite gnu icecat in the arse lmfao
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