HACKER Q&A
📣 anbardoi

Why do news websites think this is a good idea?


So many journalist/news websites require an account/subscription. It didnt used to be that way. With the volume of news sites on the web, do they really expect it to be productive to ask users to make an account? People are actively seeking to reduce the number of accounts they have to create on the web, because they dont want to keep track of them all, or risk their data being leaked. Sure, they will get die-hard readers/fans to make an account or subscribe, but how can they expect to gain new readers or fans if most of them throw up a full-screen "Create an account to continue reading"? Like the user cant even deduce if its a good article, they have no incentive to create an account. Just an incentive to mark your publication in their mind on a mental blacklist because you deny them content. Is this bigger than what I can see? Would love to hear different viewpoints.

  👤 noashavit Accepted Answer ✓
With the upcoming death of the 3rd party cookie they have to have a way to continue to target you. They need a new unique identifier for you.

So they will test out requiring signup, and see how that impacts traffic and engagement. I would assume that in the end we'll find a balance between ungated content (from search) and gated (direct, referral).

👤 cebert
With browsers starting to eliminate 3rd party cookie tracking, publishers need new means of tracking viewers for monetization. The publishers don’t care about you or your experience but rather being profitable.

It’s quite unfortunate that these email captive screens are starting to not allow you to use a private email relay service such as those from Apple or DuckDuckGo.

👤 bell-cot
I'd assume it's mostly because not requiring an account/subscription isn't working particularly well for them. Whether they are in desperate financial straits, or their PHB's need to pretend they're doing something useful, or they've grown resentful of working for crap pay so the world can read their work for free, or "subscriber growth" is the newest fashion in game-able metrics, or ...
👤 aristofun
Is it the only piece of evidence that news media went down the hill in past ~10 years?

I think not and I don’t expect any reasonable actions from unreasonable people.

Why do you, i wonder

👤 uberman
Ad blockers prevent generating revenue from ads and someone needs to pay somehow. Gdpr makes it more difficult to collect and sell information about you. Dame with 3rd party cookies.

I'm not saying that I want ads or to be tracked. I dont.

👤 aristofun
Is it the only piece of evidence that news media went down the hill in past ~10 years?

I think not and I don’t expect any reasonable actions from unreasonable people.

They are not your friends, and they are not friends to truth anymore, they just do whatever they can to suck extra dollar from you and survive.

Why do you expect something from them, i wonder