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SoylentNews
posted by
cmn32480
on Sunday May 21 2017, @07:21AM
from the trying-to-get-paid-for-what-they-do dept.
from the trying-to-get-paid-for-what-they-do dept.
The Boston Globe website is closing off a hole in its paywall by preventing visitors who aren't logged in from reading articles in a browser's private mode.
"You're using a browser set to private or incognito mode" is the message given to BostonGlobe.com visitors who click on articles in private mode. "To continue reading articles in this mode, please log in to your Globe account." People who aren't already Globe subscribers are urged to subscribe.
Like other news sites, the Globe limits the number of articles people can read without a subscription. Until the recent change, Globe website visitors could read more articles for free by switching to private or incognito mode.
Source: ArsTechnica
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BostonGlobe.Com Disables Articles When Your Browser's in Private Mode
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Good night, Mrs. Calabash, wherever you are.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday May 22 2017, @11:24PM
Beyond that it's as if people couldn't adjust their linking preferences to favour some 9 bazillion other news sites instead.
The whole point of "five pages for free" is to bait people into reading their stuff and perhaps possibly convert some day into a paying subscriber. They are doing that because it works better than shutting passers-by out altogether. When they start implementing more effective paywalling they are going to lose some of those juicy viral social media links. I wonder if they understand that this isn't necessarily the best possible tradeoff. Putting some of their better and less viral articles behind a harder paywall (with some freemium ways to occasionally showcase the paying user experience) while not limiting the other stuff could be a lot better tactic.
I don't mind paying for quality content that I keep consuming. I just have to feel like I actually want to support that and overcome my laziness to subscribe. Saying "fuck off, we don't like your browser settings" is one way of making me not feel like that. Masquerading adverts of articles that I can't view as content (that I supposedly should) on googlebookdotnewster is another.