Quote:
Originally Posted by kjk
My point is, and this is not just Apple, that some companies balance out convenience and trusting their users to do the right thing.
I know everyone here is smirking at their supposedly lame attempts, but I have a feeling they know what they are doing-trying to balance accessibility with some way of pushing their subscription service, and relying on the belief that those who value their services won't try to bypass their obviously easy to jump over gate.
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But the NY Times
doesn't trust its customers to do the right thing. If they did, this kind of paywall is the wrong way to go. This kind of paywall isn't a sign of trust. It's just an insult to users' intelligence. A sign of trust might be something like displaying the article normally and telling the user they can access the whole newspaper with a subscription.
In fact, the initial way the NY Times tried to implement a paywall
was a sign of trust. Everything but the crossword and editorials were free. The paper trusted that people who liked the newspaper enough would pay for a subscription for the editorials and crossword. Apparently, readers didn't value them enough to do that. So this paywall was an attempt at a "Screw you" that failed.
Just to be clear: I'm not against people charging for content. I'd like people to pay for the things I write, too. But a) the NY Times was free for a long time, so people feel a bit cheated (whether that's justified or not) and b) if you're going to do it, at least do it
well. It's
really not hard to create a paywall.