
Google News Should Remove Paywall and forced adblock removers from feed - 77yy77yy
When I visit Google News and click a link I don&#x27;t expect a paywall, I expect to read the news.<p>I also have never disabled an ad blocker because one site said I should in order to read their content. Another bad user experience.<p>I understand in both instances its their right to put a paywall or demand a removal of ad blocker but when aggregated by others, sites like Google News, the expectations of users are different and therefore, these sites should not be included and get traffic that for the most part, get nothing but a quick click to close window or a back button.<p>If the click doesn&#x27;t match the user&#x27;s expectation, you&#x27;re doing it wrong.
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saycheese
Beyond me how people expect journalist to work for free, then complain about
how hard it is to find good journalist.

Better idea would be for Google News to offer a unified subscription service,
or simply license the content and have a unified interface.

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jasonkostempski
We don't need journalist anymore just people that can write semi-coherently
about interesting thing they actually know something about (not just any
random thing they think people will click on). Instead of doing it for money,
they can do it for the sake of communicating with other people about something
they're involved with.

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xcavier
We don't need employees any more. We just need semi competent people who half
understand something. Instead of working for money, 'employees' can do it for
the sake of contributing.

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elorant
That's not that easy to do. GoogleBot would have to look at the code and
decide whether it contains ad blocking checks. There's not a universal method
to check for this so it would require a lot of customization and testing. I'm
sure they have better things to do with their time.

Besides, I seriously doubt whether Google would oppose checks for ad blocking
technology. After-all they make 90% of their income from ads.

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ocdtrekkie
Google has the opposite goal. Since their primary income is ad revenue, they
have absolutely zero incentive to improve the experience for ad blockers. As
long as your goal is to deny both paying for and seeing ads for content, don't
expect anyone to make your life easier, because you're leeching off everyone
else.

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blowski
Agreed. I can see why they would demote sites with terrible advertising
(especially if it generates them no revenue). But not why they would encourage
adblocking in general.

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johnnyfaehell
Sites with terrible advertising is literally the only reason I'm using an ad-
blocker. If those sites had an ad free option for reasonably cheap I would
just pay for those specific sites to be ad free.

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ocdtrekkie
That may be the excuse you give, but be away that by supporting or using ad
blockers, you're feeding a toxic force on the Internet, and drastically
hurting good journalism.

Check out Troy Hunt's experience, with his ridiculously unobjectionable
sponsor scheme, and the fact that ad blockers have gone out of their way to
explicitly block it anyways: [https://www.troyhunt.com/ad-blockers-are-part-
of-the-problem...](https://www.troyhunt.com/ad-blockers-are-part-of-the-
problem/)

Even if you believe you only use the ad blocker because of terrible
advertisers, you're likely harming legitimate ones as much or more.

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patates
Just tell me in your web site kindly and unobtrusively that you need ads to
survive and that you'd hand-picked ads which are not animated and respect
privacy of your visitors. You'll immediately get an exception.

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ocdtrekkie
Websites need ads (or subs) to survive. The default setting you operate on
should not be to starve them, and you should not need them to tell you that
before you act. If you were not blocking by default, and only blocked when a
site was particularly invasive, your position would be far more defensible.

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patates
If showing flashing ads wouldn't have been causing me seizures and if that it
weren't the norm to show that kind of ads, what you said could work.

Also why am I paying for something without seeing what it is?

"Here's our content, maybe help us keep producing it by showing our promisedly
sane ads?"

I buy a subscription or show ads to 90% of the web sites I visit more than a
couple of times per month, as long as they offer them.

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Bedon292
Not sure there is a good way to make this happen. They are an aggregator, and
have 10 different sources you can click on for the same topic. The 'top'
article for that topic regularly rotates through sources throughout the day. I
assume to promote some sort of fairness, or maybe it has something to do with
recency of the last update. Not sure how it works. But how do they prioritize
a site over another because of a pay wall? What about all the other people who
actually pay for a subscription to some news sites? Should those sites really
be punished? Should those users not see the results from that site?

If you don't like a site, you can hit personalize and reduce those sites from
showing up. If I hit one that is telling me I have to remove an ad blocker,
thats what I would do.

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ungzd
The same with Hacker News.

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jasonkostempski
I wouldn't expect Google to do this, they live on ad revenue. I'd like to see
someone else do it though, with much stricter rules e.g. no javascript and no
embedded media. And I'd like some idealistic people to write interesting
content for it to get it off the ground until it becomes insanely popular and
everyone starts writing things in that format so "[Cool Name] News" will pick
it. And then the Internet becomes a good place to visit again. _[end day
dream]_

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problems
Most paywalls get automatically disabled when clicking links from Google by
referrer.

As for ad blockers, install this: [https://reek.github.io/anti-adblock-
killer/](https://reek.github.io/anti-adblock-killer/)

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DanielBMarkham
Let's not forget that Ad networks are terrible for carrying malware.

It's not going to happen, but it should.

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fao_
I usually block the anti-adblocker message. Works like a charm.

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teaneedz
I don't use GN, but I agree with this from a UX side.

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AWildDHHAppears
I pay for NY Times and WSJ. If more people did that, we'd have less malicious
"fake news."

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jasonkostempski
If more people stopped blindly believing everything they read, there would be
no such thing as malicious fake news, it would just be called "inaccurate
information".

