
Facebook in talks with publishers on supporting subscription models - ProAm
http://www.reuters.com/article/us-facebook-newssubscription-idUSKBN1A41EO
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owlninja
The title makes it seem like TheStreet is the product but it isn't.

[https://www.thestreet.com/story/14233293/1/facebook-s-
campbe...](https://www.thestreet.com/story/14233293/1/facebook-s-campbell-
brown-we-are-launching-a-news-subscription-product.html)

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Torai
That's a very misleading usage of the colon (:) punctuation mark. Is it even
correct to use it like that in english?

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draw_down
Yes, it is used to denote the source of a bit of news or a paraphrased quote.

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monfrere
This should not be downvoted. One sees the source before the colon more often
than after the colon, but it is common to see the source after the colon in
some publications. I see several instances (e.g., "Corporate lobbying helped
derail border tax: senior Republican") on the Reuters homepage right now.

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draw_down
Forget it, Jake. It's Chinatown.

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cuteaussie
I'm more in favor of a move like this than I am having my required messenger
app spammed with advertisements. At least this is completely optional.

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toomanybeersies
Speaking of how horrible messenger is, I was just recently in a developing
country, which gave me an opportunity to download messenger light.

It's amazing, it's so much less bloated and faster than normal messenger, and
uses less data too. It doesn't have stories or the rich integration with giphy
etc., but that doesn't bother me at all.

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dabber
Didn't know there was a messenger light. Maybe because there wasn't when I was
traveling a few years back? I'd be really interested to see it. I did install
FB light on a phone I bought in a developing country and was so excited by it.
The whole app was maybe a few MB at the most and it was nothing but my friends
content and the basic functionality of the early Facebook wall/feed (minus
graffiti.) Like stepping back in time kinda. Made me remember how simple a
concept FB is/was under all the algorithms, data mining and JavaScript.

That app, ironically enough, is a major reason I'm not on FB today. When I got
home and installed the standard app (at 3xx MB) and immediately felt like I
was tricked into installing bloated adware. It ate my data up (comparatively)
and provided me with little to no extra features beyond a prettier UI. More
ads, more analytics, more shitty newsfeed clutter. I uninstalled it and
haven't been back to FB since :)

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izacus
You can easily sideload it on Android and works well even on our countries. :)

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tyingq
_" The feature is likely to allow publishers to create a paywall on Facebook's
Instant Articles and guide readers to a publisher's home page to opt for a
digital subscription"_

I wouldn't call that a news subscription product.

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jrs95
Yeah...I'd much rather they offer a Netflix-esque platform for news articles.
I can't really justify subscribing to a single site, but if I could get most
of the major ones with one affordable subscription I'd probably do it.

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wcummings
>I can't really justify subscribing to a single site

I hear this all the time, it has to be a side effect of getting all your news
through facespace and other news aggregators. There's really only a handful of
newspapers worth subscribing to (in the US), if you aren't reading at least
one regularly enough that you'd pay for it if you had to, your money is pretty
much no good. I'd expect to see more and more paywalls in the coming
months/years, the economics are better, pandering to large volumes of low
value readers is a race-to-the-bottom that won't support good journalism.

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jrs95
Honestly no, none of them are publishing content that is worth what they're
trying to charge. At $15/mo, the NYT seems to be selling a feeling of
intellectual superiority more than they're selling better journalism.

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rohansingh
If you have Prime, I think the Washington Post subscription offer of 6 months
free and then $3.99/month after that is a very reasonable value.

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jrs95
That is a great value. Way more in line with what one site ought to cost in my
opinion.

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miles_matthias
Okay, that makes FB and the publishers more money, but how does it solve FB's
fake news problem? Or does it exacerbate it?

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alttab
Google gives you the content for free via search as long as they get your
search queries. Facebook gives you your friends content for free but could
allow publishers to charge for access to their streams.

Virtual currency will run the new internet I feel - not neutrality
necessarily, but something that will work.

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epmaybe
Quite a few news sites have paywalls even through Google search, like wsj

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amelius
I always wondered why nobody implemented an App store for news and magazine
articles that can be accessed through the internet (i.e. not device specific).

Why didn't Amazon do this? Or Apple? Google?

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caryhartline
It would be against the interests of Google for people to subscribe/pay for
articles rather than searching through Google News for ad-supported articles.

It's against Apple's interests to do anything that isn't device-specific and
the same could probably be said about Amazon & Kindle.

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amelius
True. However, it can be against your interests, but you should always
consider: what if someone else does this.

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Animats
How big a cut will Facebook take?

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adjkant
I submitted a link to the Verge article on this with the title "Facebook to
add paywall features later this year" which is the main highlight here to me.

