This trend of closing off the doors to the content on the internet is getting extremely frustrating now. You can’t read anything from even a slightly well-known publication before they ask you to create an account or subscribe. Absolute bullshit!
@amit I try pretty hard not to share links to pages that are behind paywalls, as my way of fighting back. The sites though have so many tricks (such as sharable links that redirect to non-sharable links, so I can read the page, but people I share the URL with can't). It's very frustrating.
@philipbrewer @amit I found a neat workaround to circumvent this. If I want to share an article with friends or family, I use my wallabag instance to fetch a copy of the article and share that as a public link. Works great so far. In a few rare instances, the formatting is a bit off. However, the reader always has the option to click the link to the original source if required. This also prevents link rot on my end.
@ridwan This one was National Geographic -- a fascinating article that I could not read! Sure, not a lesser known though :)
@philipbrewer Hmmm, same here. And it's so difficult to know what's behind a paywall too at times. I have a few subscriptions which I am sure no one in my circle of friends and family won't. So it's difficult to keep up with the attempt.
@sp Interesting, thank you for sharing that. And am also curious that this route has been left open by the big publications?
@amit So you want a free trail for everything? Some sort of freely available selection as a taster?
I assume you don't recklessly click on a bunch of links to things with no context for what it is and as such at least have some idea of what you are paying for.
Unfortunately, whether we like it or not, when you look at a web page that is an act of consumption and our existing economic models are based on paying for that act in some way or another.
@amit I despise these as well, especially when they only show up after you start reading and scroll-jack the article. Activating reader mode used to be effective at getting around this until they wised up to that trick. Now I just choose not to give these sites my time and close the tab.
@simonwoods I won't subscribe to a publication that charges only in USD, only with yearly subscription just because I want to read one article published there. Subscription, especially yearly one, is the worst model that these portals are holding on to.
@JohnPhilpin Oh, I wish that happened sooner. It is the way to go -- it just needs some egos to be bursted.
@amit This continues to interest me -- for lots of reasons tbh! -- since I'm immediately drawn to the question: what did you do before?
Why is this "getting worse", which is always the framing I now see, as if things used to be better... and I'm not sure that's true, at least not with any great certainty.
@amit Yeah. Most give you a 3 or so free articles view per month. I don't really read/subscribe to mainstream paid news content. If I really want to red something and they insist on an email I spin one up from SimpleLogin. There are very few magazines - Nautil.us for example, that I subscribe to paid content, since I really do enjoy their content. I'd also much rather support individual content producers than mainstream media.
@amit @johnphilpin It would probably lead to better journalism too, (after a short period of clickbait competition).
@amit I don't know the first thing about libraries in India. 😊 But, here in Sweden, we have access to newspapers and magazines through our local libraries. Both online and offline. British Council seems to have a similar offer. Maybe you can get access to National Geographic that way?
@philipbrewer Isn't it? In tandem with miniflux, it definitely has changed how I consume content. You're welcome to test it out on my instance.