Comment by xp84

Speaking of the news-type sites you bring up:

I hate all these patterns too, but interestingly it feels like I hate it more because the whole Internet has been designed around the "free to read with ads" paradigm -- we've been taught that if you can see something, get the URL and share it, so that others can reference the thing you're trying to either comment on or raise awareness about.

With paper newspapers or magazines it wasn't ever a problem, because if I subscribed to the Dallas Morning News, I automatically got all their articles, and even stories that weren't local to Dallas were covered by them too. I didn't need a subscription to the San Francisco Chronicle and didn't miss it.

Today, if someone is reading an article in the Chronicle, or even the Verge, it's a huge problem for them to share it with someone else even if the other person actually pays for subscriptions to say, NY Times and Bloomberg. Even if all four of those publications each have articles just summarizing the same 5 bullet points.

I'd blame the "news" industry as a whole for not implementing some kinds of reciprocal agreements. Even giant news conglomerates like Media News Group[1] who publish dozens of major US papers don't give you a simple subscription that at least covers all their own properties. I'd argue that they should try harder to stand up some shared subscription services with heavy reciprocal benefits and revenue sharing, so that most people would be able to read most paywalled articles with one monthly subscription. That industry has no one to blame but themselves for not figuring this one out.

[1] https://www.medianewsgroup.com/about-us/