The Sun and other publications roll out "Pay to Reject personalized ads"

https://help.thesun.co.uk/article/the-sun-pay-to-reject-faqs

by alex_suzuki • 2 years ago

26 31 2 years ago

help.thesun.co.uk

h2odragon2• 2 years ago

"Pay us enough, and we won't tell others what we know about you"

Sound familiar, doesn't it?

mberger• 2 years ago

I would rather this than a hard paywall. I think this is the future of the internet. The masses get their data harvested and the rich and smart can opt out.

rchaud• 2 years ago

You don't have to be rich or smart to just buy the newsstand version and avoid tracking altogether.

fifteen1506• 2 years ago

Great.

Maybe next they'll adopt micropayment systems.

renegat0x0• 2 years ago

Paywalls are OK. People need to be paid for their work. Paying for the pleasure of not being surveilled upon - not so much.

user3939382• 2 years ago

A protection racket for surveillance, geniuses. How about, I don’t give a shit about your publication?

_tk_• 2 years ago

Interestingly, the Information Commissioner's Office calls it "Consent or pay" instead of "Pay to Reject". Or is this another model?

https://ico.org.uk/about-the-ico/media-centre/news-and-blogs...

InMice• 2 years ago

Absolutely never, of course. I'll stick with ublock origin and noscript for news sites. Although I am trialing apple news right now. I land on so many news sites randomly that any individual subscriptions to any of them is absurd. This is NOT the solution and is probably not even realistic if I had to guess.

xattt2• 2 years ago

Apple News has been surprisingly good. I notice they dilute their premium sources in Canada with free news articles from AP, Canadian Press, and Reuters. Unfortunately, those articles tend to be news gruel.

squigz• 2 years ago

Are you referring to the specific articles they choose, or are you suggesting those 3 publications generally only put out "news gruel"?

amne• 2 years ago

so .. pay or see ads. then adblockers are instantly outlawed.

alex_suzuki• 2 years ago

You still see ads even if you pay. Just not targeted ones. Yes, really...

itishappy4• 2 years ago

You are paying for an ad-tracking free experience so you will still see non-personalised advertising.

I get paying for an ad free service. (I pay for YouTube Premium today.) I don't get paying and still seeing ads.

TheBozzCL• 2 years ago

It’s the Mr. Krabs money meme.

They’ll take as much as they can get away with before people seriously push back. I mean, it’s nothing new, really - see how some paid streaming services have converted their paid, ad-free tiers to have ads, and added a more expensive tier without them again.

add-sub-mul-div3• 2 years ago

Removal of ads has been a feature of paying for a service in some instances but not others. Why is that hard to understand?

itishappy4• 2 years ago

I understand why it's offered, I don't understand why anybody would sign up for it.

I feel like the segment of the population who is willing to pay for a free service in exchange for additional privacy but not willing to pay a bit more to remove ads entirely is vanishingly slim. Am I missing something?

infecto• 2 years ago

I know it existed and did not work but I would like to have micro transactions setup on publications. It would be great to just deposit $N to go and read an article without the burden of having a subscription.

biglyburrito• 2 years ago

AHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAH

klez• 2 years ago

Newspapers in Italy have been doing this for years, by the way. You don't want third party cookies? Subscribe!

There was an investigation by the privacy watchdog[0].

I'm not sure how it ended. Last news I can find is that they were continuing the investigation one month later.[1]

[0] https://www.garanteprivacy.it/web/guest/home/docweb/-/docweb...

[1] https://www.garanteprivacy.it/home/docweb/-/docweb-display/d...

alkonaut3• 2 years ago

Yeah no. I can pay for news and you can even put friendly ads in the news if it makes it cheaper.

I’ll do no business with anyone who does the “pay with money or with your info” business model. And I’ll keep reading their news for free while they contemplate their business model further.

dns_snek• 2 years ago

I'm holding out some hope that EU regulatory action will be swift and severe to act as a deterrent. These "accept or pay" walls are clearly against the spirit and likely against the letter of GDPR.

4. When assessing whether consent is freely given, utmost account shall be taken of whether, inter alia (among other things), the performance of a contract, including the provision of a service, is conditional on consent to the processing of personal data that is not necessary for the performance of that contract.

https://gdpr-info.eu/art-7-gdpr/

Consent should not be regarded as freely given if the data subject has no genuine or free choice or is unable to refuse or withdraw consent without detriment.

https://gdpr-info.eu/recitals/no-42/

alkonaut3• 2 years ago

I don’t understand why legislation is passed that is this clear on something but then it’s not enforced?

Unenforced regulation is even worse than no regulation because it makes it very unclear what the regulation actually is. Worst case it forces the actors on the market to all be in violation because it’s such a competitive disadvantage to comply unless everyone does. This regulation is supposed to (I hope) make non-tracking ads more profitable because advertisers simply can’t show tracking ads. But if half the sites still show tracking ads then the revenue from displaying dumb ads will be next to nothing.

fmajid• 2 years ago

The EU Data Protection Board ruled that Meta's similar proposal is illegal under GDPR. Forced consent is not consent.

https://noyb.eu/en/statement-edpb-pay-or-okay-opinion

motohagiography• 2 years ago

sounds like ryanair for content. one of my early (non-starter) startup plays was going to use a similar technology but instead of pay to reject, you'd get a login that came as a customer benefit for buying certain higher end products.

e.g. buy a tesla or fancy sunglasses and it comes with access to paywalled articles from mainstream publishers. idea being products can differentiate by extending their brand experience to other platforms, where a new mercedes should come with some basket of economist, wsj, and FT subscriptions the way you get the first year of satellite radio.

I don't know what product connection The Sun's content would be good for, maybe aftermarket rims or if there were a royal warrant holder for stab vests, but the model may still apply for some future startup.

the business was to bulk buy content access from publishers and sell the access to retail brands via the portal/app to bundle for their customers with their products. This idea of, "we're going to make it insufferable, but you can make it just more sufferable by paying," is like discount airlines, HP's printer business, and I guess legacy media is there now too.

The Sun and other publications roll out "Pay to Reject personalized ads"

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