<story><title>New York Times Co. Reports $24M Profit, Thanks to Digital Subscribers</title><url>https://www.nytimes.com/2018/08/08/business/media/new-york-times-earnings-subscriptions.html</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>joekrill</author><text>&amp;gt; They also show ads even if you have a subscription, which sounds very backward to me.&lt;p&gt;So are you also cancelling your cable subscription, any magazine subscriptions, physical newspaper subscriptions, no longer driving on toll roads with billboard...?&lt;p&gt;I&amp;#x27;m not saying it&amp;#x27;s right, or good, or valid--but the standard practice, for as long as I can remember, for most mediums, is to still show ads for things you pay for. So I&amp;#x27;m not sure how that makes it &amp;quot;backwards&amp;quot;.</text></item><item><author>ehsankia</author><text>I canceled mine last week exactly because of those dark patterns. They also show ads even if you have a subscription, which sounds very backward to me. I&amp;#x27;d love to support them, but those practices don&amp;#x27;t belong in 2018.&lt;p&gt;EDIT: Oh, looks like the cancellation didn&amp;#x27;t go through and they charged me for one more month, sweet. I might just go to my bank and tell them to block the source. Or even better, I may have found a trick. You can switch your payment to Paypal, and then Paypal let&amp;#x27;s you block&amp;#x2F;cancel reccuring payment. Let&amp;#x27;s see if that works.</text></item><item><author>TheAceOfHearts</author><text>It&amp;#x27;s surprising to see how small they are. Only 3.8 million subscribers, and you have to imagine that some percentage of that barely reads their content.&lt;p&gt;I wonder if there&amp;#x27;s public numbers estimating how many people in total read the New York Times, and how it compares to emerging forms of media and entertainment like YouTube.&lt;p&gt;One criticism of New York Times that I&amp;#x27;ve read online is that they won&amp;#x27;t allow you to cancel your digital subscription through their website. They force you to call them. I&amp;#x27;m not sure if that has changed recently, but that&amp;#x27;s a pretty questionable dark pattern.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>criddell</author><text>A lot of people have cancelled their cable subscription and get by with ad-free services like Netflix and Hulu, MLB.tv, etc...&lt;p&gt;The other things you mention - magazines, newspapers, and billboards - usually don&amp;#x27;t track you and build a profile on you so they are less objectionable.</text></comment>
<story><title>New York Times Co. Reports $24M Profit, Thanks to Digital Subscribers</title><url>https://www.nytimes.com/2018/08/08/business/media/new-york-times-earnings-subscriptions.html</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>joekrill</author><text>&amp;gt; They also show ads even if you have a subscription, which sounds very backward to me.&lt;p&gt;So are you also cancelling your cable subscription, any magazine subscriptions, physical newspaper subscriptions, no longer driving on toll roads with billboard...?&lt;p&gt;I&amp;#x27;m not saying it&amp;#x27;s right, or good, or valid--but the standard practice, for as long as I can remember, for most mediums, is to still show ads for things you pay for. So I&amp;#x27;m not sure how that makes it &amp;quot;backwards&amp;quot;.</text></item><item><author>ehsankia</author><text>I canceled mine last week exactly because of those dark patterns. They also show ads even if you have a subscription, which sounds very backward to me. I&amp;#x27;d love to support them, but those practices don&amp;#x27;t belong in 2018.&lt;p&gt;EDIT: Oh, looks like the cancellation didn&amp;#x27;t go through and they charged me for one more month, sweet. I might just go to my bank and tell them to block the source. Or even better, I may have found a trick. You can switch your payment to Paypal, and then Paypal let&amp;#x27;s you block&amp;#x2F;cancel reccuring payment. Let&amp;#x27;s see if that works.</text></item><item><author>TheAceOfHearts</author><text>It&amp;#x27;s surprising to see how small they are. Only 3.8 million subscribers, and you have to imagine that some percentage of that barely reads their content.&lt;p&gt;I wonder if there&amp;#x27;s public numbers estimating how many people in total read the New York Times, and how it compares to emerging forms of media and entertainment like YouTube.&lt;p&gt;One criticism of New York Times that I&amp;#x27;ve read online is that they won&amp;#x27;t allow you to cancel your digital subscription through their website. They force you to call them. I&amp;#x27;m not sure if that has changed recently, but that&amp;#x27;s a pretty questionable dark pattern.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>r3bl</author><text>Because you can open a private&amp;#x2F;incognito&amp;#x2F;porn tab and view the same article without actually paying for it, and a premium should offer you something worth a constant amount of money draining from your account.&lt;p&gt;Paying 15 euros per month to get a daily crossword + cooking section (or 9 euros per month to &lt;i&gt;not&lt;/i&gt; get them) is something not a lot of people are interested in.</text></comment>