Newspapers slit their own throats back in 1994-5 or so when they decided to put their content up for free because they could sell ad space. It was a bad idea then, and I don't think anyone's tried to fix it in the past 25 years.
> Newspapers slit their own throats back in 1994-5 or so when they decided to put their content up for free because they could sell ad space.
Newspapers had little choice, because they compete with lots of other free information and because payment mechanisms are too costly (in reader time and frustration).
> It was a bad idea then, and I don't think anyone's tried to fix it in the past 25 years.
In fact, in journalism in the last 25 years - maybe the last 50 or 100 years - I doubt anything has gotten more attention than than a solution to this problem.
1993 -- 25 years ago -- was an experimental time for the Internet.
The only competition they had was other pioneers slitting their own throats because that's how you got recognized on this new-fangled World Wide Web.
A lot of newspapers thought they could sell ad space against their Internet properties for at least as much as they were selling their newspaper-based classified ads. That was obviously not the case.
I appreciate that you think the WWW has always had the power it does now, but back in '93 it was a niche in the multiple ways a content provider had to distribute their wares.
The Washington Post is the perfect example of this.
They have two paid plans, a "Basic" one and a "Premium EU Ad-Free Subscription" promising "No on-site advertising or third-party ad tracking". However, trying to subscribe to the latter still says the following:
> By subscribing, you agree to the use by us and our third-party partners of technologies such as cookies to personalize content and perform analytics. Please see our Terms of Service, Digital Products Terms of Sale and Privacy Policy for more information.
"personalize content and perform analytics" does not necessarily have anything to do with ads. Examples abound: 3rd party A/B testing (Optimizely), 3rd party analytics (Google Analytics), 3rd party error reporting (Bugsnag), 3rd party page speed testing, etc.
> By subscribing, you agree to the use by us and our third-party partners of technologies such as cookies to personalize content and perform analytics. Please see our Terms of Service, Digital Products Terms of Sale and Privacy Policy for more information.
It's not an opt-in if it's a condition of using the service. If "by using this you agree to" is an opt-in, then the definition of opt-in is meaningless.
The "opt" stands for optional. This wording is not describing an optional feature.
If thing A is optional, and thing B is permanently attached to thing B, there are a couple of ways to express this relationship. One could say "Thing B is non-optionally attached to optional thing A". One could also say "Thing B is optional, but bundled with thing A".
Some might say "Thing B is optional", because thing B is attached to thing A that is optional, and their inseparability does not change this characteristic.
I understand where you're coming from. It would be really awesome have privacy-respecting to have an "opt out of all tracking forever and just let me have the service" button, without which there's really no option at all. That's a strong, principled, justified, and completely valid position.
Yet, it's perhaps possible that different vernacular readings of the word might arrive at different, though equally valid, positions.
