For the past few weeks, when one tries to look at a story on Fox News, one increasingly gets this pop-up at the link:
That pretty much eliminates Fox News as a usable source, in my opinion.
Remember, businesses do things that make money for them. If something doesn't make money for them, why should they do it? When Fox News - or Epoch Times, or any other news source (or any other Web site, for that matter) - demands that you allow them to invade your privacy by giving them your e-mail address and/or other contact information in order to use their services, you can be sure they're not offering anything for your benefit. No, it's for their benefit. They expect to make money off of you, or send you advertisements or propaganda or whatever, or track your online activities so they can make money out of selling that information to data aggregators.
Therefore, when you come across any Web site or online business demanding that you sign up in some way to use their services, just remember - it's for their benefit, not yours. If it weren't, they wouldn't be asking for it.
Therefore, Fox News has now been added to my list of Web sites that are untrustworthy and/or never to be used. That's no loss, of course. One can get news almost anywhere, courtesy of a quick Internet search on the subject, much of it free of paywalls, registration and other intrusions into one's privacy. I'll find what I need that way.
Peter
Last year the Murdoch kids finally got their wish and took over Fox. It has headed downhill fast since then.
ReplyDeleteEven before that, I felt they were verging on click bait and publishing whatever got views. They had some good content but you had to dig through lots of flashy stuff to get there.
Jonathan
Never liked that Neocon termite mound anyway.
ReplyDeleteI have some "junk email" accounts that I use for just such occasions. I only use those email accounts for signing up to gain access to something. I access the accounts a couple of times a week to delete the junk email so that the account remains active.
ReplyDeleteStill arrives from the same server (unless VPNd) which can be cross referenced.
DeleteMy personal policy is to avoid anything with a paywall. If I can read the article I want regardless of the paywall, I will. Maybe I'm just cheap. But I prefer to think that those entities haven't successfully adapted their business models to the world as we find it. If their business model is that bad, how good can their content be?
ReplyDelete"Remember, businesses do things that make money for them."
ReplyDeletehate to mention this but the New York Times has been doing things like putting out false news on their front page that's been making money for them for years - and people (like my SIL) will actually pay good money for a subscription.
not everyone has the intelligence to discern a good apple from a rotten one; the amazing thing is that they'll continue eating it anyway and then tell everyone how delicious it was.
The sites that really irritate me are the ones with the snake oil pitchers (Doctors stunned by this new treatment for toenail fungus!, etc.) Some prominent bloggers and other sites are full of this garbage because they can't get legitimate advertisers.
ReplyDeleteNot a reader of Fox except on the rare occasion that following a link lands me there. But on Epoch Times, it’s not quite the same as a paywall or login, since the article loads prior to the pop up. So if the phone goes into airplane mode at that moment, the article can be read without logging in. Also, the reader mode option loads the article as text only with login not required. So it seems they don’t mind people reading their articles without logging in.
ReplyDeleteCurious if this works with Fox, or if they really do have their articles locked behind a login.
Switched off Fox on election night 2020. They were obviously long gone at that point.
ReplyDeleteFox News started that with just a few articles, and now it's all of them, it appears.
ReplyDeleteI don't sign on for anything, no matter how harmless it may appear. I just don't.
So, it was "Goodbye, Fox."
Yeah, when the Grahams sold to the Murdoch Family, it was the beginning of the end....
There are simply too many alternative news sites freely available* to expose my ID just to see a Fox News (or any other piece or opinion.
* I wonder for how long, though.
Faux News sold out to the commie left a LONG time ago.
ReplyDeleteThe Chrome plugin "Archive Page" is invaluable for creating an Internet Archive style archived copy of the page (or checking if it exists) and this in turn bypasses the paywalls and nag walls.
ReplyDeleteYou can also go direct to their site https://archive.md/
Kind of like American Partisan's site wants to load you up with cookies using DDG 'for the best experience'. No thanks.
ReplyDeleteThis goes all the way back to the television boom and the birth of modern advertising: "If you're not paying for the product, you are the product."
ReplyDeleteGlad to see others that feel as I do about Fox selling Email Address’s. I wouldn’t be surprised at all, if they download Straight to The Boi’s.
ReplyDeleteWhen a local restaurant asked its local patrons to vote in the local 'Best Restaurant in the [area]', the voting was run by the Los Angeles Times. Seemed legit. Still, I gave it my ancient 'spam magnet' address, and sure enough, I was getting all sorts of new junk within a day or two.
ReplyDeleteGlen Beck used to publish a free news site but no more
ReplyDeleteWell thet almost never have news about foxes anyway.
ReplyDelete