The desperation of NYTimes

hparadiz

I just installed Brother's app from the Apple store. Immediately met with 4 popups that you can not close until you press the completely fake "maybe next time" prompt only to find out the program doesn't even support feed scanning on my specific printer. Imagine being a sysadmin that has to install this thing over and over on multiple machines. If you ever wonder why your app has a 1.7 star rating on the app store look no further.

epistasis

NYTimes is predatory on subscriptions. Over my long lifetime I've subscribed twice, and regretted it both times with intensity. Any place that allows easy instantaneous subscription by a simple web form, but makes you call and talk to a person during limited business hours for cancellation , is a toxic place. I've been told they have stopped this predatory practice due to some newly passed laws or something, but they did not stop their predation due to their own values. I urge everyone reading to unsubscribe instantaneously from the NYTimes for their business practices. Do not do business with unethical companies.

Georgelemental

> I'm aware media and journalism sites have been getting hit hard over the last few years, but is it this bad? The New York Times is actually doing quite well financially, they are the exception to the trend

ezfe

When I sign in, NYtimes asks me to subscribe to other services, even though my subscription has access to the article I am trying to read.

ryandrake

Corporate desperation seems to be on the rise. So many products try to convince, beg, nudge, trick, and dark-pattern you into buying or even just interacting with them. They're all like clingy puppy dogs, begging for you to notice them, read their spam and be part of their ecosystem. Microsoft is one of the worst--forcing you to do things, begging you to do other things, forgetting that you opted out, and just in general nagging users to death about everything. C'mon developers, stand up to marketing for a change and stop writing these software nags.

mrcwinn

NYTimes is not unique, but yes, they are a for-profit entity focused on audience building and audience retention. Their audience tends to be liberal leaning types, and so their aim is to produce content for that audience. This particular example is disgusting. My suggestion is subscribe to Breaking Points or try them for free on YouTube. You won't get the breadth of content given their scale, but you will get a more honest approach to delivering news.

superxpro12

Im curious what the alternatives are the author considers to be acceptable? From what I understand, the press is under assault from all sides... Internet has killed paper subs, political influence is attacking them... like what do you expect them to do?

skybrian

Another example of being user-hostile is that they put videos on the front page that autoplay and can't be paused. I will not renew either.

devindotcom

It's not just them. Yeah, this is bad, but I get tons of unsolicited messages from any company I establish a basic relationship with. Every interaction I have with a store or site signs me up for some promotional thing, which I unsubscribe from immediately, only to find it's one of 4 different lists I was added to. Then 6 months later I receive some stupid new thing as they try to drum up engagement. One that particularly bugs me is Bank of America, which sends all kinds of promotional stuff with a note at the end saying "You're receiving this servicing email as part of your existing relationship with us." Can't block it without blocking actual important banking emails. Experian was doing the same - promoting services under the guise of offering account updates. It does feel desperate, but one has to imagine that this firehose technique works.

jamwise

I only interact with them through their word and logic games. They finally coerced me into subscribing, but to their credit it was a pretty good deal. Now I'm worried.

failuser

NYT makes more money from their games than actual news, right? Newspapers are dead and there is nothing to replace them. There is no loner money in informing the masses, only is disinformation. The people who can make money from the news and data buy surveillance data that is far more accurate than the government publishes and trade on it. You can’t have anything resembling a liberal democracy when the monetary insensitive are aligned like this and there is no pushback.

everdrive

NYTimes was the only subscription in well over a decade that was just sitting there collecting money when we thought we'd canceled it. It was for some crossword type app game, but it was just eating ~$7 monthly without any use. The only reason I noticed was my credit card bill. I really, really hate subscriptions.

heathrow83829

NYTimes and the big media papers in general seem to have this entitled arrogance. Like they feel entitled to have an audience or something. I've noticed similar predatory behavior from car and driver magazine. they would send me a bill marked "overdue" even though I never reknewed my subscription. they would harass me repeatedly over and over saying that I owed them money. It's fraudulent, and I will never subscribe to any print media or media subscriptions again!

ilamont

If you think that's bad, 5 years ago you had to call someone on the phone to cancel NYT subscriptions (the boiler room retention script always gave you an option to extend at the cheaper rate, but it was a pain to have to go through the motions). IIRC new consumer laws at the state or local level ended that practice. I'm still paying the NYT intro rate ($4 a month billed annually) and on day 364 go to the account page to cancel my subscription before it resets to the "official" rate. Sure enough, they let you stay at the cheap rate if you tell them you'll walk. Works for telcos and Adobe, too. As for alerts and notices you can't unsubscribe from: filter or spam.

halapro

This is why I love Apple's Hide My Email. I use it ALL the time and the unsubscribe button is always there. It's not the most polished interface, but it works perfectly. Also, for any subscription for which I don't use HME, I will immediately "mark as spam" any minimally-spammy email I get. The ones described in the article would be insta-marked due to the lack of Unsubscribe button.

da02

I just gave up on reading respectable news outlet like NY Times. I decided to just get it from "fringe" Youtube channels: Danny Haiphong, Dialogue Works with Nima, The Jimmy Dore Show. Recently, former CIA analyst, Larry Johnson, worked with Pepe Escobar and Zulfiqar Ali to vet a source saying Iran has 1 or 2 nuclear weapons. Let's see how long it will take the NY Times to avoid/deny/confirm that story.

tangotaylor

I wish we could just have microtransactions to buy access to individual articles at a time. Like physical news stands letting you buy a newspaper or magazine. There are so many times where I've bounced away from an interesting article because I didn't want to deal with the subscription paywall. The argument for subscriptions is it helps cultivate a relationship with customers and gives the business recurring revenue. Which is fine if I want the relationship, like with Ars Technica, Wired where I'm usually interested in their reporting. But in most cases the relationship feels awkward and forced, like this linked article mentions. Like I'm not paying $400/year to The Information just to unlock a one-off story.

tptacek

The problem you're going to have in these kinds of analyses is that the New York Times is the most successful news organization basically in all of North America. They're doing these things because they work.

ChrisArchitect

Whatever they're doing, whether to maintain growth or increase it, it's mostly working. Just today coincidentally: The New York Times Reaches Three Million Digital Subscribers Outside the U.S. https://www.nytco.com/press/the-new-york-times-reaches-three... And last month: The New York Times Passes 13 Million Subscribers > For the second quarter of 2026, the company forecast a 14 to 17 percent increase in digital-only subscription revenue https://www.nytimes.com/2026/05/06/business/media/new-york-t...

mherkender

If being user-hostile in tech created real consequences, Facebook would've shuttered 15 years ago. Sad to say but I'm guessing this is an effective strategy.