I have subscriptions to a few news websites and I’ve noticed this new tactic that really annoys me. They keep trying to upsell me to a higher level of subscription. Click here to subscribe to our premium subscription. Click here for the family plan and add 3 more members to your subscription. I wouldn’t mind it if it was an email once a month, but I feel like every time I visit these websites they’re throwing this in my face. It’s like they are pissed I’m only paying them $n, wouldn’t you rather pay us $n * 2?
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I will just cancel those subscriptions all together. You try to upsell me you lose me. Be happy with what you are getting. If I’m already a subscriber I’m aware of upgraded subscription and there is a reason I have not upgraded to the upper tier.
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To me, it’s just more advertising. I don’t like to pay for a website and then be subjected to advertising of any type.
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Every ad or sales appeal is after one thing and one thing only, your money. I have gotten very stingy about subscribing or purchasing what I really don’t need. I will occasionally “treat” myself but I’m weary of the constant efforts to pick my pocket. 
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I mean, Apple does this. “Upgrade AppleCare coverage.” By which they mean, “switch to AppleCare One”. There’s no actual UPGRADE of your coverage, just a different way to collect your money.
One could even argue that with their aggressive removal of devices from the plan makes it a downgrade. Reference ATP with Siracusa talking about how he’d get emails telling him he had 24 hours to log in to a given device or lose coverage. And of course the emails were about devices that were either currently logged in, or just logged in to a different user account.
Although Dropbox is my worst offender in this category. I pay the regular monthly fee for the 2 TB or whatever it is, but whenever I go to the website they want to sell me more storage despite the fact that I’m nowhere close to using the 2 TB.
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Journalism subscriptions are increasingly up-or-out; people who stick with the base plans are likely to stop paying anyway as the bottom falls out of the industry. Might as well ask. Family subscriptions are especially worth selling since they socialize the publication (and its daily games) to new generations.
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I ignore these messages and most other annoyances on web pages if possible. Or I turn on Reader Mode to try get rid of them. But most of the time I just click the “Save to Goodlinks” button. Or search for the story on another site if GoodLinks can’t grab the page.
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It makes sense to them as someone who likes the service enough to pay for it. however if they piss you off enough you may leave, so they should allow you to stop them.
However the company we all talk about here the most in Apple does this regularly too. Try Apple TV for 3 months for free, Book F1 cinema tickets, upgrade your Numbers to the subscription version…
Sadly it’s just life now, and the only way these companies get the message, especially at scale is for a significant percentage of people taking an action (like unsubscribing) which they notice. Especially with Marketing, I’ve seen if happen that as the marketing trend in use gets less effective, the head of Marketing leaves and a new person comes in who wants to do things their own way.
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and if one person in the family really likes it, the family is even less likely to unsubscribe.
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They notice, but whether they get that the excessive marketing push is what caused the unsubscribe is debatable.
I’ve done some automatic reminder sorts of projects for companies (past due invoices, expected orders, etc.). It can take a little bit of effort to dial in the system so that it accomplishes the goal of reminding users without making everybody cranky - but it’s definitely possible.
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NY Times and WaPost seem to do this.
I let my subs lapse.
I won’t put up with it.
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I had the same thing with Notability, which I’ve used for years. Some nagware to use their sync or something every time I used it. I complained and asked how to turn it off, they said just ignore it. I cancelled my subscription, and now will ignore Notability.
Life’s too short to put up with this crap.
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I’m also not renewing NYT or WaPo, but for different reasons.
I found I was wasting too much time looking at them waiting for something interesting happen.
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It’s really your own fault. You shouldn’t have subscriptions to proprietary services; it should be an absolute exception (for example Proton Mail and Lumo+).
It’s best to use open-source software without a subscription.
Companies think people who use subscriptions are stupid and want to squeeze even more money out of them.
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How does that apply to news websites?
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Related note: Google pushing a combination of Google One and YouTube Premium to existing subscribers of both. Here’s the rub:
Current setup:
Google One 2TB - $99.99/yr
YouTube Premium Family - $22.99/mo ($275.88/yr)
Annual Total: $375.87
If I ‘take advantage’ of the offer of “Save up to 25% with a YouTube Premium add-on” (which seems to go with the Google AI Plus plan):
Google AI Plus 2TB: $9.99/mo ($119.88/yr)
YouTube Premium INDIVIDUAL: $11.99/mo ($143.88/yr)
[NOTE: these are actually combined at $23.63/mo (incl. tax) so $283.56/yr]
YouTube Premium INDIVIDUAL for wife: $15.99/mo ($199.98/yr)
Annual Total: $483.54
That is an extra $106.67 a year, just three short clicks away. Looks like a bargain, but at no point in the process do they take into account your family members losing access…and if you have to spin up a separate family plan, that’s an additional $275.88 a year.
Google should be able to see that I already have YouTube Premium FAMILY plan and just not offer this to me. Imagine if we were using all 6 family members?
That’s a DARK PATTERN if I ever saw one…
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I realized too late that you were talking about the New York Times and the like. It’s best to stop consuming the news altogether—it’s almost entirely negative. You’ll live a much healthier life (mentally) if you don’t read the news. Most of what you read isn’t true anyway.
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I realise this is probably tongue in cheek, but it sent me into some deep thinking.
Trying to summarise: being aware of our immediate and wider physical and social environment and what is happening there is critically important, both in avoiding danger and in finding positives. We are hard wired to pay particular attention to threats and the flight or flight response is triggered when we recognise that we need to act now to protect ourselves or those closest to us. The first of many effects it has is to heighten our perception and receptivity. We notice things we’d normally ignore. This is basically unavoidable: it’s hard-wired and a good thing.
Sharing the “news” is one of the fundamental characteristics of human beings. Being able to add a community dimension to our personal experience and interpretation is a massive advantage and one of the things which allows our species to thrive.
In short, ignoring the news is very unlikely to end well in a rapidly changing world where there are real threats which may not be obvious if we only use our own senses.
On the other hand, the funding of almost all news sources provides a massive incentive for those organisations to require as much of our attention as they can, whether that is through advertising, or being funded to preach a particular political line. Since humans have a flight or fight response, the more this is triggered, the more attention we will give to what triggers it. Therefore news sources moved to 24 hour coverage, and constantly try to make what might be a real but distant threat into something personal and visceral.
That’s where the line blurs over the truth of reports too. Honest reports would usually be full of probabilities, unknowns and contradictory elements: likely to encourage a “wait and see” than engaging our flight or fight response. The incentives will tend to reports every item of “breaking news”, to over-simplify, and make coherent narratives where there is no real coherence etc…
There’s a lot to be said for the old-fashioned idea of a “summary” of the news given as factual, limited statements. Look up some of the five minute bulletins from the BBC at the most critical times of World War 2, for example. They were authoritative because they were understated, careful and cautious, and they stuck very strictly to the facts.
Constantly following the news through the day is not good for us. Giving it up entirely is equally bad, and if we assume that it’s all lies, we give away our critical faculties much too easily and at exactly the wrong time. Deciding thoughtfully and humbly what is to be believed and what not is something we need more than ever.
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Your total response was thoughtful. Thank you for that.
To the quote above, I would add “a crisis an hour.” Everything is framed as a crisis. When you cry wolf so many times, pretty soon people tune you out.
I have significantly tuned out. I too have dramatically cut back on the “news.” Most of it is either slanted, incomplete, factually wrong, out of context, oversimplified, hyped, mere conjecture, or all of these. Other than that, it’s pretty good. 
Frankly, listening to, watching, or reading news from most sources has not made me more informed, a better citizen, or better protected. More likely, it has given me a false, incomplete perspective on events, very much like political ads that distort and slander the opponent’s views. I’d suggest that most of what passes for “news” is actually “Newstainment.” There are exceptions, but by and large, I have about as much respect for most journalism as I do for Hollywood celebrities. And that “ain’t” much! 
I have made the decision to primarily watch local news about local civic matters and the weather. I also read substantive journals from both ends of the ideological spectrum to stay informed. Cable news and popular news sources have little of substance to offer and are not generally trustworthy. They simply are not worth my time.
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Almost every time I turn on cable TV news they have a red BREAKING NEWS banner. And it’s often something so mundane, it makes a mockery of the whole thing.
I used to read the paper every morning, but stopped doing that several years ago. Now I get short summaries of the news 2-3 times a day and feel much happier not getting upset or worried about things I have no control over.
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