NY Times Articles on HN
Is it me or are there now lots of NY Times articles on HN? The titles are always "interesting", of course you click and you get hit with the paywall. Seems like someone is intentionally submitting "interesting" NY Times articles on HN to get traffic and hope for a conversion rate. Are they being submitted by a few users or is it randomly distributed? Is there a way to crack down on this?
6 comments
Just to add some facts to your speculation, and as a quick check, in the last 7 days there have been 86 submissions from the NY Times. Of those, 61 were by single submission authors. Those who have submitted more than one are:
4 danso
4 001sky
3 wallflower
3 RougeFemme
3 rosser
2 the_economist
2 panarky
2 kanamekun
2 ibsathish
Taking this into consideration, the spike may just be from the holiday lull and the fact that we are collectively reading more NYT articles and/or we are reading more of everything and submitting more of everything, but the NYT name makes the articles more readily clickable for us.
Would be interesting to dig deeper into the single submission users' user behavior too.
Btw I find it humorous that user name the_economist is one of the top NYT submitters over the last week.
Would be interesting to dig deeper into the single submission users' user behavior too.
Btw I find it humorous that user name the_economist is one of the top NYT submitters over the last week.
Interesting. Does "single submission authors" mean: (i) they have only submitted 1 NY times article but have made other submissions or (ii) they have only ever submitted 1 article and it was a NY Times article?
It was intended to mean the former ... stand by ...
OK, done. In the last seven days, 61 people who have submitted one and only item from the NYT. For 37 of them, that was the only submission made over the past 7 days. However, the other 24 made more than one submission. The following includes the NYT submission:
I haven't checked the total number of submissions of those who submitted more than one NYT item. To do so would require a more sensible reporting format than just listing them.
OK, done. In the last seven days, 61 people who have submitted one and only item from the NYT. For 37 of them, that was the only submission made over the past 7 days. However, the other 24 made more than one submission. The following includes the NYT submission:
9 made 2 submissions (hence 1 other)
5 made 3 submissions (hence 2 others)
1 made 4 submissions (etc)
1 made 5 submissions
4 made 6 submissions
I haven't checked the total number of submissions of those who submitted more than one NYT item. To do so would require a more sensible reporting format than just listing them.
Cool, thanks. So approximately 43% of the NYT submissions were made by members who only submitted that article. Would be interesting to know if these are new members, who perhaps created accounts for the sake of promoting NYT paywall articles...or maybe I just really want there to be a conspiracy...
Looking at how long these accounts have been registered, initial results are:
So no, these don't appear to be newly registered accounts specifically for the purpose of shilling for NYT. Why do you want there to be a conspiracy?
created: 854 days ago created: 601 days ago
created: 923 days ago created: 2466 days ago
created: 13 days ago created: 1304 days ago
created: 1311 days ago created: 1983 days ago
created: 1168 days ago created: 500 days ago
created: 319 days ago created: 1286 days ago
created: 305 days ago created: 817 days ago
created: 1793 days ago created: 1822 days ago
created: 89 days ago created: 1444 days ago
created: 899 days ago created: 491 days ago
created: 736 days ago created: 649 days ago
created: 1160 days ago created: 1767 days ago
created: 363 days ago created: 560 days ago
created: 1554 days ago created: 863 days ago
created: 81 days ago created: 1169 days ago
created: 1316 days ago created: 310 days ago
created: 504 days ago created: 176 days ago
created: 2015 days ago created: 142 days ago
created: 838 days ago
So no, these don't appear to be newly registered accounts specifically for the purpose of shilling for NYT. Why do you want there to be a conspiracy?
Great detective work!...oh i don't know why I want there to be a conspiracy, maybe my own life is not exciting enough :)
In general paywalls from large, prestigious organizations scare me. For now I can ignore them, as there are hundreds of other sources of interesting content that generate revenue from traditional means (advertising, selling your information, etc.). But if the paywall scheme is successful for such organizations, others will follow suit, and the abundance of “free” quality content will dry up. The rolling snowball effect, I hope the snowball melts before it has a chance to gain momentum.
I have no trouble with the "paywall", try configuring your browser to clear cookies after a session ends (personally, I use https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/self-destruct...) or just use private browsing mode for NYT.
I used to love reading the NY Times and would still argue that it is a quality newspaper (or as good as one there is these days) but even I would have to agree that the paywall is rather annoying and articles with the paywall should be tagged as such.
Another way to view NY Times articles articles without the paywall is to drop the title into a Google search. Going through Google drops the paywall for me.
Yes, worked for me as well. Interesting, same browser, but if you click from HN versus a google search the count starts over? So you can do it 10 times before you hit the paywall again? I would think a different browser would work (different cookie), but the same browser...I wonder what this says about the NYT algorithm?
I don't like it either. It should be marked in the title.
Example Title:
"This is the best paywalled article you will ever see!(PAYWALL)"