The desperation of NYTimes(rozumem.xyz) |
The desperation of NYTimes(rozumem.xyz) |
Relatedly, I've been answering those dumb-ass "How do you feel about our product?" popups that Microsoft Office is so fond of with some variation on the theme of "Be less needy."
You feel like the stereotypical clingy girlfriend... "Do you love me? Would you recommend me to your friends? Are you interested in the other services I can provide? Would you still love me if a witch turned me into a frog and I could only communicate in croaking sounds? Are you thinking of leaving me? Would you still be thinking of leaving me if I set all your documents on fire and scattered them across the front lawn and then told you my engineers 'accidentally' lost the backups?"
It's not like I have any expectation that anyone, even an AI, is reading these things anyhow.
Your KPIs are not my problem.
I use a throwaway email that's just for NYT for the subscription itself, like I do many other things, and just expect to get the daylights spammed out of it.
~ just a guy trying to get by on $690,000 a year in Queens
Scott Alexander as the most memorable, and then the backlash after they post the backrooms movie creator's house on twitter recently
Just very shortsighted behavior
Cancellation wasn't difficult though, and didn't require me to call anyone.
Would love to be proven wrong, though.
They all have APIs of course, but you have to contact sales for what I’m sure is a very expensive negotiation. I believe that’s what news aggregators like Apple News and ground news does.
But yeah, it sucks. AP is outstanding. Their push notifications are all the mainstream news anyone really needs for timely updates. But their App is awful once you click on those notifications.
ONE unsolicited unlawful (EU) spam mail is quite enough reason to get angry, block mail, and to complain to the relevant authorities. This spamming has to stop!
I don’t get it. If they cut out all the awful mid-article ads, stopped the page resetting to the top every time you hit the back button, and stopped nagging me to install the app (which I don’t use because of the aforementioned mid-article ads, but would use otherwise), I’d happily pay 5x the subscription. I like the content (mostly) but everything else makes me despise them.
I just want to read the news!
With all due respect, you are not responsible for covering every single thing the Trump administration is doing and ensuring they are held accountable. While simultaneously satisfying customers who are used to getting endless content for free, and sniff their noses at paying $2/month.
The journalism business is a hard business. I may not agree with everything NYT does, they are most certainly not perfect, but they are operating in good faith and trying their best. Give them a break
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.. 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.
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...
This has guaranteed I will not even consider NYTimes for the foreseeable future. So disrespectful.
Feel powerless? Set up a filter.
C'mon developers, stand up to marketing for a change and stop writing these software nags.
Only things they ever stood up for were social issues (that's why you see banners with Ukraine and BLM, etc). Google kinda put an end to that when they fired 28 workers protesting Israel.
I never saw any banners protesting dark patterns.
Now, with (perhaps) most developers in the shadow of the AI-layoffs boot, there's really no hope for change coming from the inside.
Is it just so they can tell advertisers X amount of people "viewed" your ad?
Your problem. Read some of Michael Porter’s books on competition. In an economic interaction, all players compete with each other. The Times thinks it’s in its interest to try to brainwash you with some garbage.
And you look for Mommy.
Jesus fucking christ. Somebody call the whaaaambulance
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.
More info: https://writersagainstthewarongaza.com/boycott-nyt
I'm going to a baseball game soon. Naturally, 3 survey links, none with unsubscribe, because naturally i want a relationship with the team, their facilities, and their ticket vendor, naturally.
Email was a mistake, frankly.
They are transactional emails. Maybe the author doesn’t agree with that but they’re welcome to take NYT to court over it.
Is their email provider charging you per email or something?
They are part of the transaction and they are not an ongoing marketing mailing list. They end completely after 14 days.
The author described them as "marketing" but did not disclose the content in any way.
The Intercept article linked to from your piece 'debunking' the piece (https://theintercept.com/2024/02/28/new-york-times-anat-schw...) claims:
> In a response to The Intercept’s questions about Schwartz’s podcast interview, a spokesperson for the New York Times walked back the blockbuster article’s framing that evidence shows Hamas had weaponized sexual violence to a softer claim that “there may have been systematic use of sexual assault.”
That's not much of a 'walking back' much less a 'debunking'. That article is also bizarre - they talk about "October 7 sensationalism" - a murder rampage among families killing 800+ innocent people is pretty sensational.
Some quick research gives the following first hand reports of sexual assult:
_______________
Publicly identified survivors/victims who claimed personal experiences:
- D. (anonymous male survivor, Nova festival): First male survivor to publicly describe being gang-raped by Hamas terrorists at the Nova music festival. https://www.timesofisrael.com/male-october-7-survivor-recoun...
- Amit Soussana: Released hostage; first to publicly detail being sexually assaulted by her Hamas captor in Gaza. https://www.nytimes.com/2024/03/26/world/middleeast/hamas-ho...
- Romi Gonen: Released hostage; publicly described repeated sexual assaults during captivity. https://www.cnn.com/2026/01/04/middleeast/israeli-hostage-ga...
- Rom Braslavski: Released hostage; described sexual assault and torture by captors. https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cgkz0yzde80o
- Ilana Gritzewsky: Released hostage; testified to sexual assault and abuse during captivity. https://www.timesofisrael.com/released-hostage-ilana-gritzew...
- Guy Gilboa-Dalal: Released hostage; detailed sexual abuse by a Hamas captor. https://www.nytimes.com/2026/02/03/world/middleeast/hamas-ho...
- Arbel Yehud: Released hostage; described relentless sexual abuse throughout captivity. https://www.jpost.com/israel-news/article-886646
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.
To supplement other news sources am always reading Apnews, Reuters, Al Jazeera and The Stranger (local to Seattle).
NYT is just not a hill I'm willing to die on re: marketing etc.
This new change has really disappointed me.
Iraq war: not even once.
And making it hard to cancel is not just "marketing" . There are even laws to prevent that sort of thing.
One caveat is the subscription "rental" is for only a 3 day period, so you have "renew" your subscription every 3 days. This only takes 2 clicks though. For San Francisco public library: https://ezproxy.sfpl.org/login/nyt.
I can’t promise I would pay $300/yr to access a great public library, but I would like the option to try it.
My in-laws have a decent (not great, but decent) one in their city, and for sure they will never use it, but they aren’t going to drag the documentation up there and get cards just for me.
That hasn't been true for, what, almost ten years? When I cancelled three months ago, it was about three or four clicks through the beg screens, and done. No, I don't live in CA.
Do not subscribe to the NYTimes. Use your library card, if one must read it, and unfortunately as the undeserved "paper of record" one must often read it to be kept aware of what others are being fed. There's no baby here to throw out with the bath water, I find other places have far better coverage for all the topics I care intensely about. For example, their Ukraine coverage is basically Russia-lite, and extremely anti-Ukrainian, I haven't seen such biased coverage anywhere else except for far-right rags.
I moved into a new home. I kept the old one for a few weeks extra. Needed time to move out.
I signed up for CenturyLink at my new home.
After six weeks, I tried to turn off internet at my old house.
* I can’t.
* CenturyLink wouldn’t let me cancel, without waiting on hold for an hour or more
* I work overnight
* CenturyLink is open when I’m asleep
So I’m paying for two plans with the same company. Thanks CenturyLink.
At each of these locations there is one or more necks that can be wrung if something goes wrong with my services
I know it's not really a solution for your nocturnal proclivities, but I think the argument holds. If you had to sacrifice a couple of your sleeping hours but you know you can sort your problem, then you migt be inclined to do so?
If people stopped buying from unethical businesses it would be practically impossible to function in the modern day. Not only is it extremely difficult to know what businesses are “ethical”, but it’s becoming increasingly easy to assume no business is truly ethical. e.g. Environmentally friendly clothing brand Everlane just sold to SHEIN of all places.
Years later, I wanted to sub again, and this time I did it through the iOS app. Best decision ever, as now it just sits alongside my other App Store subscriptions and is easily cancelable in a single click.
If they got what I want, I don't care about ethics, I care about value. I've just never seen value in NYT.
Well you sound nice to share a society with.
I guess there are more people who give up on unsubscribing than who refrain from subscribing?
Honestly if it was easier to unsubscribe I'd probably have an on and off again subscription, but I'll never subscribe again because I don't want to jump through those hoops to unsubscribe.
FWIW, as a subscriber to both, I have more often found myself manually renewing lapsed subscriptions than going through painful cancellation processes to get out of them. I get the Economist through DiscountMags.com where it is often available with a discount.
Oh the irony of telling somebody to instantaneously unsubscribe from something notoriously hard to unsubscribe from.
Me personally, I just go on the web chat every once in a while and say I want to cancel, and they give me a nice discount.
You are not wrong for thinking that, but I encourage people to consider that generally the business and editorial areas are largely independent of each other because of the value of editorial independence in case they think that the lack of ethics applies to their journalism too.
https://www.theguardian.com/media/2020/jun/05/new-york-times...
They have predilection for defense of elites, including Trump, and have not challenged his corruption to the degree that they have challenged, say Clinton's accusations of corruption. Their defense of the elite in their coverage that launched the war in Iraq, the outright corruption of their own reporters and editors, is not reflected in the overall reputation of the NYTimes. Holding them up as the beacon of good journalism results in poor judgements on what's happening with current affairs, because they are often quite biased in very disastrous ways that have resulted in the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people and trillions of wasted defense spending.
More recently, the circling of the wagons of those considered "in-group" like Olivia Nuzzi has also been despicable, but definitely descriptive of the general editorial choices at the NYTimes.
However I don't expect as many people to agree with me that the NYTimes has an undeserved reputation for journalistic excellence, so I focus mostly on their bad business practices.
Happily, this practice is illegal in California. Sometimes consumer-protection laws work ... and are necessary.
(As a hackaround, try using a VPN to make it appear as if you are connecting from California...)
that's totally irrelevant: Conde Nast for Wired is a shameless offender, for example. took me hours to cancel some autorenewing subscription i never subscribed for, perhaps enabled years ago through some dark pattern in iOS, but i genuinely don't know, and am not easily tricked.
I unsubscribed a couple years ago. It was a click on the website. (Just checked. Cancelling online without talking to anyone is still an option.)
> 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.
https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/news/press-releases/2024/10/...
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.
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.
I was gifted a subscription and clicked cancel on it in January out of concern it would roll over.
It still rolled over and the person who gifted it had to call them, repeatedly, from New Zealand and spent ages on the phone (at their cost).
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.
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.
That's one thing that bugs me about hardware companies -- they all want you to install their app to monitor/configure/bedazzle their hardware. But really, it probably is just going to work anyway. And a printer or a mouse shouldn't need much.
At least on a Mac. On Windows, sometimes the vendor apps are helpful, but usually it's still not absolutely needed (except maybe for GPUs...)
Both your experience and the article author's experience manifest in the feeling of an antagonistic relationship and frustration on the part of the customer. But what I'd wager is happening is that the analytics teams have looked at subscriber retention and seen patterns. Perhaps subscribers who use 3 of their 5 key features don't cancel nearly as often. Or maybe subscribers who share with family rarely cancel because they either assume their family is getting value from it or they don't want to have the conversation about whether it's worth the price.
I have no doubt that a pure-digital product like the Times has tons of data on their users and have determined the key metrics that lead to retention. So their natural tendency is to try to game the metrics by trying to push as many accounts into those high-retention buckets as possible. The behavior you and the article author have experienced is the result of an organization becoming extremely data focused and losing focus on the customer experience. It's something to remember for those of us who ever find ourselves in a meeting where we're dissecting retention metrics and trying to figure out how to make our companies more successful.
Something like 40% of users employ an ad blocker, and the other 60% likely don't know ad blockers exist. I think that's a pretty strong signal that something is wrong with internet ads specifically - people are willing to accept ads in other aspects of their life when it's not so invasive.
I, like many others, play Wordle daily. When the page loads, there is a button to play todays challenge. Then, there is a very small delay (like 100ms) and suddenly a button to "View all games" appears, right where you would have tapped/clicked on the button to play the puzzle. To me, viewing all games is a way to "see what you could have" if you subscribed.
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!
The publisher may be preserving the family business during difficult times, but... in addition to the money and the upper-crust status that business survival confers, doesn't the publisher and everyone else involved with the NYT want to serve society, and to be known for serving society?
Not to be known for NYT's various sketchy subscription practices?
There's an unsubscribe link, but it directs me to login to my account to manage my e-mail preferences -- I don't have an account. They have a separate, hard to find, "remove me from your invitations" form, but they seem to ignore that. I finally sent a CCPA request (very hard to find the link), which went unacknowledged, but the e-mails seemed to stop until recently, when they started again.
The kicker is that they think I'm someone else (a relative), so it's all completely ridiculous.
First of all they log you out way more often than they ever did, so constantly prompted to log back in. This is of course because after login they try to up-sell you to more packages.
I am more likely to exit entirely than add more packages at this point.
I've also experienced this elsewhere. TIAA was essentially sending me marketing emails I couldn't unsubscribe from. My financial manager with sympathetic and communicated my frustration to the business, but I don't believe it lead to any changes. As a result I have marked my emails from TIAA as spam, which now means email is not a reliable source of information from them, and so I unsubscribed from all email communication and instead receive paper mail. Sad.
I can name others using this pattern. Very frustrating. It's a lot of work to sever these relationships. I guess they know this and so think they can get away with it.
For a while they all had a footer like "This service communication provides information about your plan benefits to help you make informed decisions. It is sent as part of our plan services and is not subject to communication preferences. Thank you." But today's spam didn't even bother with that song and dance.
It's infuriating.
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.
I was upset when Weiss announced she was leaving the Free Press to head a big American news agency because I was worried it would affect the Free Press. That's how much I like it. Thankfully it hasn't much, just mostly her personal reporting - which was great - isn't there anymore.
The Free Press has its own biases. But it's much more varied and inquisitive than other news sites. Sometimes I get to the end of an article and I'm annoyed that the author didn't make more of a stand and then I realise, that's the point.
Some articles are just super interesting. Their indepth investigation into the Free Birth Society wasn't a big story, but it made a profound and personal impact on me.
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?
Take my money, show me content. No adverts. No spam. Let me unsubscribe if I want to.
The New York Times is actually doing quite well financially, they are the exception to the trend
The options are “yes” or “Not now”
No option for the “No thanks, please don’t bother me about this again for at least 30 days” that I want
The times will repeat this about ever 3 articles, which is really fn annoying.
People want news online, and they do not want to see ads, they do not want to pay a subscription.
So if you are media company and want to stay afloat, you need to appeal to the people who are either willing (or don't know otherwise) to load ads or willing to pay a subscription. In both cases, it's in large part people on the fringe. Not your average person.
This is wrong in 2026. Lots of people want to pay. See: TFA
What they don't want is and _still_ see ads, get hassled by needy marketing emails. See: TFA
If you're saying "we're gonna show you ads and datamine you because you're getting it free", then when I do pay, you have to take that stuff out. Try to have your cake and eat it too = sub canceled, adblock on, ad nauseam enabled.
It's also true that most people are unwilling to fully "buy out" their ad value. For instance Meta makes about $27/mo/user from instagram ads.
Would you pay $27/mo for instagram? Maybe people would pay $5, but Meta will still close the gap with $22 of ads...
Sad to say but I'm guessing this is an effective strategy.
Given how the "hostility" is often more than just ugly-UI, and aspects like monopolies, surveillance, and billing you for services you don't want, I think this is relevant:
> I've written before about the futility of "voting with your wallet." [...] Shopping isn't politics. Politics are politics, and shopping is shopping. [...] No matter how indie your coffee, books and social media, your consumption choices will not have a material impact on Starbucks, Amazon or Twitter.
A couple of years later resubscribed. I also subscribe to the WSJ to make sure I receive a more balanced viewpoint.
WSJ offered me an online cancel option after I moved (cough) to California.
It was a digital subscription by the way - usually they have your address on file anyway because you used it to verify your credit card.
[1]https://oag.ca.gov/news/press-releases/attorney-general-bont...
The success rate is low, but the problem is that it's an arms race, where every competitor is spamming, so each new entrant (or non-spammer) must try to spam even harder to compete. If one elects not to spam, they are at a competitive disadvantage. If there is an anti-spam law or regulation, this just benefits competitors from other jurisdictions, where it is difficult to enforce the rule.
Luckily this kind of thing is very much illegal here in the EU. If they send me marketing shit without my explicit active consent, they are in violation of the law, and I can at least report them. As I do. It is still not perfect, but the amount of spam I get from previous business relations has declined a lot in the past years. Other spam is still rampant, and I can only block any such sender until they find a new way to push their shit.
Give them a masked email (if you get a custom domain, you can make it so any random string of characters is a new masked email). Block all calls and texts except from contacts
> Bank of America, which sends all kinds of promotional stuff
Use a different bank (for more reasons than avoiding spam)
I'd kinda understand it if they had sent me a polite text or email shortly after our initial engagement saying "hey, if you had a good experience please review us/recommend us" but coming in literal years late with a blast of multiple messages screams "we hired some sort of marketing firm and fed them our customer database".
And it stands to reason NYT do this so aggressively since they also have by far the most successful subscription business in the entire world of journalism.
(I subscribe to Bloomberg, and send their emails to feeds which end up in a https://karakeep.app/ instance for consumption)
What's your library's page?
I have a few library cards so I'm curious as to which ones have better or worse terms.
Changes every 6-12 months, but that's easy to update.
Yes, we should be clear on this. It's fraud. What the NYT is engaging in is fraud.
This thread has a whole bunch of Charlie Browns in it who are "shocked, shocked" to find that Lucy has pulled away the football once again...
Before even finishing this sentence, I can think of five or six examples of awful internet ads that completely ruined the experience I was having (spank this monkey NOW!).
That was 5 years ago. California's "click-to-cancel" law was amended in 2024, effective July 1, 2025.
This is very surprising to me, I thought they were kind of pro Ukraine biased.
I asked an AI and it came back with this:
> The New York Times' coverage of the war is overwhelmingly pro-Ukraine in its framing, tone, and attribution of responsibility, though critics argue this manifests as omission of context regarding NATO expansion and US intelligence involvement rather than direct support for Russia.
Somewhere Walter Duranty is looking up and smiling.
Leave a bad review where their social marketing team will see it.
If they sent out a survey about "why you're no longer a customer" I suppose it would provide one channel for explaining one's actions. Oddly, I seem to get those constantly when I am a customer, but essentially never when I'm a former or inactive customer.
On privacy grounds I like the idea that non-customers would be left alone, but on boycott-impact grounds it seems like having some kind of predictable "what are we doing wrong?" channel would be nice too.
Yay, American "capitalism".
If you think they give one flying fuck about what customers think I have news for you: the only thing that matters is what the board thinks and if revenue is rising but everyone hates the product/company they won’t even blink.
I'm a fan of writing actual paper letters, which are (marginally) harder to ignore than emails, and (at least I like to think) carry a bit more moral authority, since I'm making the effort to print and (pay to) send them. In my letter I make it clear what I like they're doing, but reserve most of the rest of the letter to express my displeasure at the things I'm most displeased with.
Often these letters disappear into a black hole. Morbid curiosity leads me to wish for a response, but I'm jaded enough to know that even if they respond enthusiastically to my criticism with promises of change, until they actually change, it's just an empty promise. So at the end of the day, often I just want to vent and move on.
I have to believe that if enough people did this, it would move the needle somewhat. If not, well, at least I have the satisfaction of having done something.
My pet peeve with the NY Times online is that there's no escaping the upsell screen after logging on.
In the beginning I would still compile user complaints into write ups for my managers à la “hey these 50 people hate that we do X, maybe we could do Y and win back their gratitude/trust” - but I soon realised that’s just a waste of my lifetime, because PM don’t give a fuck.
And why should they? Even if you improve the thing it won’t matter - the majority of people just want to vent like you; they don’t care anymore if the product improves, even if you would give them the perfect product of their dreams it wouldn’t change their minds.
This might sound jaded but there is a reason why the market is dominated by god-awful products - those that gave too much of a shit were sorted out early enough and only those that focus ruthlessly on the money and only the money survive.
There are a few exceptions of course but those just prove the rule to me.
Even if the faulty product/service never changes, writing those letters can result in savings of hundreds of dollars a year if done right.
I deleted linkedin a few years ago because of the ridiculous volume of emails and their dark patterns about cancellation. NYT is just not a hill i'm willing to die on unlike linkedin, for example
This kind of knots get solved automatically in markets that are very easy to enter, or by regulation. That's why for the commercial examples, we can have consumer protection laws that create little distortion and have a better equilibrium. Good luck trying to use that lever to fix politics though.
A good way? No. There's a way, which is to get a person with enough clout to yell at them on social media in the hope that it generates attention and scares them. There used to be a time when companies had customer service and actually listened but apparently the C-Suite at some point had the idea that you can just ignore your customers.