[blackpowder12]

I don’t get it, this stuff is already behind a paywall already. There’s no darkening of the internet of news if news is already paywalled.

Looks like false controversy to me. All publishers have to do is demand a login and that’s it. Articles that are now behind a paywall will continue to do so.

There’s no difference that I can understand outside of a slight adjustment in paywall protection. Seriously can anyone explain what he’s going on about?

[hedora]

I think the author is upset because publishers want to have their cake and eat it too: It has long been google’s (and all other successful search engines’) policy that sites should present the same content to the web crawler and to human beings.

Soft paywalls are essentially a loophole in that (at least superficially) pro-consumer rule, and incognito blockers are apparently taking that loophole one step too far. This move will fix the issue by changing the browser instead of page ranks.

Here is an unfounded conspiracy theory: People noticed that regularly clearing cookies works better than incognito mode, so they were switching to that because of incognito blockers, and that presents an existential threat to Google’s cash cow.

I don’t believe the previous paragraph, but I really want an extension that nukes all browser state if my computer / device is idle for more than 4 hours. The only exceptions would be bookmarks and password management.

[knd775]

They've been using soft paywalls which allow people to read a certain number of articles per month for free. To prevent users from simply using incognito mode to pretend every visit is their first visit, publishers started detecting incognito mode and blocking them from reading articles using it (without signing in).

[tjoff]

Which was quite frustrating for us that only ever surf in incognito.

Now we'll see what their response is, probably something moronic as 5 views per IP.

Better to just require an account straight up. Then there is no point for anyone to link to them and we will get rid of the whole "will I be able to read this link mess".

[minedwiz]

No, I'm with you. It's an odd piece.

Purely anecdotally, I never remember seeing the "Incognito walls" before a year or so ago; paywalls are clearly able to function even if they can't stop the use of private modes.

Many/most paywalls can be bypassed by blocking or wiping cookies. I wonder if news sites are going to come for cookie blocking next.