[vorpalhex]

We have to be careful when we look at isolated data points. One, uh, "trick", I've seen newspapers in particular pull which will immediately cause me to not support them are confusing subscription terms.

"Special! $1 a month for 12 months". Well, that's $1 per month, that's perfectly affordable... except it's going to auto-renew at a mystery rate that you won't tell me.

My other recently seen favorites include, "Only $X for ultra premium content". What the hell is "ultra premium content"? Is it possible for me to still be walled out of parts of the newspaper? Are these like editorials (who cares) or like major stories?

"Only $1 a week". Ok, that works out to something like $52 a year but why in the world are you giving me a batshit insane term like weekly payments?

Patreon, Nextflix, and many others have this figured out: "It's $x a month. It'll stay $x a month for the immediate future and we'll let you know about price increases in advance." Done. Don't charge me by section, don't charge me in weird terms, don't throw opaque special offers at me.

[Maakuth]

Also there's no neat way to unsubscribe, you need to convince somebody via chat that you really don't want the subscription anymore. This seems quite toxic pattern and will keep me from subscribing to services doing this, such as NYT or WaPo, even at their discount rates.