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I've had that happen with ArsTechnica. I log in, read an article, maybe some comments. My build is finished. I run some tests, do some debugging. I changed a header that everything includes, so here comes another long build. Back to Ars... and I'm logged out. I subscribed specifically to not see ads, and as soon as I'm logged out, ads start showing up. I literally never read more than 1 article per half hour, so it basically defeated the point. I'd be logged out after every article I read. I canceled, which was surprisingly easy given the dark patterns that other people here experience with NYT, et al. I have a subscription to AppleNews. I don't love it, but I get the same Ars articles with far fewer ads and no auto-play video wasting my bandwidth. I don't love Apple's algorithm for finding me content, but it's not the worst I've seen. Sometimes it's spot-on, and other times way off. What's more irritating to me about it are the following: 1) Shows me an article I'm not interested in, so I don't click it. It keeps showing me that article for the next 10 weeks. Sometimes hides it for a week or two, then suddenly brings it back for no discernible reason. 2) No granularity on how to tell it why you did or didn't like an article in your feed. For example, it was shoving some sex-related article from Cosmo at me. I don't mind sex-related articles. I'm not a huge fan of Cosmo (not really the target demo, but whatever). But if I click "Show me less like this" (thumbs down), is the signal "sex articles," "Cosmopolitan," "articles we've repeatedly shown you that you haven't clicked on," or something else entirely? 3) News sources that I've said I never want to see (Fox News, People Magazine) are sometimes "featured" which means instead of putting a different article where that one would have been, I get a blank spot in the feed that says, "You have asked not to see articles from People magazine." Yeah, thanks. I don't need to be reminded of that. Just put something else there! 4) Sections show up where you have no ability to like, dislike, or remove them. This week it's a section on Major League Baseball, because guess who just got rights to show MLB games? AppleTV+. Great, I don't begrudge others who want to watch baseball. I just couldn't care less and never want to see any article about baseball in my feed. I'm paying for this, so it isn't like they can justify it by, "we need to sell your eyeballs to others to make money." Given all that, it's still the least-worst option I've found at the moment. It's mostly leading me to just read less news, which is better for me anyway. |