Ask HN: What's a good alternative to The Verge now it's login-gated?
For the last few years I’ve mainly just checked The Verge for the latest tech news. Alas, I will not be creating an account just to browse. The answer is to pay for content you enjoy. The Verge is a great site, it was an easy decision to pay to be a member. True, but they didn't ask how to get it for free. And besides, people are pretty much over having to subscribe to everything. It's not that they don't wish to pay, it's just they don't want to have to pay every single entity every single month. It's just too much. If only micropayments had took off. Why do so many free sites force users to login? Are they trying to shield their content from AI bots? Or is it something else? They have a paywall now, you can still view their free articles without an account. My understanding is that most publications like this have declining financials. More competition, functional replacements in the market, declining search traffic, changing audience preferences. The pay wall is to try to re-capture some of that lost rev to keep things going. They have some free articles about this and have talked about it on their podcast. Hisense vs linkedin says it's legal to scrape content without a login wall. They want your email address so they can spam you with newsletters, which increase retention. I seem to still be able to read articles if I dismiss the email popup. why won’t you create an account if you like the content?