David Sacerdote: Just a heads-up to gift link lovers: the Washington Post has changed the rules for viewing gift links, and now requires registration, though no payment is required to view the article.

Just a heads-up to gift link lovers: the Washington Post has changed the rules for viewing gift links, and now requires registration, though no payment is required to view the article.

Yes, I've just been grappling with that. No payment is required, but they'll clog your inbox with promotions to the point where you'll delete that email address.

I recommend setting up a throwaway gmail account to send them to.

Yeah, I thought of that and would rather not.

Simplelogin.co is a lot simpler. Set up an email alias and delete it when it no longer serves its purpose. I accumulated around 20 Gmail accounts before I learned this one weird trick

SimpleLogin | Open source anonymous email servicesimplelogin.co With email aliases , you can be anonymous online and protect your inbox against spams and phishing.

📌

That's so much more work than logging in to Gmail web on a drsktop computer and adding a filter to archive any emails from @wapo

I use DuckDuckGo and have shadow email addresses to 1 Gmail account.

You can unsubscribe to those, I have gotten into a habit of automatically hitting unsubscribe to all emails I start getting as soon as I buy something or read an article etc.

Then I will never read WaPo again.

put any WaPo article url into archive.ph and it will make a freely sharable non-paywalled link to it for you

archive.ph

I have that url as a pinned web page on my firefox like I do for my email and calendar and this site and twitter. It's very helpful.

If you use Firefox, it’s also available as an extension. Just click the icon on a page and it’ll archive it for you, rather than having to copy/paste, etc.

What is the extension name so I can add it?

Under extensions, do a search for “archive today.” Much faster to use the site as an extension.

Here are my choices

Thanks. There are like five choices. Which one do you use?

Yea but then you’d be reading WaPo.

true, but archive dot ph works for almost anything that's paywalled

archive.ph

Thanks again Rich

Very nice

Thanks for posting

📌

Ooohhh, I have a 29 year old AOL account I can use.

So I had to clean out my app caches and then delete my Chrome browsing history to keep it from forcing me to use the email account I used as a subscriber. Then I was finally able to read an article unimpeded and it was disappointing.

Ok, f*ck them.

This is bullshit

Tell them about it, though a bit more politely. thewashingtonpost.formstack.com/forms/submit...

Submit a Letter to the editor - Formstackthewashingtonpost.formstack.com

Can I say “enshittification”?

The Washington Post website is privately owned, so our expectations will differ from those associated with a website we help to maintain with our own funds or with public money. The new gift link system is indeed clunky, could be smoothed out, but we’re not entitled to the gifts we receive.

A lot of subscribers care that it's easy for people whom we send gift links to be able to read them seamlessly. Putting up a registration-wall means it makes more sense to send people archive links instead of gift links. And this only hurts the Washington Post. We're entitled to gripe about that.

Fair point, David! I was speaking only as a non subscriber, but you’re right about the clunkiness. They will attract new subscribers by extending their deals, not by gumming up the gift process. (And maybe by retaining their professional newsroom standards, but that’s another thread🥹)

I think it would be better if they put a limit on how many unique visits a gift article receives. That way, one gift article isn't read by hundreds if not thousands of people. Kind of like libraries. But different subscribers can generate different gift links.

The financial press uses this approach, as do a handful of overseas outlets. It kills the ability of content to go viral, so you give up the ad revenue when you break a new story, and lose it to other outlets which depend on your work. The approach they had was pretty good, and worked well.

That's what I tell my nieces and nephews when I drive away with their toys on Christmas night.

LOL. I was speaking as the recipient of gifts, not as giver of trinkets or third party taker awayer…🎄

"we’re not entitled to the gifts we receive" Girl, what?

This is a hill I will expire upon. 🤓⚰️

Remember that you can always copy the article URL and just drop it into archive.today if they make it too difficult for us to use gift links.

Ah the WaPo. A newly fascist run rag, unworthy of subscribing. I hope the staff not aligned with those propaganda-tubes are able to find better employment.

I've said it before and I'll say it again, pay walls are just as responsible for misinformation as free conservative media.

Had an old inactive account and was prompted to sign in. Worked fine after that.

I did that too but they don't show the article and demand that I resubscribe. Meh.

Same thing happened to me. I had to delete the cache and my history to get it to stop recognizing me. Then I could use the old email address.

I just tried again and it's working for me. But maybe there's a limit to how many I'll get, or it's because I'm in North America, or...?

Hehe or maybe it's personal with me!

They're not validating email addresses on the new WaPo gift link registration-wall, so you can clear cookies just for washingtonpost.com and then register with a made-up email address. Instructions for Firefox mobile: support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/cle... Chrome: support.google.com/chrome/answe...

Clear cookies and website data for a single domain in Firefox for Android | Firefox for Android Help support.mozilla.org You can delete your cookies and website data for a single domain in Firefox for Android, without losing your logins for other domains.

They are. They send a sign in link to the email. I tried with a fake email and they said a sign in link would be sent. Tried with an old email, same. Got the link, subscription required.

That’s exactly what happened to me. Ain’t gonna happen.

Clear cookies from washingtonpost.com Then you can give them a fake email address (they don't verify) and it should work.