How can you criticize The Guardian of all places, when they let people read their articles for free? This is puzzling to me.

To me, this is an example of how someone can be very generous and people still find a way to ask for more.

>they let people read their articles for free? This is puzzling to me.

That's the data use consent part...which the article talked about:

>We see a handful of large platforms harvesting users’ private data to share with commercial brokers

>On many platforms, we are no longer the customers, but instead have become the product. Our data, even if anonymised, is sold on to actors we never intended it to reach, who can then target us with content and advertising.

...hence irony. Guardian is either pay or agree to data use

In the UK? I can choose "reject all" after a couple of obnoxious cookie banner clicks in the EU.

This point feels like the "Yet you participate in society" meme to me. Guardian has massive reach and it's free to read.

Ooooh, you had to either consent or pay!

Which did you do? Let me guess.

Consent or pay or decline on this particular platform. Since things do have some value. You're reading an article by a human on a platform with content (exclusively?) researched and written by humans. There's a reason the guardian often has articles reaching HN where other "news" outlets do not.

I agree 100%, but I'll note in this case it's trivial to bypass the banner by blocking scripts from sourcepoint.theguardian.com.

I’m curious what you would rather have them do. Just put up a giant paywall like every other newspaper?

I’m sure they have a toggle to make some articles entirely free. This should be one of them!

Indeed. I got cookied by Google Ads and likely, many other platforms, while reading it.

Maybe use private/incognito mode on those sites.

The Guardian is one of a limited handfuls left that don’t have their content behind mandatory paywalls.

News shouldn’t be a luxury.