Batu69 Posted February 25, 2016 Share Posted February 25, 2016 CEO says apps "ask for extortion to allow for ads;" paper says they conserve battery. The New York Times' recent guide to smartphone battery life tweaks included an animated GIF teaching readers how to enable third-party ad-blocking software within iOS 9. The New York Times inadvertently found itself on both sides of the media world's ongoing ad-blocking conversation this week when a public statement by its CEO was countered by an article about smartphone battery life. On one side of the argument stood CEO Mark Thompson, who spoke against the practice on Tuesday during a keynote discussion at New York's Social Media Week—and suggested possibly banning Times access for users who employ ad-blocking software. Adweek reported on that conversation, which saw Thompson say that his paper's content should be valued "like it's HBO rather than a broadcast network" and that "trying to use and get the benefit of the Times' journalism without making any contribution to how it's paid is not good." Yet the Times followed those statements on Wednesday with a feature-length guide in its technology section titled "Tips and Myths About Extending Smartphone Battery Life." The guide, which is advertised as "part of a series of creative collaborations with The Wirecutter," covers topics such as downloading media instead of streaming it and keeping a phone's automatic brightness setting enabled, and it also dismisses battery-related myths. Most interestingly—at least in light of Thompson's statements—is its unqualified recommendation to "block power-sucking ads." "When browsing the web, your smartphone also burns through power when it downloads mobile ads on websites," the guide says. "Installing an ad blocker will greatly extend battery life." The guide then confirms that typical battery tests on both an iPhone 6s and a Moto X Pure become much more efficient with software such as 1Blocker and Ghostery installed. The guide doesn't clarify anything about blocking specific kinds of ads for battery gains. Thompson didn't call either of those ad-blocking programs out by name, but he did criticize some apps' use of "whitelisting"—meaning, letting certain publishers' content through the blocks in exchange for payments. Those apps' creators "essentially are asking for extortion to allow for ads to take place," Thompson said. Thompson also confirmed both print and online subscriber counts at the Times: 1.38 million and nearly 1.1 million, respectively. The latter grew by 53,000 in the fourth quarter of 2015, Thompson told the Social Media Week audience. Also, during that quarter, the paper's print advertising revenue shrank by seven percent, while its digital advertising revenue grew by eight percent—but those percentage numbers may mask a greater gap between print and digital rates. The Times began requiring paid subscriptions to access more than 10 articles a month in March 2011, but crafty users have since found ways to get around the requirement. In particular, the 10-freebies-per-month limit doesn't take a hit when articles are accessed through shared Twitter or Facebook links. Article source Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
steven36 Posted February 25, 2016 Share Posted February 25, 2016 I went all my life and never bought the Times . I got satellite were i could watch news 24 hours a day so why would i sign up too read 10 articles . If i had to pay i rather just watch the news or they can fix sites like hulu does were you can watch it for free in videos and adblockers dont work for commaricals . Why would we buy news from so and so site when once one site post something and then a 100 sites will spam the internet with the same story even if its not even true. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
lurch234 Posted February 25, 2016 Share Posted February 25, 2016 30 minutes ago, steven36 said: so why would i sign up too read 10 articles I use to buy the Globe&Mail. And I stopped for the same reason you just mentioned. Now I have news feeds from the AP, Reuters and the BBC. I just pick what I want to read. Not having to go thru a whole newspaper to find what is interesting to read sure is hard to beat Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jtmulc Posted February 26, 2016 Share Posted February 26, 2016 Looks like somebody didn't get the memo. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
rasbridge Posted February 26, 2016 Share Posted February 26, 2016 18 hours ago, lurch234 said: I use to buy the Globe&Mail. And I stopped for the same reason you just mentioned. Now I have news feeds from the AP, Reuters and the BBC. I just pick what I want to read. Not having to go thru a whole newspaper to find what is interesting to read sure is hard to beat That is a wonderful idea. So,please provide the links to those sites. Thank you. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
lurch234 Posted February 26, 2016 Share Posted February 26, 2016 5 hours ago, rasbridge said: That is a wonderful idea. So,please provide the links to those sites. Thank you. Well, hoping this doesn't sound lame, some eight years ago I signed up to a Yahoo account and made it my homepage. Within the "add content" tab you have many choices of subjects like science,sports...etc. I chose "news" and filled up my homepage with blocks of the news providers I mentioned in my reply. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
rasbridge Posted February 27, 2016 Share Posted February 27, 2016 Wonderful, thanks for the info. I will definitely start doing that myself... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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