NYTimes is predatory on subscriptions. Over my long lifetime I've subscribed twice, and regretted it both times with intensity.
Any place that allows easy instantaneous subscription by a simple web form, but makes you call and talk to a person during limited business hours for cancellation, is a toxic place. I've been told they have stopped this predatory practice due to some newly passed laws or something, but they did not stop their predation due to their own values.
I urge everyone reading to unsubscribe instantaneously from the NYTimes for their business practices. Do not do business with unethical companies.
I respect your opinion but am grateful for and find tremendous value in my NYT subscription. I share it with my SO and read their articles constantly. Prior to getting a subscription I was a "turn js off" kind of person - which is fine I suppose and still do it for other sites. I do not maintain any streaming or other subscriptions outside of Deezer (and a Garmin GPS FWIW). I would like a Bloomberg subscription but to only read Matt Levine cannot justify the cost.
To supplement other news sources am always reading Apnews, Reuters, Al Jazeera and The Stranger (local to Seattle).
NYT is just not a hill I'm willing to die on re: marketing etc.
This is an interesting topic. If a company does something you approve of (e.g. do journalism) and something else you disapprove of (e.g. make canceling hard), is there a good way to signal both as a consumer? This is also relevant in the context of companies like Target, which has been boycotted by both sides of the US political spectrum for various reasons.
I have also wondered about this when boycotting companies for reasons that I suspected were not the most common reasons.
If they sent out a survey about "why you're no longer a customer" I suppose it would provide one channel for explaining one's actions. Oddly, I seem to get those constantly when I am a customer, but essentially never when I'm a former or inactive customer.
On privacy grounds I like the idea that non-customers would be left alone, but on boycott-impact grounds it seems like having some kind of predictable "what are we doing wrong?" channel would be nice too.
Thus the thing to do, for funsies, is to subscribe, and then cancel, and give the poor customer service person on the other end of the line, a piece of your mind, every time you cancel. Boycotts generally don't work. But the goal is to make a signal that gets noticed by the C-suite. Unfortunately, the routes I see are in the pocketbook, the customer service department, and via Twitter, if they do actually happen to be there. A sustained prolonged boycott would work, but most people don't care. Screaming at the customer support person is just shitty to a low level employee that doesn't have the ability to affect change so empathetically thats horrible to do to them, so that's a no go as well. But that is by design. Thus, one way is to overcome that and be horrible to the CSR. But that sucks.
Yay, American "capitalism".
Being horrible to the CSR will never be noticed by the C-suite.
If you think they give one flying fuck about what customers think I have news for you: the only thing that matters is what the board thinks and if revenue is rising but everyone hates the product/company they won’t even blink.
Even then, it's a share price that matters to them. Revenue affects that, but unless they get a K1, it's the share price that really matters.
> If a company does something you approve of (e.g. do journalism) and something else you disapprove of (e.g. make canceling hard), is there a good way to signal both as a consumer?
Leave a bad review where their social marketing team will see it.
> If a company does something you approve of [...] and something else you disapprove of [...], is there a good way to signal both as a consumer?
I'm a fan of writing actual paper letters, which are (marginally) harder to ignore than emails, and (at least I like to think) carry a bit more moral authority, since I'm making the effort to print and (pay to) send them. In my letter I make it clear what I like they're doing, but reserve most of the rest of the letter to express my displeasure at the things I'm most displeased with.
Often these letters disappear into a black hole. Morbid curiosity leads me to wish for a response, but I'm jaded enough to know that even if they respond enthusiastically to my criticism with promises of change, until they actually change, it's just an empty promise. So at the end of the day, often I just want to vent and move on.
I have to believe that if enough people did this, it would move the needle somewhat. If not, well, at least I have the satisfaction of having done something.
My pet peeve with the NY Times online is that there's no escaping the upsell screen after logging on.
You know I spent a lot of my professional work life on the receiving end of these messages and if I had even one ounce of power to change anything for the better I would have.
In the beginning I would still compile user complaints into write ups for my managers à la “hey these 50 people hate that we do X, maybe we could do Y and win back their gratitude/trust” - but I soon realised that’s just a waste of my lifetime, because PM don’t give a fuck.
And why should they? Even if you improve the thing it won’t matter - the majority of people just want to vent like you; they don’t care anymore if the product improves, even if you would give them the perfect product of their dreams it wouldn’t change their minds.
This might sound jaded but there is a reason why the market is dominated by god-awful products - those that gave too much of a shit were sorted out early enough and only those that focus ruthlessly on the money and only the money survive.
There are a few exceptions of course but those just prove the rule to me.
The flipside of companies not caring is that sometimes they tend to throw you a bone in the form of something they can control, like a free month of service, or a coupon for a free/discounted widget.
Even if the faulty product/service never changes, writing those letters can result in savings of hundreds of dollars a year if done right.
I spend quite some time in the political field and practically each paper letter I saw (aside from professional mass letters) was on the weird side.
So I'm not sure the theory holds up.
> This is an interesting topic. If a company does something you approve of (e.g. do journalism) and something else you disapprove of (e.g. make canceling hard), is there a good way to signal both as a consumer? This is also relevant in the context of companies like Target, which has been boycotted by both sides of the US political spectrum for various reasons.
No. at least not as a consumer in the marketplace. That's why people who act like the market creates a good fit for consumer preferences or go on and on about things like "revealed preferences" are just plain wrong.
Good point. I vote with my dollar and do not support Amazon (directly; AWS is unavoidable). But that's your point!
I deleted linkedin a few years ago because of the ridiculous volume of emails and their dark patterns about cancellation. NYT is just not a hill i'm willing to die on unlike linkedin, for example
I think it's pretty simple: the value of good journalism vastly outweighs the crappy subscription practices, but the value of stuff like same-day delivery does not outweigh th e harm Amazon causes.
Your dollar is always your vote. What society spends its labour on is the society it creates, far more so than a random tick in a box.
It's a core question to public choice theory, and why people are generally very unhappy with politics in general. You end up with aggregations of baskets of goods that aren't just suboptimal for you, but suboptimal for the bast majority of consumers, but where there's no practical opportunity to offer the alternative. The barrier to even begin to compete is so high, so the agents (the owner of the newspaper, the retailer, or the politician) end up twisting the available options in their favor.
This kind of knots get solved automatically in markets that are very easy to enter, or by regulation. That's why for the commercial examples, we can have consumer protection laws that create little distortion and have a better equilibrium. Good luck trying to use that lever to fix politics though.
There’s a form of Gell-Mann amnesia at work here. Why would you expect a company that is unethical in its business practices to be ethical where it counts, in its reporting? The answer is that it isn’t.
The product they sell is trustworthy news but they still have accountants. The high-quality news business is a rough business and few are profitable. I can understand why they might feel defensive and a more than a little spooked. How many profitable quality newspapers can you identify? NYT and WSJ - any others?
Cancelling yhe subscription does both. You can't cancel if you're not subscribed.
>is there a good way to signal both as a consumer?
A good way? No. There's a way, which is to get a person with enough clout to yell at them on social media in the hope that it generates attention and scares them. There used to be a time when companies had customer service and actually listened but apparently the C-Suite at some point had the idea that you can just ignore your customers.
FYI you can get Money Stuff delivered by email without a Bloomberg subscription.
Thanks for that! I have been on Levine's website recently and for some reason thought they may deviate in content or something. But will try it out. It's a daily newsletter which is kind of high volume for me (which is why I hadn't subscribed prior) but will check it out. I actually may have been sub'd previously and had to check out because the push-model was slightly too much; would kind of prefer a pull model.
For anyone else interested, here’s the link to the newsletter: https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/authors/ARbTQlRLRjE/matthe...
If you prefer pull, subscribe to it with https://www.kill-the-newsletter.com/
(I subscribe to Bloomberg, and send their emails to feeds which end up in a https://karakeep.app/ instance for consumption)
Great idea and just a note to anyone doing this (as I just did) - Bloomberg will send a confirmation code to the email which you have to get out of the feed. Took a few minutes, but it worked!
Great idea and thanks, will check it out!
The quality of the New York Times as a product is irrelevant to them being predatory about subscriptions.
The quality of the NYT as a product is relevant to GP’s assertion that everyone should unsubscribe from the service though.
If my polite neighbour smiles, holds the door, but also pisses on my doormat every few days, I call him LOUD a jerk and tell him to stop. I never approve the piss because he said good morning.
How is this a fair analogy? The NYT isn't pissing on your doormat. Making it harder to cancel is an annoyance, but it's not like they don't let you.
I've used this pattern for ~10 years now:
1 Subscribe at some very reasonable intro rate: $4 a month for 6 months
2 The intro rate expires and goes to $25 a month.
3 I call the number to cancel, say I am canceling because expense
4 They offer the intro-rate again to keep me, I accept
5 goto 2
Lately, however, I haven't even had to call someone. I just go through their webapp and it automatically offers the intro rate again. I suppose that if I decline that, I would have to talk to someone, but I really like the NYTimes and $4.24/month is reasonable to me.
And yes, I think they do have some sense of desperation chasing them. It costs money to do what they do and newspapers are a hard business.
By the way... if the OP really doesn't want to bother with a subscription, many public libraries offer digital access in the form of 72 hour passes to the NYTimes, the passes are unlimited. I realize that public libraries aren't cool for the libertarian set, but it is a viable option. There are tons of other newspapers and magazines available to read online for free too through your public library (needs a library card though).
If the NYT subscription indeed has a tremendous value, surely it can attract and retain the subscribers without resorting to dark patterns in their products.
The problem is people who get actual news from a decent newspaper (and let's face it, after Bezos trashed the Washington Post, the NYT has no serious rival in the US) is a value for society more than it is for individuals. People might say "I don't need to read a newspaper; I can get news from my social media" but that's kind of the problem with today's society.
For some balance, add the WSJ.
When you say you’re sharing with a SO, do you mean you’re doing the dance of re-authenticating with their two factor code every few days now that they clamped down on sharing a subscription even within the same household?
This new change has really disappointed me.
At least a couple years ago we created a new email for shared online accounts, which is only NYT. It hasn't come up yet and I wasn't aware of their changes; we do not have 2-factor configured and SO says they do not read NYT much... Good to have a heads up for this though.
Re: Matt Levine. You can sign up for his 4x-per-week email for free, and he doesn't spam you.
I like their content. I would subscribe, but knowing how their unsubscription process is deliberately broken, I never will.
Bloomberg is crazy expensive. They used to have citylab articles without a paywall, but looks like they've fixed that.
So subscribing to NYT somehow changed your stance on online privacy? Color me confused...
I won't even read the NYT lol let alone pay for it.
Iraq war: not even once.
If you only read news from companies against the iraq war your options consist pretty much solely of companies that didnt exist on 9/11.
Supporting the war is a hell of a lot different from laundering lies and justifications to build public support for the war. They lied, they knew they lied, and they knew a lot of innocent people would die because of it but did so anyway.
If that's what it takes
Except this strategy doesnt actually accomplish anything. It doesnt tell you anything about what they wouldve published had they been publishing back then
[flagged]
gp's comment had nothing to do with value of the publication. are you implying it ok for them to do that because value?
And making it hard to cancel is not just "marketing" . There are even laws to prevent that sort of thing.
No, I am not implying it is OK for them to do that because I read their paper.
> And making it hard to cancel is not just "marketing"
Yes, we should be clear on this. It's fraud. What the NYT is engaging in is fraud.
You’re not responding to anything the parent said.
The parent didn’t respond to anything their parent said either.
You can subscribe with your library card and get access to all NYTimes (games/crosswords too).
One caveat is the subscription "rental" is for only a 3 day period, so you have "renew" your subscription every 3 days. This only takes 2 clicks though. For San Francisco public library: https://ezproxy.sfpl.org/login/nyt.
Assuming you have a public library that offers these things, of course. Much like people talking about how great Libby is; you can get it through my library, but the selection is extremely limited. And very few libraries offer a good set of options, even for a substantial fee, to non-locals.
I can’t promise I would pay $300/yr to access a great public library, but I would like the option to try it.
My in-laws have a decent (not great, but decent) one in their city, and for sure they will never use it, but they aren’t going to drag the documentation up there and get cards just for me.
if (and a BIG if) you are california, you can get a library card to any in state library, regardless of where in the state you live. Between San Francisco, LA, and San Diego, I think I have pretty much the full suite of anything I can borrow from the eLibrary system.
Yes, NY has similar policies.
Many of us do not have that option.
Aren't the games free? I hear that people pay for the games, but I've done Wordle daily since before NYT bought it, Connections whenever I've watched enough Hank Green videos to forget how much I hate it, and Tiles when I remember it exists, and I've never needed to pay for any of them.
Only the free ones are free. Crossword, even mini crossword now I think, are paid. And some features like playing archived days are also only available with a paid subscription
It’s now one day only, at least through my library.
It's 3 days through mine.
What's your library's page?
I have a few library cards so I'm curious as to which ones have better or worse terms.
https://sccld.org/nyt-online/
It used to be 3 days until some time last year.
I just bookmarked the apply-code page.
Changes every 6-12 months, but that's easy to update.
Any place that allows easy instantaneous subscription by a simple web form, but makes you call and talk to a person during limited business hours
That hasn't been true for, what, almost ten years? When I cancelled three months ago, it was about three or four clicks through the beg screens, and done. No, I don't live in CA.
I live in California, cancelled about five years ago, and they forced me to talk to a person who demanded a reason for my cancellation, and then argued with me about wanting to cancel.
Do not subscribe to the NYTimes. Use your library card, if one must read it, and unfortunately as the undeserved "paper of record" one must often read it to be kept aware of what others are being fed. There's no baby here to throw out with the bath water, I find other places have far better coverage for all the topics I care intensely about. For example, their Ukraine coverage is basically Russia-lite, and extremely anti-Ukrainian, I haven't seen such biased coverage anywhere else except for far-right rags.
> I live in California, cancelled about five years ago, and they forced me to talk to a person who demanded a reason for my cancellation, and then argued with me about wanting to cancel.
That was 5 years ago. California's "click-to-cancel" law was amended in 2024, effective July 1, 2025.
I bet if you read actual Ukrainian Telegram channels that openly discuss military setbacks and government corruption you would conclude they are "anti-Ukrainian".
> their Ukraine coverage is basically Russia-lite, and extremely anti-Ukrainian
This is very surprising to me, I thought they were kind of pro Ukraine biased.
I asked an AI and it came back with this:
> The New York Times' coverage of the war is overwhelmingly pro-Ukraine in its framing, tone, and attribution of responsibility, though critics argue this manifests as omission of context regarding NATO expansion and US intelligence involvement rather than direct support for Russia.
Of course it is and always has been. However, since 2023 with the failure of the overhyped summer counteroffensive, the mainstream narrative has shifted in a slightly more realist direction, which infuriates a lot of people.
> Of course it is and always has been.
Somewhere Walter Duranty is looking up and smiling.
I cancelled last week and it was all on the web, pretty easy.
See, you've made a fundamental mistake: NYT is a far-right rag in sheep's clothing
Unsubscribe? And then miss out on all that excellent "There is another thing you should be worried about" content?
What, you don't appreciate opinion pieces like "Donald Trump is a convicted felon, serial liar, serial business bankrupter, Russian asset, dementia victim, alleged pedophile, and racist, sure, but what if Kamala was worse somehow? That would be awful, so I encourage everyone not to vote for her."
> I urge everyone reading to unsubscribe instantaneously from the NYTimes for their business practices.
If people stopped buying from unethical businesses it would be practically impossible to function in the modern day. Not only is it extremely difficult to know what businesses are “ethical”, but it’s becoming increasingly easy to assume no business is truly ethical. e.g. Environmentally friendly clothing brand Everlane just sold to SHEIN of all places.
I've been close to subscribing to The Economist a couple of times, but when I do a web search I find a lot of people complaining about their similar practice of making it difficult to unsubscribe, so I've refrained.
I guess there are more people who give up on unsubscribing than who refrain from subscribing?
Unsubscribing from The Economist was one of the most frustrating corporate interactions I've ever had.
Honestly if it was easier to unsubscribe I'd probably have an on and off again subscription, but I'll never subscribe again because I don't want to jump through those hoops to unsubscribe.
It's hard to calculate the number of people who don't subscribe at all, but you can calculate the number of recovered subscriptions from a retention process.
FWIW, as a subscriber to both, I have more often found myself manually renewing lapsed subscriptions than going through painful cancellation processes to get out of them. I get the Economist through DiscountMags.com where it is often available with a discount.
Agreed, I made the same mistake once by subbing on their website. Dealing with the eventual cancelation was an absolute pain.
Years later, I wanted to sub again, and this time I did it through the iOS app. Best decision ever, as now it just sits alongside my other App Store subscriptions and is easily cancelable in a single click.
I love this simple but excellent suggestion, thank you.
The NYT frequently offer price deals which make it cheaper to directly subscribe. But unsubscribe hell remains (or did in January this year). I’m not in the US.
Assuming they are both the same price this also speaks directly to NTY: people will give Apple a 30% cut just to not deal with their shitty practices.
No it doesn't, because the price is the same. If the Apple Pay route was 30% expensiver, then I reckon most would not opt for that option.
And it’s not just them, many businesses force you to call to unsubscribe, this should be illegal. I managed to unsubscribe via their chatbot. Maybe because I’m in California where it’s actually illegal.
> Do not do business with unethical companies.
If they got what I want, I don't care about ethics, I care about value. I've just never seen value in NYT.
> I don't care about ethics
Well you sound nice to share a society with.
Using services that will let you generate single use credit card numbers for subscriptions are great for this type of thing. You just disable the card number.
Any place that allows easy instantaneous subscription by a simple web form, but makes you call and talk to a person during limited business hours, is a toxic place.
Happily, this practice is illegal in California. Sometimes consumer-protection laws work ... and are necessary.
(As a hackaround, try using a VPN to make it appear as if you are connecting from California...)
> Happily, this practice is illegal in California.
that's totally irrelevant: Conde Nast for Wired is a shameless offender, for example. took me hours to cancel some autorenewing subscription i never subscribed for, perhaps enabled years ago through some dark pattern in iOS, but i genuinely don't know, and am not easily tricked.
Wired once sent my dad to collections for an automatic renewal that wasn't even due yet.
I don’t remember how it worked but I did a one year subscription last year because of a discount and had no problems cancelling.
> Any place that allows easy instantaneous subscription by a simple web form, but makes you call and talk to a person during limited business hours for cancellation
I moved into a new home. I kept the old one for a few weeks extra. Needed time to move out.
I signed up for CenturyLink at my new home.
After six weeks, I tried to turn off internet at my old house.
* I can’t.
* CenturyLink wouldn’t let me cancel, without waiting on hold for an hour or more
* I work overnight
* CenturyLink is open when I’m asleep
So I’m paying for two plans with the same company. Thanks CenturyLink.
This is a good argument for local brick and mortar representation for the critical services we consume. My bank, mobile and fibre providers all have branches/offices/shops in the town closest to where I live (15km drive).
At each of these locations there is one or more necks that can be wrung if something goes wrong with my services
I know it's not really a solution for your nocturnal proclivities, but I think the argument holds. If you had to sacrifice a couple of your sleeping hours but you know you can sort your problem, then you migt be inclined to do so?
If all else fails resort to old-fashioned letter. As long as it's certified you will have proof of delivery. And then, if they continue to make unauthorized charges, it is your credit card company's problem. They are awake during business hours, and they WILL sort it out.
Certified mail? I know it's old-fashioned but then you could hold their feet to the fire if they kept charging you.
Copy/paste this to your local news organization and your representative in congress.
A certified letter never fails in my experience.
“unsubscribe instantaneously”
Oh the irony of telling somebody to instantaneously unsubscribe from something notoriously hard to unsubscribe from.
Me personally, I just go on the web chat every once in a while and say I want to cancel, and they give me a nice discount.
Respectfully disagree that it's toxic or predatory. Very easy to cancel via chat as well. New York times is an incredible jewel of a company. I am fine with some marketing tactics that aren't incredibly heavy handed. They are far far far from unethical.
.I urge everyone reading to unsubscribe instantaneously from the NYTimes for their business practices. Do not do business with unethical companies.
You are not wrong for thinking that, but I encourage people to consider that generally the business and editorial areas are largely independent of each other because of the value of editorial independence in case they think that the lack of ethics applies to their journalism too.
Have they issued a retraction for the biologically impossible “dog rape” claims yet?
I suspect this has something to do with a middle eastern conflict of which I don't know the details. That said I know from other stories that this isn't impossible
Well I would also encourage people to unsubscribe for their editorial practices, and this was the incident that prompted my second unsubscription:
https://www.theguardian.com/media/2020/jun/05/new-york-times...
They have predilection for defense of elites, including Trump, and have not challenged his corruption to the degree that they have challenged, say Clinton's accusations of corruption. Their defense of the elite in their coverage that launched the war in Iraq, the outright corruption of their own reporters and editors, is not reflected in the overall reputation of the NYTimes. Holding them up as the beacon of good journalism results in poor judgements on what's happening with current affairs, because they are often quite biased in very disastrous ways that have resulted in the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people and trillions of wasted defense spending.
More recently, the circling of the wagons of those considered "in-group" like Olivia Nuzzi has also been despicable, but definitely descriptive of the general editorial choices at the NYTimes.
However I don't expect as many people to agree with me that the NYTimes has an undeserved reputation for journalistic excellence, so I focus mostly on their bad business practices.
I haven't had a NYTimes subscription since around 1991.
This thread has a whole bunch of Charlie Browns in it who are "shocked, shocked" to find that Lucy has pulled away the football once again...
That's why it's best not to give companies your credit card number. If you subscribe through PayPal, you can cancel through PayPal.
you can do a merchant block on your CC then it doesn't matter what they claim, no more payments issued to that merchant (NYT in these examples).
I had the same experience after subscribing for crosswords around 10 years ago, but I think at that time they did let you ask nicely for cancellation via a support chat bot. I think they might have only supported this in California due to California state law.
> makes you call and talk to a person during limited business hours
I unsubscribed a couple years ago. It was a click on the website. (Just checked. Cancelling online without talking to anyone is still an option.)
I unsubscribed ~7 years ago and was forced to call a person. It depends on where you live, I remember reading at the time that California residents could unsubscribe online, but everyone else was forced to call. They then forced you to convince a phone operator that you really wanted to cancel. They may have changed it due to changing legislation, or maybe you live in an area with better laws.
If you read one more sentence further:
> I've been told they have stopped this predatory practice due to some newly passed laws or something, but they did not stop their predation due to their own values.
Depends on the jurisdiction you are in.
No, it doesn't. I live in WA, with no such consumer protections, and it was a few clicks.
I’m in Wyoming. There is zero chance we have any consumer protection laws around this.
The FTC did away with the "call to cancel" after subscribing online, fortunately. You have to allow cancellation using the same method as subscription. So they can no longer do this.
https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/news/press-releases/2024/10/...
> Do not do business with unethical companies.
Sure name one who is ethical and successful.
What a fascinating hill to (with some assumptions about your political leanings) choose to die on. Does the logic go something like "the country may be dying while owing over $100,000 of debt on my behalf, but I'm not gonna let scummy newspapers get in the way with O($100) from my wallet?
The fact that they have an online unsubscribe option that's only available for California users is seriously scummy.
That isn't a fact. Plenty of folks under the OG comment that don't live in CA have said they cancelled online, myself included.
I like the system. Every single time I talked to the human, and explained that the Times wasn’t worth the “regular” price, back came a much lower one.
I heard this, but I cancelled without fuss during the worst of cancel culture.
A couple of years later resubscribed. I also subscribe to the WSJ to make sure I receive a more balanced viewpoint.
You can usually get a web cancel option by changing your address, because some states, including California[1], have laws requiring it be as easy to cancel as it was to sign up.
WSJ offered me an online cancel option after I moved (cough) to California.
It was a digital subscription by the way - usually they have your address on file anyway because you used it to verify your credit card.
[1]https://oag.ca.gov/news/press-releases/attorney-general-bont...
lets not throw out the baby with the bathwater
The NYT is not a baby. At _best_ they're a pail of dirt that occasionally has some flecks of gold mixed in with the mud.
I think we need more babies. I would be ecstatic to pay for an alternative source of national US journalism that actually has some analysis and decent writing. NYT is a shadow of its former self, apnews reads to me like USnews. international helps round it out, but it's not super in depth for the US.
What a load of crap. You can just cancel your subscription from the app or on your account on the desktop.
I jumped into a NY Times games sub for a year; couldn’t find the cancel button after a couple minutes of fiddling and ended up doing a CC chargeback in 60 seconds.