Misleading pricing:
Using the billing period as the header and showing the price for the billing period… except for monthly—which shows 1/4 the price and says “every week” in smaller, gray text.
Punishing non-subscription payments:
Adding a $6.50 (1400%) surcharge for wanting a weekly one-time payment instead of a recurring subscription.
Charging more for longer periods:
Monthly billing, once you remove the dark pattern and convert it to its actual price, is $2. There are 12 months in a year, meaning it would cost $24 to maintain that subscription for a year.
Why is the yearly subscription $29, then?
If you want to verify this for yourself, you’re going to need to clear your cookies and reload an article a lot. They do A/B tests and show different subscription requied modals. This one was the worst.
See, the problem is, free news has to make revenue from somewhere.
If they aren’t taking subscriptions, then they are probably showing ads, so their content is at the mercy of their sponsors.
Even if they are taking subscriptions, they are probably showing ads. That makes it doubly bad.
The alternative is secondary sources (i.e. social media), where theres already a bias by whoever is curating it.
We are amidst an actual information war. Like, there are at least two totally separate realities existing on the US right now. A reliable source of news is important, and capitalism has destroyed all of the old outlets and left us skeptical of the new ones. Good job, everyone.