NY Post Forces iPad Users to Subscribe

There is a good reason newspapers are on their death bed. People have more ways to access content these days. They can use native apps and websites to keep themselves up-to-date with the news. That used to be the case for the New York Post fans on iPad. However, the site’s content is no longer available to iPad users. The New York Post wants more people to subscribe and has set up a ridiculous pay wall to force people to download its app and subscribe. As published on Apple Insider, iPad users will get the following message when they point their iPad’s Safari to the NY Post’s site.

Not surprisingly, the user of other browsers can still access the site on their iPad. More publishers are thinking about implementing their own pay walls. Many top ones are expected to offer subscriptions through in-app purchases. But forcing a segment of Internet traffic to pay for content is the worst type of pay wall we have seen. As expected, not too many people are happy about this:

Okay this is bad. This is breaking the web. If no one used the iPad it wouldn’t matter. But lots of people use it… I wonder how Apple feels about this? I can’t imagine they like it. I can see the ads now. Get an Android tablet to read the web,

said Dave Winer of Scripting.com. Consumers have a choice here. One does not have to be a NY Post fan to realize how dangerous its approach can be for the web. Even the strangest pay wall systems can be brought down if people do not give in to the demands of publishers that use them. Unfortunately, some of these companies are willing to do anything to increase their revenue.