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.
I loaded a bunch of articles until it prompted me to pay. I got the screenshot below. In my opinion, this is an intentionally misleading fake 50c/month offer.
Fuck is ‘core’ and ‘premium’??
Will they deliver the news all he way to my device e ery morning if I get premium?
The $2-3 subscription wouldn’t be unreasonable, but I’d rather give it to an outlet that doesn’t try to mislead me even before I become their customer.
Premium includes the stories that are critical of Amazon and billionaires, which Bezos usually has pulled from circulation.
/s
Holy crap that’s a big change!!