WikiLeaks Tests Donation Pop-Ups For Leaked Material 67
WikiLeaks has for years relied on donated time and money to publish the scoops that it has; now, concealment writes "As of Wednesday night, the secret-spilling site now shows a 'paywall' to any visitor who clicks on one of its leaked documents, including the 13,374 emails from the private intelligence firm Stratfor that it published earlier in the day along with the teaser that the messages regarded presidential candidate Mitt Romney. The pop-up message that blocks access to the site's content shows a video parodying Barack Obama's stump speeches and asking visitors to instead 'vote for WikiLeaks' by making a donation to the site or buying its promotional gear like tote bags and hoodies."
Re:What are they thinking?!? (Score:2, Informative)
I have to wonder who at Wikileaks thought that this would be a good idea.
Who rated this interesting? Did they miss the button for "sack of lying shit"?
Funny how only three people seem to have checked and noticed there is no paywall - not even in Google's cache.
Blockable (Score:5, Informative)
AdBlock Plus can block the popups using these filters:
wikileaks.org###boost
wikileaks.org###entry
Re:What are they thinking?!? (Score:2, Informative)
Who rated this interesting? Did they miss the button for "sack of lying shit"?
Who rated this informative? Did they miss the button for "knee jerk stupidity"?
It was there. You can still see it here [wikileaks.org].
Just because they took it down isn't a good reason to call people a "sack of lying shit". Actually, there's no good reason to do that. Why not treat people fairly? How did it feel when I responded to you the same way? I've noticed that most name calling jerks don't take that very well.
Not quite a paywall (Score:5, Informative)
More like "nag screen":
Update: WikiLeaks has confirmed that the pop-up is intentional, but pointed out via Twitter that visitors can skirt the paywall by sharing a link to the donation pop-up instead of paying, or simply waiting several minutes, as I found.
Of course, this is anathema to the "I want it for FREE and I want it NOW" crowd. My guess is that anyone with the patience to actually read through the Stratfor reports doesn't mind waiting several minutes.
Re:What are they thinking?!? (Score:5, Informative)
I clicked this link [wikileaks.org] on the front page of wikileaks.org and was immediately confronted with a paywall that matched the description in the article. That's great if you don't see a paywall where you are from, but that doesn't make those that do see it a "sack of lying shit".