Why the extra advertisements and illegal cookies on the website?

Many readers ask why the news on the website of de Volkskrant is not free, and complain about the cookies. The latter will really change soon, the publisher promises.

‘Articles about the war in Ukraine can only be read for a fee. I can’t explain that to the refugees I have in the house. Large and small entrepreneurs offer a contribution free of charge. All public transport in Europe is free for Ukrainian refugees. But de Volkskrant asks money for information.’

Almost every week the Ombudsman receives questions about access to the website; the advertisements that people get there and the cookie policy of the publisher. And now also a moral appeal to the newspaper to make articles about the war in Ukraine freely accessible. ‘Also for the ordinary minimum man’.

Another subscriber says he likes more Volkskrantwould like to share articles for free via Facebook to prevent others from being deprived of reliable news. Similar calls were made to the newspaper in the early days of the Covid epidemic. Via the website petition.nl it was even a petition started to get all newspapers to the point that the paywall would disappear, partly as a weapon against the many fake news. With only thirty signatures, that call was unsuccessful.

No major Dutch newspaper gave free access to all the stories. However, some, including de Volkskrant for free access to the live blog with news plus a selection of other articles. The same is true with Ukraine, the editor-in-chief responds when asked to the moral appeal of readers. As with the corona epidemic, the Ukraine live blog is free and the other stories and columns are behind a paywall that gives access to six free articles. That is also the maximum that someone can share via Facebook for free. ‘Unlike, for example, the public broadcaster, we are almost entirely dependent on reader income, which makes this unavoidable’, says editor-in-chief Pieter Klok.

The latter cannot be denied: the newspaper needs income to allow its journalists to do their job: research, collect facts and check in order to be able to write reliable news and background stories. Many readers are willing and able to pay that price: the number of (digital) subscribers of de Volkskrant increased by almost one fifth over the past two years. Other media from publisher DPG Media also performed well; on average, the number of subscribers grew by 5 percent. Partly because of this, the group made an ‘exceptional’ profit of 228 million euros last year.

DPG Media is a wealthy company and I would welcome it if the publisher would make the newspaper (partly) free for those who cannot afford a subscription. But that seems to me to be a utopia that is also difficult to implement in practice. I don’t think a link with the tax authorities is a good idea. Nevertheless, if you have a workable suggestion, you can email me. The notion that newspaper journalism can be ‘free’ has often been disproved over the past twenty years. Free newspapers have disappeared and on free news websites, with more superficial journalism, the visitor pays not so much with money, but with attention-demanding advertisements and personal data that are sold to advertisers.

And about that too, readers are concerned, or even angry. A reader who reads the paper newspaper in PDF format on his laptop is annoyed by the extra advertisements that sometimes appear there. I am already paying for that newspaper and the advertisements in it, is his defence. The editor-in-chief says he agrees with him. He is in favor of a ‘Spotify model’ in which paying subscribers no longer see additional advertising. But all this is the domain of the publisher, and he does not share his vision. As a result, even the PDF newspaper sometimes shows a interstitial on; the technical term for a full-page online advertisement between two newspaper pages. “Traditionally, advertising and subscriptions have been the dual revenue model of our newspapers and that has been extended to our digital products,” the publisher said.

And what about the cookies (small data files with information about the user’s click behaviour) on de Volkskrantsite? Three years ago this was still a hot issue for my predecessor because the newspaper didn’t even give paying subscribers the choice of whether or not to accept cookies. Anyone who did not provide data did not enter the site. The privacy watchdog, the Dutch Data Protection Authority, also thought that this was unacceptable, after which that practice was eventually reversed.

Since the beginning of February this year, however, there is a new problem. At that time, the system in which readers do formally give permission for the placement of cookies was also declared illegal by the privacy guards. Users cannot imagine what this entails, is the reasoning. User data is sent within microseconds to commercial parties unknown to the reader somewhere in the world. They bid on this information in an online ‘auction’, after which the advertisement is sold and placed. This system does not comply with European privacy legislation, according to the Belgian regulator, also on behalf of its European colleagues.

Like all major European publishers, the Volkskrantwebsite, the system still works. According to the Dutch Data Protection Authority is that illegal and the company may be fined or reprimanded for it. According to publisher DPG, to whom I submit this, the Dutch privacy watchdog speaks for itself because the European umbrella organization for digital marketing has lodged an appeal. But the authority stands by its judgment and advises companies to “look for a system that does not track users and therefore does not resell users’ data.”

The latter is exactly what we are doing, explains the publisher. DPG wants to say goodbye to the worldwide auction of user data as soon as possible; probably within a year. The personal data of those who accept cookies will remain within the company in that future. They are used to profile users after which their profile is included in a database of at least 10 thousand people as a target group for an advertiser. The advertiser therefore never gets hold of the data of that one person.

This means that privacy is sufficiently guaranteed, at least according to European rules. For Volkskrantreaders it is probably useful to know that such a user profile is compiled on the basis of online visits to all 95 DPG media (television, radio, newspapers, magazines, public magazines, trade journals, online services) in the Netherlands, Belgium and Denmark. Anyone who does not like to have so much information about themselves combined by one company would be wise to refuse those cookies. Just like with Google and Facebook by the way.